Trends in attention to complementary and alternative medicine in the American medical literature.

For decades, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has been a topic of discussion within American medical journals. This research examines trends in the amount of coverage CAM receives in top professional journals in US medicine in order to ascertain if the timing of this discussion is linked to demographic, economic or political changes occurring in US society and affecting organized medicine. Pooled time series analyses of the number of published documents in five prestigious American medical journals between 1965 and 1999 were conducted, and findings of models with unlagged and lagged variables are presented.

Medical doctors and complementary and alternative medicine: the context of holistic practice.

Consumers, health care financing, external and internal competition are factors identified in the medical literature as prompting change within medicine. I test these factors to determine if they also prompt regular doctors to define themselves as 'holistic MDs' and align themselves with complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). State-level regression analyses on the number of MDs advertising in referral directories for CAM therapies find holistic practice a function of practice locale.