[How holistic is health?--from Hippocrates and Plato to a future sociopsychosomatic situational therapy]

To be with others is helpful for the recovery from illness. It has been shown that this is true not only in human relations but also, for instance, in relating oneself to trees as well. This implies that health is not an individual but a social property. Like in Hippocratic and Platonic medicine illness means to have got out of oneself or out of one's nature in the widest - even cosmic - sense. The basic task of complementary and natural medicine is to prevent just this; to cure diseases can only be second-class.