ABSTRACT
The challenges of today are different than they were a century ago. Most acute infections have been conquered, along with key chronic diseases such as tuberculosis and syphilis. The health care system has grown in complexity during the twentieth century, thus generating many professional and business interests. Advocates of biomedicine were shocked when one third of Americans were rejected from military service in World War II for emotional and psychological disorders. Environmental medicine stands closer to biomedicine than does holistic medicine. Criticism of science became increasingly prevalent during the 1960s and early 1970s, when authority of all kinds was being challenged by a baby boom generation come of age. In 1994, major health care reform seems to be on the horizon in the United States. Most of the diseases that will eventually afflict Americans cannot be cured, although the impact of these maladies can be postponed through preventive medicine and lessened through skillful management.
