Greater Than the Parts: Holism in Biomedicine, 1920-1950 Book

The standard account of the development of medicine in the twentieth century maintains that after the acceptance of the germ theory of disease, the health sciences embarked on an evolutionary path dominated by laboratory science and technology, and increasingly reductionist in its orientation. The result has been a monolithic entity termed "biomedicine" which has come under growing criticism in the popular sphere since the 1960s. The essays in this volume suggest that this received view, accepted by both supporters and opponents of biomedicine, is seriously incomplete. Holism today is commonly regarded as an alternative to regular healing and a reaction to it. As early as the interwar years, however, mainstream clinicians and basic scientists in Europe and North America responded to what they perceived as the increasing reductionism and mechanization of the biomedical sciences and clinical practice by creating "holistic" models of the body's activities and "holistic" methods of healing based on the individual sufferer. Some of the opponents of reductionism employed the latest scientific discoveries to reinvigorate concerns about the individual and his environment; others went as far as to recommend that population health and not individual disease processes be the proper object of the healing arts. Holistic responses were also visible in public health and epidemiology. Constitutionalism, psychosomatic medicine, neo-Hippocratic medicine, neo-humoralism, social medicine, homeopathy, and catholic humanism were some of the different approaches that emerged as a reaction to orthodox medicine. The essays collected here explore this previously neglected subject. They examine the holistic turn in orthodox medicine in the interwar years as a reaction to scientific reductionism and the specialization and division of labor in medicine. In addition, they demonstrate how this movement represented a part of the more general response to modernity itself, and how it incorporated the political, ideological and cultural upheaval of the years between the wars. Greater than the Parts: Holism in Biomedicine, 1920-1950 will appeal to a broad circle of readers interested in the history of science, medicine, and culture in the twentieth century, as well as to professional scholars in the area.Read More