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These are the questions that new medicine has to ask. They
are different from the questions medical science has asked
until now, and they are important because medicine is in
crisis. The crisis has to do with rocketing costs and a wide-
spread disillusionment among the public with scientific
medicine’s obsession with molecules, drugs and technology
at the expense of serving the whole person. It is an aspect
of a worldwide concern with sustainability and the side-
effects, whether global or medical, of technological
solutions to complex problems. Fortunately, science is
becoming more holistic as it realises the limitations of a
fragmented approach to solving problems and starts to
understand complexity. Curiously, the scientific picture
emerging today has a lot in common with truths known to
the world’s oldest healing traditions. The new medicine
will integrate this timeless knowledge about self-healing
and whole person care with 21st-century science. It is even
possible, as complexity is further explored and understood,
that traditional notions such as “life-force” and “energy-
body” could find their way into mainstream medicine.