The concept of nature cure in the US comes from the work of the two founders of naturopathic medicine: Benedict Lust and Henry Lindlahr. Each of these founders published a foundational work that advanced the concept of relying on nature itself to heal us from the ills of a modern, urban, post-industrial society. In the early 20th century it seemed without question that industrialization in Western Europe and in North America had advanced so rapidly during the 19th Century that we had changed our environment more rapidly than our own evolution had been able to adapt to and accommodate.
Benedict Lust translated into English and published Return to Nature (1896) by Germany’s Adolph Just in 1903. Just’s book was based entirely on the idea that at Just’s sanitarium Jungborn, Stapelburg in the Harz in Germany patients and guests could literally escape the modern city and return to nature for a period of rest, and if necessary recovery, in a natural back-to-the-earth setting. Moreover, visitors could learn the principles of natural, healthful living that society had forgotten in the rush and tumble of modern society and to everyday living refreshed and “re-armed.”
Lust established his own American “Jungborn” in Butler, New Jersey, based on Just’s work, and widely publicized the idea that such a return to natural settings, away from urban life, held substantial therapeutic value. Lust then established a second Jungborn in Tangerine, Florida, in the Tampa bay region of the state. By the 1920s Lust’s operation of these two Jungborns was in full swing.
In his 1913 book Nature Cure Henry Lindlahr advanced this philosophy a step further. He noted: “Nature Cure is a system of building the entire being in harmony with the constructive principle in Nature on the physical, mental, moral and spiritual planes of being.” Further, “the … method does not wait until diseases have fully developed and gained ascendancy in the body, but concentrates its best endeavors on preventing, by hygienic living and natural methods of treatment, the development of diseases.”
These concepts became a central part of the treatment philosophy of natural healing…
Immediately after WW II, as the President of the American Naturopathic Association, Inc., Robert Carroll established ANA committees to prepare two works: a textbook of basic naturopathic principles and compendium of natural medicines in general use among naturopaths in the US. The association under Carroll was determined to fill a void in naturopathic practice–a lack of written treatises that actually represented the principles and practices of naturopathy in postwar America.
Both of the resulting works advanced the idea of applying the Just-Lust-Lindlahr concepts of nature cure to an urban, industrialized American clinical setting. In Basic Naturopathy, H. Riley Spitler, Editor (1947, American Naturopathic Association, Inc,.), especially in Chapters Ten (“Nutrition and Health”) and Eleven (“Environmental Factors”), a lack of conformity with “natures laws” is addressed across all of modern American life, with attendant observation of how these laws are routinely violated and how modern everyday living can conform to these laws. The goal, always, is to support and maintain the body’s “vital energy”: “The biological requirements for good health and vitality have already been described. It is logical that disobeying these biological laws will weaken vital power and lay the foundation for impaired health. Let us briefly consider the most common fundamental causes of ill health” (pg. 181, Chapter Eleven).
In Naturae Medicina and Naturopathic Dispensatory, A.W. Kuts-Cheraux, Editor (1953, American Naturopathic Physicians and Surgeons Association, Inc.) the stated goal of the work was to advance “a complete system of therapeutics, embracing the use of Nature’s agencies, forces, processes and products” (page 7, 1999 reprint edition). The entire work strives to be consistent in documenting how clinical practice had evolved its modern principles in a manner consistent with and respectful of the Just-Lust-Lindlahr concepts. That said, there was a caveat:
Very frequently naturopathic physicians are confused with so-called “Nature-Curists.” While naturopathic physicians have a basic philosophy almost identical with the Nature-Curist, the latter has a self-limited scope or method of therapy. The naturopathic physician is eclectic in his practice, embracing all of Nature’s agents, forces and products” (page 5, 1999 reprint edition).
In many respects current integrative practices still direct themselves to the concepts of more natural, healthful living, and restoring balance to a more healthful lifestyle; to this extent Nature Cure in the Just-Lust-Lindlahr vision is still a vital principle today.