[Alternative medicine during the XIX and XX centuries]

Alternative medicines continue to grow during these first years of the XXIst century where believes and irrational ideas are popular. Drugs did played and still play a central role for some of them such as homeopathy, radiesthesia, and magnetism, three approaches that are sometime consider as complementary to each others. Pharmacists were related volunterely or not to their history during the XIX and XX centuries, as well as official institutions and political power. The present study shows complexity of these interactions and the role sometime essential the pharmacist had for the recognition of some medical practices.