Soc Sci Med. 1998 May; 46(9): 1193-203.

Therapeutic landscapes in holistic medicine.

Williams A.

Health Studies Program, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ont., Canada.

Therapeutic landscapes are places, settings, situations, locales, and milieus that encompass both the physical and psychological environments associated with treatment or healing, and the maintenance of health and well-being. Practices from holistic medicine--also known as nonconventional, alternative, complementary or traditional medicine--are used to illustrate specific humanistic concepts in further examining therapeutic landscapes. In addition to contributing to a theoretically-informed health geography, this paper further develops the concept of therapeutic landscapes and the understanding of holistic medicine.