Alternative healing methods include, but are not limited to, the methods mentioned below:

These techniques have little or nothing in common other than that they are not generally included in standard contemporary medicine. Even this, however, is a generalization: many modern drugs, including digitalis and morphine, are derived from herbal sources, or are synthetic versions of the active ingredients in herbs.

Most alternative methods have not undergone double-blind clinical trials: in some cases, their practitioners and supporters claim that these trials are inappropriate.