How have medical systems from homeopathy to traiteur come to be dubbed "alternative"?
Before the late 1800's, allopathic medicine, that which we call modern medicine today, was only one of many approaches to healing. Other systems included homeopathy, herbalism, hydropathy, home remedies and the many elixirs and tonics peddled by varying degrees of "quacks" throughout the country. Through political lobbying and the discoveries of various "magic bullet" cures such as salvarsan for tuberculosis, "a particular kind of healing has gained a monopoly in American society and legitimacy, and as a result everything else is called alternative because it's the alternative to that one thing," states Helen Regis, the medical anthropologist featured in the film who works in Cameroon, Africa; however, she continues, "...in most places in the world, people practice a great variety of therapies and healing practices. So biomedicine is used, but there are also other healing approaches to healing that are used — herbalism, magical healing, religious healing."

How does traditional healing fit within the context of biomedicine and modern America?
In Southern Louisiana, the co-existence of allopathic medicine and traiteur offers patients a range of resources for treating illness. Traiteurs and their patients do not view the two systems as conflicting. For example, when Lawrence, the Houma traiteur becomes ill, he goes to the doctor, yet also employs week-long, occult candles (which are highly commercialized), visits to another traiteur, Catholic novenas (a rite involving nine days or weeks of recitation of a series of prayers) and native traditional herbs to get well. Switching from one healing system to another is common among these practitioners and their patients, whose religious syncretism is matched by syncretism among medical systems. Another example of this fluidity is evident in the language with which the patients label their illnesses. Lousay A., a Cajun healer, is shown at his weekly home "clinic" hours one Saturday treating patients. One woman describes her condition as la mal angle, Cajun French for shingles, while another woman explains that she has herpes simplex, the medical term for the virus. Even in language, the traditional and the biomedical is heard to exist side by side without conflict.

Why go to the traiteur?
What sorts of illness do traiteurs and other traditional healers normally treat?
As any consumer or browser of popular magazines, talk shows and self-help books knows, "alternative" therapies are of enormous significance to popular culture today. Many academics, public analysts and everyday people attribute this to the increasingly institutionalized, specialized, and financially taxing nature of the biomedical system.

Regardless of its obvious technological, surgical, and pharmaceutical benefits, the American public continues to look for more "holistic" forms of healing that appeal to their psycho-social and spiritual as well as physiological needs. As an OB/GYN, Dr. Marie Mendenhall states in the film, "Medicine is very cold and all based on fact...I think that leaves a void and wherever there's a void, there'll be somebody to step in, and I think traiteurs, that's what they do. They walk right in to that and fill that void, that need for somebody to pray for them."

Traiteurs not only fill a spiritual void; they also provide services for people who either cannot afford medical care or are unable to find relief within the biomedical system. As Helen Regis contends, "In a context like the US where biomedicine is available, traditional medicine is often used for chronic ailments, ailments with a poor prognosis, chronic pain and anything with a strong psychological component." For instance, Pop Joe F., a Creole healer in the film, uses alligator grease for asthma, a chronic condition. Many others practice the laying-on of hands and prayer for nervous problems, shingles, warts and other psychologically related disorders and viruses.