The holistic alternative to scientific medicine: history and analysis.

The resurgence of the holistic health movement in the 1970s can be in part attributed to increasing consumer dissatisfaction with the present system of medical care delivery. This article traces the rise and decline of modern medicine by analyzing the assumption of hegemony by scientific medicine and its practitioners. Then it describes the challenges that holistic medicine's theories and therapies currently pose to scientific medicine's organizational form and practical content. Holistic medicine is assessed in terms of its organizational and conceptual basis, and the relationship between holistic medicine and the needs of advanced capitalist society is discussed.