Changes

'''Why were you attracted to the topic of naturopathic healing? What spurred your interest?'''

I’ve researched and published on the intersections of women’s lives and the history of alternative healing and medicine for decades. I’ve focused on the 19th century cold water cure movement, patent medicines, self-help regimes, ethnic and racial folk healing ways and the stinging critiques levied against organized medicine by alternative healing sects: homeopathy, botanics, hydropathy, and women’s groups in the modern era. Around 1990, I was contacted by Cathy Rogers, N.D. (Naturopathic Doctor) then President of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians who had read my book Wash and Be Healed: The Water Cure Movement and Women’s Health (1987, 1992). Since water cure was a foundational component of naturopathic healing she asked if I’d be interested in researching their movement. This triggered my interest and all these years later has resulted in Nature’s Path. This text looks at the Naturopathic movement within a social context of culture wars between organized medicine and the naturopaths, the notion of relying on an M.D. as “expert” vs. health choices and self-determination, women’s empowerment and much larger critiques of power and authority that permeate American society, 1890s-present.

'''What is naturopathy and what was its philosophy?'''

Today, to quote the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, naturopathic practice includes the diagnostic and therapeutic modalities of “clinical and laboratory diagnostic testing, nutritional medicine, botanical medicine, naturopathic physical medicine (including naturopathic manipulative therapy), public health measures, hygiene, counseling, minor surgery, homeopathy, acupuncture, prescription medication, intravenous and injection therapy, and naturopathic obstetrics (natural childbirth).” As in the past, naturopathy is a philosophy for a way of life, linking body, mind and daily purpose to stay healthy. (See [http://www.naturopathic.org/content.asp?contentid=59 The American Association of Naturopathic Physicians].)

''How does it differ from Eclecticism, Hydrotherapy or Botanics?'''

Naturopathy differed from the 19th medical sects of eclecticism, hydropathy, botanics (herbal medicinals) and chiropractic in many ways. It is not a single cause/cure premise. Bodily wellbeing cannot be attained through any one healing system like these, most especially not through regular medicine. The best methods must be combined from many practices to create a healthy world and body. Naturopathy does have in common with these named sects an insistence that the individual cannot be a passive recipient of expert-driven health care. Rather, health is predicated on personal responsibility. Naturopathy also relied and still relies heavily on women’s knowledge and expertise as both professional practitioners and domestic healers.

'''Who were the leading figures in naturopathy?'''

The Lusts were the premiere popularizers of the movement. Before and after their marriage in the late 19th century and first decade of the 20th century, they founded the American School of Naturopathy in New York City, a health food bakery, numerous periodical publications, countless therapeutic texts, a hospital and clinic (of sorts) and three away-from-home agrarian health retreats all known as Yungborn (New Jersey, Florida and Cuba).

'''Did women play a large role in both practicing and advocating for naturopathic healing?'''

Women co-created, co-led and benefitted immensely from the Naturopathic Movement. This has been true since its inception through the present day. Louisa Stroebele Lust embodied this most fully: she owned the Bellevue Sanatorium health retreat in New Jersey (1892) that offered natural healing methods; she authored the pivotal cook book The Practical Naturopathic Vegetarian Cook Book (1907), that charted nutritional advice so central to naturopathic living; she taught at the College, and wrote regular columns for the Naturopath and Herald of Health and other publications detailing women’s rights, responsibilities and unique powers to lead the movement—and their families.

'''By 1905, medical licensing (at least some of form it) had basically been implemented in almost every state. Did this force naturopathic healers to describe themselves as something besides doctors to avoid regulation?'''

[[File:BenedictLust.jpg|thumbnail|250px|Benedict Lust and Louisa Stroebele Lust founded naturopathy]]

One of the central themes of Nature’s Path was the “culture wars” that raged between regular physicians (who became the American Medical Association in 1847) and the numerous alternative healing sects who opposed their methods and political heavy handedness. The centralized power of the AMA meant that they controlled medical licensing, pharmaceuticals, public health authorities, police enforcement and military medicine. The government and major philanthropic foundations, through the AMA’s powerful lobby, deemed only the allopathic (regular/AMA) physicians as credible and skilled. All others, regardless of their credentials and acquired knowledge could be, and were frequently, arrested for “practicing medicine without a license” under the plethora of medical license acts.

'''How did naturopathy spread across the country?'''

Naturopathy’s root practices (botanics, eclecticism, water-cure, sun and air cures) were used nationwide. Naturopathy first grew popular along the east and west coasts and in Chicago, but it spread rapidly through national meetings, conventions, and Lust’s state-by-state lobbying for licensure. Naturopathy was first and foremost part of a nationwide populist movement. The desire for choice in medical practitioners and the relentless critique of invasive allopathic methods went hand-in-hand with the Progressive Era’s push back to industrialization, monopolies, and condemnation of capitalist greed, overbearing enforcement of expert-driven laws, governmental enforcement tactics of public health policies (forced vaccination) that removed agency from individuals. Naturopathy was part of the response to anti-immigrant sentiments and anti-Black racism that produced notoriously unhealthy slums and poverty.

'''What made it appealing?'''

It appealed to critics of the status quo and the two-tiered hierarchy of the haves and have-nots and also to the myriad alternative healers excluded from the right to earn degrees and practice medicine in disciplines of their choice. Socialists and other anti-capitalists joined a nationwide movement for, as they called it, medical liberty rights, advocating for bodily self-determination and practitioner choice. Naturopathy also appealed to those who rejected all drugs, including botanics, union activists, antivivisectionists who believed with naturopaths that animal life was sacred and not fodder for medical experimentation, anti-vaccinationists and so on.

'''How has Naturopathy changed from its roots?'''

[[File:National_College_of_Naturopathic_Medicine_(Portland,_Oregon).jpg|thumbnail|275px|National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon]]This is a fascinating and complex question. To survive, naturopathic practitioners needed to secure legal licensure or be completely obliterated. This is contrary to the original philosophy that natural medicine should be taught to patients so they can be responsible for their own health--ideology that was foundational to the movement. Early naturopaths loathed AMA credential-based authority, in part because regular medicine insisted on complete control over natural health, labeling other healing philosophies as quackery. There were, indeed, quacks that sold so-called cure-alls—elixirs or opiate and alcohol-based “cures” for everything from cancer to headaches. There were also diploma mills cranking out bogus degrees (but the same was true for allopaths in the early years as well).

'''What surprised you the most when you were researching this topic?'''

I have been blown away by the scope and vision of early and current day naturopaths and naturopathic medicine. It has been from its inception a radical vision advanced by a devoted band of eclectic firebrands who view health, life, self-determination and environmental integrity as interwoven. They have dared to critique (and outright condemn) cultural “givens” such as animal experimentation, professionalization, vaccination (at a time when it was highly imperfect and unregulated for safety and effectiveness), AMA authority and profit-driven capitalists making decisions that affect the masses. Gender equity and social class consciousness is a continuous theme: women have not merely contributed to naturopathy, they have co-created it at all levels and their labors, ideas, analysis and skills have been openly recruited and deemed assets. Working people have the most to benefit-and lose-from accessibility to health care prevention and affordability. Few other healing systems keep these factors in the forefront as naturopathy does.

'''If there was one thing that you wanted people to know about the history of Naturopathy what would it be?'''

The history of Naturopathy teaches us that a shared radical vision can bring about significant and lasting positive disruptions to power relations that can benefit human health and women’s empowerment. It teaches us that the causes of ill health--and of wellbeing--are integrally interwoven with how we live physically, mentally, and spiritually, and that what we value and how we function as individuals impacts the global community.

'''How would you recommend using your book in a history class? What type of classes would it be best suited for?'''

Nature’s Path can enhance curriculum in American history, Women’s Studies classes, health and healing and social change classes. The chapters and their detailed subheadings lend themselves to topical and chronological insertion into course syllabi. This is a terrific text for faculty wanting to introduce not only new content knowledge, but for those who want to generate analytic discussion about power relations, gender equity, institutional monopolies, the courage to defy the norm and radical thinkers and practitioners who dare chart their own vision.: