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Naturopathic medicine (a.k.a., naturopathy) is marketed as a unique form of primary care medicine that is allegedly patient-centered, safe, and effective. The heart of naturopathy is positioned within a philosophy that presumes “natural” and “traditional” methods are better than the science-driven practices of modern medicine. Naturopaths have become skilled at selling this “nature works best” gimmick through scientific deception, hyperbole, and pseudo-profundity. The result is the rise of a new medical profession lacking standards of care and a basis in reality, which teaches its practitioners to provide treatments that are inherently unethical or even illegal. How do I know? I was a licensed naturopath who sold this naturopathic quackery to patients. Herein lies stories from my time as one of these fake doctors.

This chapter describes the allopathic response to the democratic challenges of alternative medical sects, particularly homeopathy. It describes the formation of the American Medical Association (AMA) and its early practices as an organizational response to the problem of adjudication. The organization has three goals: educating the public on medical issues, reforming allopathic medical education, and combating “quackery” in all its guises through legislative efforts.

Chapter 2 investigates the prosecution of ‘Professor’ Abraham Eastburn in 1919 as a means of exploring the interface between the law and the moral panic surrounding VD in early twentieth century Scotland that reached its peak during and immediately after the First World War. A detailed narrative of his background and practice, together with a content analysis of his posters and handbills, furnish valuable insights into the widespread and continuing recourse to unregistered healers and quack remedies. The failure of qualified practitioners and established therapies to meet the needs of those suffering from venereal infections is surveyed. Eastburn’s’ prosecution is then contextualised within the social politics shaping the creation of a nation-wide health system for the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of VD, and the outlawing, under growing pressure from the medical profession, of all venereal advice and treatment by unqualified practitioners under the 1917 Venereal Disease Act..

In this chapter it is pointed out how the recent advances in placebo research can stimulate the development of new clinical trial designs for the validation of new treatments. One of the main implications of the recent advances in placebo research is the possibility of inducing drug-like effects without drugs, thus opening up the potential of reducing drug intake. As social stimuli may activate the same biochemical and receptor pathways on which drugs act, several cognitive and affective factors can modulate the action of drugs. The new scientific advances in placebo research need to be considered and analysed in more detail from an ethical perspective, as they raise a number of questions that need to be discussed in depth, including the use of placebos by quackery.

This chapter discusses the 1930s through the 1960s, an anomalous period of American history in which the people’s confidence in major national institutions was at its peak. Most people trusted government health regulators, the medical establishment, and pharmaceutical companies to do the right thing. Consequently, medical freedom of choice activism occurred mainly on society’s margins, voiced by peddlers of fraudulent products and right-wing cranks. The most persistent and cantankerous promoter of medical freedom during this period was the National Health Federation (NHF), the publisher of “Health Freedom News.” This organization, founded by manufacturers of dietary supplements and quack medical devices, resisted FDA regulation of alternative treatments, as well as the fluoridation of municipal water supplies. Although the NHF sometimes exemplified paranoid, Red-Scare politics, it also employed more conventional libertarian arguments of the sort that infused medical freedom rhetoric in other periods of American history.

The scattered scholarly treatments of Ebenezer Sibly assert that he took all his enterprises seriously and engaged intellectually and emotionally with astrology, alchemy, freemasonry, Newtonian science, and old-style natural philosophy. They also portray him as an actual practicing physician and surgeon. This chapter argues he was nothing of the sort. A fraudulent physician, he was also a fraudulent husband. This chapter also follows Sibly through bankruptcy with a fabulously crooked lawyer, and legal separation from his third wife. More important for the long term, this chapter also examines his acquisition of a patent for the Solar Tincture, and what that meant for him in terms of personal finances, and more broadly as a marketing device.

This chapter examines whether complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) should be covered by health insurance. It first considers the philosophical and practical obstacles to science in medicine before discussing the (sometimes) unfounded bias that paints all alternative medicine as quackery and the (sometimes) unwarranted confidence that portrays all conventional medicine as science. In order to respond appropriately to the health-related needs of patients, the chapter argues that health plans must avoid a double standard by using the same criteria for evaluating conventional and alternative modalities. A just system should promote good care within prudent limits by avoiding waste and harm, and by requiring empirical substantiation of the value of all interventions, conventional as well as alternative ones.