The development of medical sects

There exist a number of studies that demonstrate a parallel between secular and transcendental movements. A useful exercise is to look at the development of medicine and compare the origin and development of medical sects with sects that we would more normally associate with religious development. Thus, the struggle for a dominant ideology in medicine meant that Galenism as the New Systematists gave way to the emergence of a dominant medical orthodoxy. The dilemmas presented by new discoveries in medicine highlight this struggle for dominance. Running alongside medical sectarianism is the phenomenon of medical cults such as phrenology and mesmerism. Osteopathy, naturopathy, homeopathy, and chiropractic are significant examples of modern challenges to the monopoly of medical knowledge exhibited by sects.