holistic [E20th] Holism [E20th] was a theory developed by Jan Smuts (1870–1950), the South African general, prime minister, and international diplomat, that nature tends to form wholes from the ordered grouping of smaller units. Holism is not much heard of today, but its adjective, holistic, has come to be widely used for medicine which aims to treat the whole person rather than just the symptoms. The spelling reflects the fact that it was coined from Greek holos ‘whole’.