[Conventional school medicine--alternative medicine: one or both? A personal viewpoint]

The demand for an alternative medical care is in fashion nowadays. The blessings of a science- and technology-oriented medicine are on suspicion. This essay deals with the current credo of scholastic medicine, the definition of alternative health care and with the methods of phytotherapy, homeopathy and acupuncture. The opinion is promoted that there is but one integral medicine. The different methods have to be subjected to cost-benefit analysis because society cannot afford to waste financial resources to ineffective diagnostic and therapeutic measures: however, traditional medical science should accept the challenge to accept interesting alternative methods. Health care is poorly provided, if only mercantile criteria are accepted as some health-insurers propose.