Complementary medicine is something you do in addition to the usual scientific medicine to make people feel better, e.g. home-made chicken soup. Alternative medicine is something you do in place of scientific medicine, e.g. homeopathy — something not yet shown to work. As soon as it is shown to work, it becomes scientific medicine. This suggests that any alternative therapy that has been around for decades and still has not been shown to work, almost certainly doesn’t.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)