As Thomas Kuhn showed so well, the path of science is characterized by periods of revolution during which the dogmatic system of beliefs derived from the past is replaced by a new paradigm—a new view of how things work. This change is brought about by the gradually increasing failure of the established paradigm to deliver on its promises and the ability of the new one [better to] explain reality. As in all revolutions, the change in ideas is always bitterly opposed by the practitioners of the established paradigm.
The paradigm that was in place in the 1950s was based on the chemical-mechanistic concept of life. In this view, living things were chemical-mechanistic machines whose capabilities were constrained to those functions permitted by this model; there was no place for any characteristics, such as autonomy or self-healing, that did not fit this mold. This was reinforced until it became a dogma, the proponents of which claimed to know everything there was to know about life. This paradigm not only dominated our society but ruled the medical profession as well, limiting both the methods that could be used to bring about a cure and our perception of the ability of the human body to hear itself.
As each technological advance entered medical practice, we found ourselves paying an increasing price of unexpected side effects. Most technological cures for cancer, for example, were found to be carcinogenic themselves. Because such unexpected side effects have required additional "technological fixes," we now find ourselves in a spiral in which technological applications are piled one atop another, with no end in sight and no cure for the patient.
The chemical-mechanistic paradigm has failed, and a medical revolution has begun. Today, motivated by a growing dissatisfaction with the mechanistic concept and the treatments it dictates, many physicians are reexamining and applying therapeutic techniques that were previously discarded as "unscientific" by academic medicine. The use of foods, herbs, meditation, and acupuncture are only a few examples. This radical change in medical practice is deeply rooted in Ancient concepts of life, energy, and medicine, and it includes a reaffirmation of the innate healing ability of living things.

Energy medicine is actually a generic term, one that is used to refer to many ancient and some modern medical practices. It is derived from the concept of alternative or holistic medicine, which encompasses many different therapeutic disciplines but which views each as a separate entity with different mechanisms of action.
The idea of an energy medicine that postulates a common basis for all these disciplines has arisen lately because of new discoveries in biology that cast serious doubt on strictly mechanistic concepts of life and seem to reintroduce the old idea of body energy. These discoveries are not "vitalistic" in the sense that they prove or even hint at some mysterious, unknowable life force. Rather, they reveal the presence of electrical and magnetic forces at the most basic levels within living organisms. These discoveries, which are the basis for a new scientific revolution, are rapidly changing what we believe about the way things work.
The practitioners of each discipline of alternative medicine (for example, acupuncturists, homeopaths, and electrotherapy practitioners) eagerly—and often prematurely—embraced this latest scientific revolution as their own, postulating that these energetic systems were the ones accessed by their particular techniques and that other alternative methods lacked this ability. However, more recently the idea has arisen that this one common principle could be applied to all alternative medical techniques. As a result, the generic term energy medicine was coined.
While this scientific revolution was brewing, a revolution in medical practices was also occurring. Patients were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with orthodox medicine. The promises of technology implied by such ideas as "the war on cancer" were unfulfilled. That war seemed, in fact, turned into one of attrition, with the patients suffering the casualties and bearing the increasing expenses. Hospitals were becoming dangerous places to enter; patients sometimes entered with minor illnesses and left with permanent disabilities resulting from one complication after another. The old adage, "The doctor knows best," began to be replaced with "The doctor is usually wrong" or worse, "Your doctor can make you sicker than you already are."
Some patients discovered the various disciplines of energy medicine, which appeared to have three outstanding things to offer. First, they would do no harm; second, they often seemed to do some good; and third, they were much less expensive than orthodox medicine. As a result, the number of patients treated with these unorthodox, unapproved techniques has increased markedly over the past decade.
In sum, the revolution in biology and medicine has been brought about in part by consumer dissatisfaction with orthodox medicine—with its increasingly impersonal technological sophistication, its high costs and its inefficiency—and in part by the new scientific data challenging the mechanistic view of life
There are many questions raised by this revolution. Is energy medicine scientifically real, or is it simply the newest quackery? Which of the newest techniques, if any, holds the key to its application? Are there really body energies that play a role in healing? And, most importantly, will energy medicine survive to dominate orthodox medicine or to become integrated with it? Or will it simply disappear, like so many fads of the past?