The origins of alternative medicine, also known as holistic medicine, can be traced back thousands of years to the very roots of medicine. Many millennia ago, physicians or healers would assess the sick persons emotional condition in addition to their physical symptoms before beginning treatment. The roots of alternative medicine deal with the symptoms of the whole person, not merely the physical signs of illness. This is radically different from traditional medicine today.
In medicine today, people demand to be cured immediately, and the demand for medicines and treatments that do so is very high. Most physicians today are trained to assess physical symptoms and base treatments on that, without much consideration of the persons emotional or intellectual state.