ABSTRACT
As a result of the rapid development of science and technology during the late 1800s and early 1900s, Western medicine embraced a biomedical model of health. Individuals’ emotional state and the interpersonal relationship between them and their physician played an important role before the biomedical model of illness was adopted. Until the turn of the 20th century, before scientists possessed the technology to advance the biomedical model, doctors and physicians practiced their trade by observing their sick patients to determine what in that individual’s environment might be contributing to his or her ailment. That is, biopsychosocial factors were believed to interact with one another to produce illness. Physicians diagnosed and treated their patients on an individual-by-individual basis. There was no disease model to dictate diagnosis or how the course of treatment should proceed. It was the individual as a whole who was considered by the treating physician.
