Alterative - Wikipedia Alterative is a former categorisation of materia medica covering various substances, often metals or minerals used in the treatment of chronic conditions to alter the body's metabolic processes [1]
Understanding Alteratives - Herbalist Alchemist In the 1819 London Medical Dictionary, Bartholomew Parr defines an alterative (from the Latin altoros, meaning to change), as a substance that corrects “acrimony in the blood ” Even as late as the 1930's, dispensatories and materia medicas still included alterative remedies