More and more people in Western countries - and in Israel - turn to alternative health care as a complement or a substitute for conventional health care. Some visit alternative practitioners even before they see a family doctor. And for many people these methods work!! Alternative health care in Israel, like in other Western countries, is a growing phenomenon which changes over time. The book captures its dynamism showing its development from the late 1980s to the present by describing its place in the health care scene against the background of cultural, political and social forces in Israel. The book is based on 15 years of research which included over 100 in-depth interviews with alternative practitioners, conventional practitioners, patients and policy makers from different health care organization in Israel. There are many lively quotations from these interviews which bring the narrative close to real life. The book shows that in Israel there are many mainstream doctors, nurses, midwives, physiotherapists and others who practice integrative medicine which combines alternative and conventional approaches in order to reinvigorate medicines overall orientation to care and cure.

Judith Shuval, M.A., Ph.D. Sociology, Harvard University, Professor Emerita Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Holds Rose Chair in Sociology of Health. Recipient Israel Prize for Social Sciences. Published 12 books, IMMIGRANTS ON THE THRESHOLD reprinted 2006 as classic of the 60s. Awarded Prize for Life Work by European Society for Medical Sociology.