Other Natural Therapies
In alternative medicine, natural health is an eclectic self-care system of natural therapies concerned with building and restoring health and wellness via prevention and healthy lifestyles. Natural health includes homeopathy, massage therapy, relaxation techniques (e.g. more...
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yoga, tai-chi), accupuncture, sauna, exercise, aromatherapy, ayurveda medicine, Kneipp therapy, herbalism, natural hygiene, naturopathy, and nutripathy.
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-- where natural therapy is rather common and covered by mainstream health insurance companies -- and were brought over to the New World.
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.
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.
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