... use to treat infections. Biomedical treatments often involve the removal of the cause, for example the virus or bacteria. The biomedical model is based on the belief that there is always a cure and the idea that illness is temporary, episodic and a physical condition. Modern biomedicine rests upon two major developments, both of which remain influential to this day. It is first important to consider the Cartesian revolution, after the 17th century French philosophy René Descartes. The Cartesian revolution encouraged the idea that the body and mind are independent or not closely related. In this mechanistic view, the body is perceived to function like a machine, with its individual parts individually treatable, and those that treat them considered engineers. The second conceptual shift that transformed medical thinking was Louis Pasteur's development of 'germ theory' and Robert Koch's further development of it. The Germ theory claimed that in certain (for ...

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