Holistic View in Medicine

Modern medicine was born in modernism period around two centuries ago with materialistic view in general and pure biologic approach to health and disease. This new kind of approach was based on the wide spread philosophic view of that era especially the hypotheses of Claude Bernard. As our understanding of human biology has tremendously progressed, and the emergence of postmodernism era has occurred, deficiencies of pure biologic approach in solving human problems concerning health and disease are becoming more evident. Numerous scientific researches on one hand and return of societies to humanistic values on the other hand have opened new horizons in therapeutic endeavors. Alternative medicine has been growing continuously, and pure biologic approach has been replaced by the new holistic approach. In this philosophy, human being is regarded from its biologic, psychologic, social, mental and spiritual dimensions and his interaction with the world of creation as his living environment has been taken into consideration. In this review we tried to discuss concepts, history and principles of this view.