2011/02/24 by Ashish Sharma · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Medicine · Social Sciences · #Scientific and Historical Analyses #Complementary and Alternative Medicine Studies #German Social Sciences and History #Quackery #Heterodoxy #Mainstream #Period (music) #Medicine #Natural (archaeology) #Medical practice #Subordination (linguistics) #Alternative medicine #Law #Family medicine #History #Political science #Orthodoxy #Art #Aesthetics #Philosophy
paper · doi:10.1093/shm/hkq051
openalex publication_date 2011/02/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
In Germany between approximately 1890 and 1920, tensions between medical men and lay practitioners of Naturheilkunde escalated. Historians have sometimes assumed that this tension between lay practitioners and medical men resulted in an increased subordination of Naturheilkunde—a complex of preventive and healing practices that celebrated sunlight, water, fresh air and diet—to academic medicine. The shifting fortunes of Naturheilkunde and its lay practitioners are charted over a period of approximately 30 years. It is shown how Naturheilkunde, which many doctors described as ‘quackery’ in the 1880s and 1890s, was institutionalised in the interwar period, with the creation of a chair for ‘Physical and Dietary Therapies’ at the University of Berlin in 1920. This article shows that, as the practice of natural healing was professionalised, Naturheilkunde was stripped of its association with lay healers and ‘quacks’. In the process, natural therapies moved from the medical margins to the mainstream.