Int roduction This chapter explores the articulations that have emerged over the last halfcentury between various types of holism, Chinese medicine and systems biology. Given the discipline’s historical attachments to a defi nition of ‘medicine’ that rather narrowly refers to biomedicine as developed in Europe and the US from the eighteenth century onwards, the medical humanities are not the mo...

The aim of my paper is to describe and evaluate different conceptions holism in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I distinguish three readings holistic elements this work: i) Minimal Holism (E. Anscombe, M. Black, D. Pears); ii) Moderate (J. Conant, C. Diamond, G. Ryle); iii) Radical (G. Bar-Elli, Kremer, P. Livingston). conclusion that the most viable option since it embrac...

Objective – A combined study exploring nurse lecturers’ understanding of spirit; the medical model; holism; placebo and energy medicine Results – There was evidence of a confused or vague idea of the nature of spirit and holism among nurse lecturers, with this possibly reflected in the nursing curriculum. There was some evidence of the disproportionate effect of the medical model within the tea...

Medical pluralism, equity and holism: these are research issues and perspectives arising in the Swiss Programme for the Evaluation of Complementary Medicine (PEK). This evaluation was commissioned by the Swiss Government in order to provide scientific data on 5 complementary therapies (anthroposophic medicine, homeopathy, neural therapy, phytotherapy and traditional Chinese medicine). The aim o...