Murdo Donaldson MacLeod was born in 1880 in Tolsta, on the Island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, and emigrated to Canada in 1908. He became a chaplain in the US Army and a Presbyterian minister, working in New York State. His ideas - which he called The Tree of Life Programme - were ahead of their time and advocated cooperation between the medical profession and the Christian ministry: what we would call today a holistic approach.