Natural health: Encyclopedia II - Natural health - History of Natural Health

Natural health - History of Natural Health

Although the term natural health did not become part of common usage until the late 20th century, many of its core beliefs developed in Europe and were brought over to the New World.

Natural health - New World

Medical self-care was often the only health care available, and until the 1750s, most folk healers in the United States had little medical education beyond apprenticeships.

Around the time of the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), the practice of medicine was seen as more of a part-time avocation. Women and male lay practitioners took care of most medical matters including births, injuries, and illness through the use of folk medical practices. Of course, these natural healing practices varied from locality to locality with major cities, like Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City having hospitals and other medical practices approaching those found in Europe.

Natural health - The Popular Health Movement 1830 - 1840

In the 1830s the Popular Health Movement was started by a number of different reformers and activists, such as Frances Wright, dissatisfied with the practice of heroic medicine by the contemporary physicians of that time period. These activists sought to alter these heroic medical practices by incorporating and emphasizing some of the ideas that midwives and lay practitioners had long used to heal the sick. This was the period of Jacksonian democracy where self-sufficiency was prized. "For success in this frontier environment of growing America, the specialized skills - of lawyer, doctor, financier, or engineer - had a new unimportance" (Boorstin 1965).

From the Popular Health Movement several natural health movements developed.

• Hydrotherapy
• Herbalism from Thomsonianism of Samuel Thompson.
• Eclectic Medicine, founded by Dr. Wooster Beech.
• Natural Hygiene from the Orthopathy of Isaac Jennings, MD and Sylvester Graham.

"The peak of the Popular Health Movement (in America) coincided with the beginnings of an organised feminist movement, and the two were so closely linked that it is hard to tell where one began and the other left off" ( Ehrenreich & English 1973).

Between 1820-1845, Samuel Thompson (1769-1843) founded Thomsonianism, an early approach to modern Western herbalism. In 1823, The Association of Eclectic Physicians an organization of herbal doctors was founded by Dr. Wooster Beech. At its peak, eclecticism claimed more than 20,000 qualified practitioners in the United States. Eclectic medicine officially ended in 1939 due to a lack of support of its medical schools by philanthropists.

The Hydrotherapy of Hydropathy, was an early nineteenth-century medical sect, which entailed various applications of cold water and zealously advocated the reformation of such personal habits as diet, dress, clean water and air, exercise, sunshine, and herbs. In Europe, interest in the hydrotherapy can be traced back to the ancient Roman spas and the hot mineral springs at Bath, England. The importance of the water-cure movement was over shadowed by allopathy, which viewed hydropathy as quackery largely because of its close association with female social activists of the time period, such as Frances Wright (Sheryl et al. 1987).

In 1844, founder of Natural Hygiene, Dr. Joel Shew introduces the European system of Hydrotherapy to the United States. He later adopts the Hygieo-Therapy dietary and exercise plan, as well as its emphasis on fresh air and sunlight. In 1853, he founds the New York College of Hygieo-Therapy. In 1927, Herbert Shelton (1895-1985) of the Natural Hygiene movement was jailed for the first time for practicing medicine without a license. In 1939, Shelton's Hygienic Review magazine was published. Then in 1948, The American Natural Hygiene Society was founded.

Natural health - Antebellum America

In 1860, Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), U.S. author and physician famously promoted the healing power of nature in a widely known annual address voicing therapeutic nihilism when he said "that if the whole materia medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be so much the better for mankind – and all the worse for the fishes" (Warner 1986).

Natural health - Progressive Era of Health Care Reform 1890-1920

The natural health movement of Naturopathy developed during Progressive Era of Health Care Reform. In 1895, founder of Naturopathy, Benedict Lust opened the Kneipp Water-Cure Institute in New York City. In 1902, he purchased the rights to the term "naturopathy" from John H. Scheel, who had coined it in 1895. The American Institute of Naturopathy opened in 1902. Henry Lindlahr, MD wrote in his Nature Cure: Philosophy & Practice Based on the Unity of Disease & Cure about the very Western concepts of fresh air, a natural diet, water treatment with cold baths, physical culture and the importance of maintaining the right mental and emotional attitude. But, said nothing about the modern notion of stress (See Lindlahr 1922).

Natural health - The Modern Period

By the end of the 20th century the following forms of natural health were well established as a part of American culture: health food grocery stores, natural health web sites, self-care health books, and Vitamin & Nutritional Supplement dealers.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History of Natural Health", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki