Many feel that this process formally began with the personal search of one man, Evarts Loomis, M.D., F.A.C.S.I., often called "the father of holistic medicine." In 1940, while on assignment in Newfoundland, Dr. Loomis had a dream. "One night I awoke with the words, 'Treat the whole person,' echoing through my mind," he says. "I saw that there were spiritual, emotional, as well as physical, aspects of man and that they all needed to be looked at during illness. I saw that I had just been treating the effects of illness. Right then I decided to investigate all aspects of man to find the causes of illness."14

This concept was unheard of in the conventional medicine of the 1940s and 1950s and so, on their own, Dr. Loomis and his wife Vera nurtured this dream. In 1958 they founded "Meadowlark," considered the first holistic medical retreat center in the United States.

Dr. Loomis developed a basic program that included a thorough physical examination and such treatments as nutritional counseling, exercise, homeopathic medicine, acupuncture, therapeutic fasts, hatha yoga, art and music therapy, and psycho-spiritual counseling, with daily group therapy sessions incorporating the use of dreams, Progoffian journaling, and instruction in meditative techniques.

Dr. Loomis observed that during an illness the emotions and the mind played an important role in the healing process. So guests at Meadowlark worked to heal resentments through forgiveness techniques and journaled on the meaning of their lives, and considered why their illness had come to them and what it had to teach them. The word patient wasn't used, and staff were not distinguished from the guests by white coats.

"Through fifty some years of practice, and more than 6,000 Meadowlark guests, I have seen many dramatic healings that defy orthodox Western medicine," Dr. Loomis says. "I came to understand that there were no incurable diseases, just incurable minds."15

Patients to this day still seek out Dr. Loomis for his assistance. Just recently, a woman from Chicago called Dr. Loomis. She had been to Meadowlark six times while it was under his direction. She had originally come to Meadowlark to heal a terminal lung cancer condition. Through Dr. Loomis's program, it went into remission. Now, twelve years later, her cancer returned but had not spread. She called to say how grateful she was for those twelve years of remission and asked, "Could Dr. Loomis help again?" At eighty-six, Dr. Loomis is still active as a lecturer, teacher, and counselor with his partner, Fay L. Loomis.

By the 1970s, Dr. Loomis's principles of holistic medicine were beginning to be appreciated and then practiced by a small but dedicated group of medical doctors. In 1978, Norman Shealy, M.D., and some of these doctors founded the American Holistic Medical Association (AHMA). Today, there are a respectable number of medical doctors who describe their practice of alternative/unconventional treatments as holistic medicine.

Alternative Medicine
In the mid-1980s the term "alternative medicine" began to gain popularity. Today, it is now more recognized and used by the public and the press when referring to nonconventional medical health care treatments than the terms holistic, complementary, or integral.

Usually, medical doctors who describe themselves as alternative medical doctors see their practices as an "alternative" to regular conventional medicine. To many of these doctors, alternative implies an either/or situation in treatment: that either unconventional treatments are used or conventional medicine is used.