Physiotherapy

History of Naturopathy

The philosophy of Naturopathic medicine goes back as far as 400BC with Hippocrates School of Medicine. Physicians at the time believed it was important to find the root cause of illness and understand the laws of nature. They called this "Vis Medicatrix Naturae", which is Latin for "the Healing Power of Nature", noting that the body has the ability to heal itself.

Benedict Lust, a German doctor who emigrated to the U.S. in 1892, began using the term Naturopathy in 1902. He envisioned that the future scope of natural medicine would comprise an eclectic compilation of doctrines of natural healing. His ideas and teachings were the beginning of the field of Naturopathy, where practitioners used methods such as nutritional therapy, natural diet, herbal medicine, homeopathy, spinal manipulation, exercise therapy, hydrotherapy, electrotherapy and stress reduction to improve the body's selfhealing.

Today Naturopaths use many of these same methods. With the advent of science-based medicine, much research has been conducted in the areas of health, health-related practice and the function of the human body. This research has provided Natural Medicine practitioners with evidence to support how and why these methods improve health and provide health practitioners with the knowledge and skills to more specically target treatments.

Modern science has also paved the way to a greater understanding of how our bodies work, and because of this increased knowledge both doctors and naturopaths are able to more specically target treatments.

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