Authors:
Gerd W. Lüttig
Book:
After Wise Use – The Future of Peatlands, Proceedings of the 13th International Peat Congress: Peat Balneology
Keywords:
healing, key-note, philosophy-of-peat
Documentfile:
Lüttig 2008: The touch of peat
Summary:
There is no doubt that the philosophical substantiation of naturopathy (‘natural medicine’) is based on the premise that nature is given an inherent healing power by which it is enabled to start a healing process in every sick individual if stimulated. Therefore, we are able to say that the difference between naturopathy and allopathy1 is demonstrated by comparing the behaviour of a naturopathic doctor to that of an allopathic one. The naturopath only needs to trigger a mechanism that is found in the natural power itself in a way; one can say that a naturopath uses a homespun pattern for healing processes. In contrast, the allopath has first to look for these forces of healing, in order to mobilise them as the base of a pattern still to be knitted. Of course, this is only one of the ways to explain this difference. Moreover it must be stated that naturopathy always follows the principle of holism (‘Ganzheitslehre’), whereas allopathy – which is characteristically subdivided into many sub-disciplines – uses a kind of collection of tools in which the complicated aids to be used may be applied one after the other or side by side, according to their effectiveness with respect to the physical and chemical processes to be put into appropriate healing action.