The Human Body in Conventional and Alternative Medicines

Abstract

This paper aims to explore two opposite concepts of the human body – according to conventional medicine and according to alternative (holistic) medicine – and to show the mutual interpenetration of these two concepts in the modern world. Conventional medicine sees the body as an endless collection of symptoms spread all over its surface. It presents the body as a way of localizing pain, so in the biomedical discourse the body appears as a place of defining and describing pain. It is located in individual parts, organs, limbs, etc. Alternative medicine looks at the human body from the perspective of structural, chemical and psychological unity, which constantly adapts to the changing conditions of the external environment. It sees illness not as a disorder of one particular organ or system, but as a disorder of the whole organism. However, regardless of the clear distinction between these two concepts in the legal, scientific and ethical spheres and regardless of the general medicalisation of the modern world, these two approaches to the human body are simultaneously accepted by patients.