There's alot talked about Holistic Medicine. In my mind it is taking a broad and all encompassing view of the patient in an attempt to balance these to promote health.

Aspects include environment, diet, exercise, behavior and therapeutics. The methods, or treatment modalities used by the practitioner, however, are down to that individual, depending on their skills, training and experience.

Many use homeopathy and acupuncture, some use herbs and nutraceuticals, some use conventional and alternative treatments in parallel, some use hands-on healing or kinesiology or other of the subtle healing arts.

What means used to aid healing does not define holism, just as the type of spanner a mechanic uses does not define what sort of mechanic they are. It is how the patient is viewed that sets the holistic practitioner apart.

Antibiotics, antihistamines, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories and glucocorticosteroids, in my opinion, never cure a patient, they simply remove a symptom. They have their place in modern holistic medicine, but the role should be reduced to when other methods are inappropriate or there is a welfare issue for the patient.

The use of antiopathy/allopathy/orthodox drugs can be useful in the short term as the body may then go ahead and heal itself. But all too often, the removal of symptoms is all that is done under the conventional approach. And what happens when the symptom returns? Conventional medicine is good at miracle cures; emergency medicine and heroic life-saving procedures are wonderful, but it gets a little uncomfortable if its' patients return to the vet repeatedly as they are inclined to using suppressive techniques.

Holism is about addressing the fundamental problems and treating them 'in the shortest, surest, least harmful way, according to clearly comprehensible principles' [Samuel Hahnemann c. 1840]