10. A Return to Tradition: The Rediscovery of Alternative Medicine

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Case 1: A bad day for Western medicine

The year was 1937, and pneumonia season was in full swing. The sick ward at Boston City Hospital—a large, open room with 30 beds neatly arranged around its perimeter—was filling rapidly with patients suffering from its telltale symptoms: chills, fever, bloody cough, and pain in one side of the chest. Yet one patient, a young black musician, stubbornly refused to cooperate. Admitted a few days earlier with chills and fever, he had no cough. And now, as a young intern fresh out of Harvard Medical School made his way through the ward and ...

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