Concept of Holistic Medicine

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In literature, the term ‘holistic’ has been used in three different senses in medicine. All of them are relevant and sensible.

HOLISTIC APPROACH TO HEALTH CARE

It has been a consistent claim that the indigenous systems are holistic in this sense, while the modern medicine is accused of seeing only the disease, or more specifically the symptoms. Increased urbanisation of villages, the mad rush to the cities to avail of the modern medical facilities in the well-placed or misplaced hope of quick and better relief, and the busier-than-ever doctors with over-flowing consulting rooms, all have created impersonal settings where the treatment is hardly based on anything other than the disease and symptoms. Nevertheless, at least some practitioners and institutions of modern medicine have been, of late, paying attention to the patient’s personal equations with the world around him. Under the pressure of the current times, indigenous systems now appear to be holistic more in name than in practice (Foster, 1983). Largely gone are the days when the Vaidya, or the family physician, was a local person with an intimate knowledge of the patient’s family and personal circumstances. In spite of the constraints of the current times, some serious effort should be made to relate the patient’s personal situation to the treatment.

HOLISTIC RESPONSE OF THE BODY TO A DRUG

If a drug is administered systemically, for example, an analgesic for headache, it would act on the whole body simultaneously. The patient perceives the action of the drug in the relief from headache, and does not do so in the other parts of the body, as there was no pain to indicate the difference. In another example, if a woman was sufferring from constipation, and if she was also in periods, a systemic stimulant purgative would increase her menstrual flow as well, which is quite undesirable. Similarly unacceptable would be the situation, if she was sufferring from diarrhoea, when the medicine would restrict her menstrual flow. Hence, so far as feasible, locally applied drugs should be preferred to systemic medication, in order to restrict the action of the drug to the part that was affected. A local application of a counter-irritant ointment like Amrutanjan is preferable to a systemic analgesic to relieve local pain. May be one would forget the pain in the annoyance caused by the counter-irritant ointment.

Drug targetting, in terms of the location of the organ and/or the symptom, is being paid attention even in Allopathy only in recent times. In the other systems it is largely neglected.

HOLISTIC ACTION OF ALL THE INGREDIENTS OF A MEDICINE

Modern medicine is based, much of the time, on a single chemical compound, whose pharmacodynamics are well understood. In the indigenous systems which are plant based, the concept of a single chemical drug is impossible. Even if the medication constitutes only a single species of plants, it contains several different chemical compounds, each with its own therapeutic effects. If the medicine is a formulation containing several different species, the chemical situation is much more complex. There are several formulations with over 50 different plant species. All the chemical compounds in such a medicine simultaneously function holistically, with synergistic and antagonistic interactions, the total result being the cure.