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Why Do the Elderly Use Complementary and Alternative Medicine?

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Alternative Medicine for the Elderly

Abstract

Many forms of the complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) can trace their history back literally hundreds of years. Acupuncture, herbalism and homoeopathy all claim a long lineage in terms of practice. But it has been particularly in the last fifty years (and more particularly in the past 20 years) that have seen a dramatic and sustained growth in interest in the area throughout the western world and people from many different age groups. Growth in the use of an increasingly wide variety of CAM therapies has quite naturally led to increasing research endeavour to answer questions about the efficacy and choice of CAM [60, 62, 72] compared to orthodox, western, medicine.

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Authors
  1. A. Furnham
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Geriatrics, University of Miami School of Medicine, Miami VA, Medical Center (11A), 1201 NW 16th St., 33125, Miami, FL, USA

    E. Paul Cherniack MD

  2. School of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey at Newark University Hospital, University of New Jersey-Newark, 150 Bergen Street, 07103, Newark, NJ, USA

    Neil Cherniack PhD

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Furnham, A. (2003). Why Do the Elderly Use Complementary and Alternative Medicine?. In: Cherniack, E.P., Cherniack, N. (eds) Alternative Medicine for the Elderly. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-05185-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-05185-6_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-07913-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-05185-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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