The rapid growth of Complementary & Alternative Medicine (CAM) demands that the public, the medical world, social scientists, the media, & governments pay attention. People are questioning the limits of what modern medicine can accomplish & seeking additional ways to manage their health. While many are enthusiastically adopting complementary & alternative forms of medicine, others are more sceptical. Physicians' attitudes are in transition, & governments are pondering where this increasingly important phenomenon fits into the health care system. The challenge is to keep pace with the changing ways that people view health & illness, take responsibility for themselves, & incorporate CAM into their health care. This text brings together for the first time a wide range of leading North American & European social scientists to identify who uses CAM, why they use it, & how they find out about it. Presenting research from psychology, sociology, anthropology & public health, they alert us to the current context of CAM use & provide new models & techniques for understanding its future place in health care.