THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Natural Medicine – THIRD EDITION / موسوعة الطب الطبيعي – الطبعة الثالثة

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Natural Medicine – THIRD EDITION

An evolution in the core principles of health care has been occurring over the last few decades.

At the forefront of this change is naturopathic medicine—a system of medicine based on the belief that the human body has a remarkable innate healing ability.

Naturopathic doctors (N.D.’s) view the patient as a complex, interrelated system—a whole person—and focus on promoting health through natural, nontoxic therapies such as nutrition, lifestyle modification, herbal remedies, psychological measures, and many others.

Naturopathic medicine is helping to usher in the emerging paradigm in medicine.

A paradigm is a model used to explain events. As our understanding of the environment and the human body evolves, new paradigms are developed.

For example, in physics the cause-and-effect views of Descartes and Newton were replaced by Einstein’s theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, and approaches in theoretical physics that take into considerations the tremendous interconnectedness of the universe.

The new paradigm in medicine also focuses on the interconnectedness of body, mind, emotions, social factors, and the environment.

While the old paradigm viewed the body basically as a machine that can be fixed best with drugs and surgery, the emerging new model considers these measures secondary to natural, noninvasive techniques that promote health by supporting the body’s own healing processes. The relationship between the physician and patient is also evolving.

The era of the physician as a demigod is over. The era of self-empowerment is beginning.

Naturopathy (the word means “nature cure”) is a method of healing that employs various natural means to empower an individual to achieve the highest level of health possible.

Despite its philosophical links to many cultures, modern naturopathic medicine grew out of natural healing systems in 18th- and 19th-century Europe and the United States.

The European tradition of “taking the cure” at natural springs or spas had gained a foothold in America by the middle of the 18th century.

The custom helped make Germany and the United States especially receptive to the ideas of naturopathy.

Among the movement’s earliest promoters were Sebastian Kneipp, a priest who credited his recovery from tuberculosis to bathing in the Danube; and Benedict Lust, a physician who trained at the water-cure clinic that Kneipp had founded in Europe.

Lust arrived in the United States in the 1890s and began using the term naturopathy to describe an eclectic compilation of doctrines of natural healing.

In 1902, Lust founded the first naturopathic college of medicine in the United States in New York City. It taught a system of medicine that included the best of what was then known about nutritional therapy, natural diet, herbal medicine, homeopathy, spinal manipulation, exercise therapy, hydrotherapy, electrotherapy, stress reduction, and other natural therapies.

The basic tenets of Lust’s view of naturopathy are summarized in his article “The Principles, Aim and Program of the Nature Cure”

The natural system for curing disease is based on a return to nature in regulating the diet, breathing, exercising, bathing and the employment of various forces to eliminate the poisonous products in the system, and so raise the vitality of the patient to a proper standard of health.