Article July 2, 1990 Issue

SECOND THOUGHT

Looking again at news and commentary

Harvard Magazine

From Harvard Magazine, September–October 1989

".... Western medicine [is] known generically as allopathy .

"Many physicians now feel that allopathy's dominant—nearly obsessive—focus on disease .... limits its clinical purview. 'I heard the word health mentioned very infrequently during four years of medical school and one of internship, though I listened to innumerable lectures and seminars on diseases,' says Andrew Weil ...., M.D ...., author of Health and Healing and The Natural Mind, among other books. Furthermore, allopathy's models of disease rest upon biological research that studies the workings of the body in isolation from those of the mind. 'Allopathy is built on a totally materialistic view of the body,' says Deepak Chopra, [M.D.] .