Naturopathy - current trends and the delimitation of the term

Heinrich Schipperges wrote the following lines on the "renaissance of naturopathy" in 1991:

"Among the so diverse directions of 'holistic medicine' we come across 'naturopathy' in the forefront, a very old, but also fashionably faded term, which requires a more differentiated clarification as it already contains the two fundamental models of every healing art are: 'nature' and 'healing'.

First and foremost, there would be a clear distinction between 'natural medicine', which entrusts itself to the healing powers of nature, from 'natural healing methods', which use physical-therapeutic methods, and these in turn from the 'natural way of life', which is based on a holistic approach stylized form of existence is out. We encounter all of these trends in 'empirical medicine', and they are all based on the experiences of older 'folk medicine', which in turn should be more clearly differentiated from the 'outsider methods'. Most of the outsider methods, however, fall completely outside the field of scientifically verifiable or empirically experienced healing art, such as iris diagnostics, radiesthesia, magnetic field therapy and similar procedures.

Modern naturopathy tries to re-face the two fundamental concepts of older medicine: the concept of nature and the concept of healing. On this basis, natural healing methods have always been considered the basis of therapy, as the regulation of a healthy lifestyle; they were and will remain the foundation of medicine. Over the millennia, the art of healing was in its theory a naturopathy based on the doctrine of health as a natural way of life, and in practice a naturopathic method that knew how to make use of the natural healing powers of the world outside.

With the concept of 'nature' we have before us a primordial phenomenon and a constitutional law that was available everywhere and at all times for both the prevention and the cure of diseases. The doctor felt legitimized within this system of order; he saw himself as a steward of the natural power, that comprehensive healing power, which aims to compensate for grievances and harmonize all discrepancies. Under such conditions, natural medicine formed the essential element of medical intervention in general: it is always nature that needs stylization and cultivation and that can be corrected and rehabilitated in the event of deviations and derailments. "

(from: "Medicine at the turn of the millennium: facts, trends, options." Verlag Josef Knecht, Frankfurt 1991. p. 312f.)

In "History of Medicine in Spotlights" (1990) he writes:

"Naturopathy has always made use of the healing powers of nature without, of course, ever having adequately explained this nature. The term nature can apparently only be used meaningfully if it is explained in terms of opposites. This is how nature distinguishes itself from the spirit, the dominates the realms of natural life, against the culture, which creates a reality beyond the state of nature, and also against the supernatural, which enables the participation of created natures in a higher order.In the same sense we speak of nature and art, nature and Custom, nature and history.

In addition, we know a feeling for nature and an experience of nature, nature poetry and nature wisdom, a natural force and nature mysticism. We use images like 'book of nature', 'pulse of nature', 'language of nature'. Connected with everything is the 'nature of man', our physiological constitution ('res naturales'), which needs a healing principle ('res non naturales') to maintain and restore it. Human nature thus includes both the disposition and the motives for its development and maturation. "

(from: "History of Medicine in Schlaglichtern." Meyers Lexikonverlag, Mannheim 1990. p. 301)