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====How has Naturopathy changed from its roots?====
[[File:National_College_of_Naturopathic_Medicine_(Portland,_Oregon).jpg|thumbnail|275px|National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon]]This is a fascinating and complex question. To survive, naturopathic practitioners needed to secure legal licensure or be completely obliterated. This is contrary to the original philosophy that natural medicine should be taught to patients so they can be responsible for their own health--ideology that was foundational to the movement. Early naturopaths loathed AMA credential-based authority, in part because regular medicine insisted on complete control over natural health, labeling other healing philosophies as quackery. There were, indeed, quacks that sold so-called cure-alls—elixirs or opiate and alcohol-based “cures” for everything from cancer to headaches. There were also diploma mills cranking out bogus degrees (but the same was true for allopaths in the early years as well).
But naturopaths wanted the freedom to practice, and that meant finding legitimacy in an already-established system of expert-based medicine. They also realized they needed standards so as not to be confused with the charlatans. This set the stage for ongoing disputes between various factions of licensed naturopaths, self-proclaimed natural healers and old-time nature doctors. The arguments and infighting almost destroyed the profession a few times. Despite these tensions and ironies, I do think the migration to credentialed expertise was necessary precisely because of the countless charlatans and under-schooled (perhaps well meaning) “practitioners” who called themselves naturopaths.
Early naturopathy heralded agrarian living as ideal. This made it inaccessible to most urban dwellers--the precise population most in need of the therapeutics. Just basics of a clean environment, clean air, sunshine, and clean water would have made an immense difference to those in the crowded cities, and these were the essentials of long-term naturopathic health strategies. So authors, teachers, correspondents and practitioners modified that agrarian utopian vision to be in sync with real life possibilities—cooking, exercise, etc. This served to make women’s involvement and leadership even more critical: domestic knowledge, applied to familial health and wellbeing, became the first line of approach.
And professionalization itself can shift the focus from the political to the personal--again, antithetical to early philosophical leanings. Making a profitable living can be in conflict with an ethos of community betterment, which was so much the core of the original creators.
====What surprised you the most when you were researching this topic?====
