Home > Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine > Orthomolecular Medicine

Definition

Orthomolecular medicine is the prevention and treatment of disease by administering nutritional supplements. The patient's state of health, external or environmental factors and quality of diet are taken into account. The architect of orthomolecular medicine, Nobel Prize laureate Linus Pauling, coined the term in 1968. The aim of orthomolecular medicine is not merely to eliminate disease, but to aim for "optimum health."

Origins

Linus Carl Pauling was born in 1901 in Portland, Oregon. He published his first scientific paper at the age of 22. In 1925, he graduated summa cum laude from the California Institute of Technology with a Ph.D. in chemistry. He was to remain at this institute for the next 38 years.

Though by no means the first to investigate the properties of the nutrients contained in foods, or the first to consider the medical application of nutritional supplements, his contribution to...