The chapters of this volume have demonstrated the protracted coexistence in the early modern era of a wide variety of medical knowledge regimes and practices – both religious and ‘worldly’ – for interpreting health and combating illness. In contrast, the modern medical paradigm, consolidating its hegemonic authority in the first half of the twentieth century, understood health as primarily a concern of medical science and of the public sphere. 

However, as this epilogue will explicate, the latter decades of the 1900s saw a reemergence of alternative epistemologies and the growth of a more multifaceted health market. The epilogue discusses comparisons, analogies, and contrasts between this era of ‘late modernity’ and the early modern era.

Three main aspects of health culture in the late 1900s and early 2000s are discussed in this commentary: the return of holistic new spirituality and alternative medicine; the ideology of ‘healthism’ and the marketization of health from the 1970s; and the emergence of fitness culture and issues of physical appearance.