Voluntary self-regulation of complementary and alternative medicine practitioners.

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has been practiced and used in this country continuously since the nineteenth century.2 All of the forms of care present then are still present today including botanical medicine (“Thomsonians”), health food (“Grahamites”), homeopathy, hydrotherapy, healing touch (“mesmerists”), osteopathy, naturopathy, chiropracty, and Christian Science.3 In the 1920s and early 1930s, three studies reported CAM usage of thirty-four percent, eighty-seven percent, and ten percent.4 Thirty percent of those born before 1945 use CAM compared with about one-half of those born between 1945 and 1964 and seventy percent of those born between 1965 and 1979.5 Although there may