About phytotherapy and naturopathy

Abstract: Two orientations can be distinguished within presentday phytotherapy. They have become alienated at least in parts. A modern view is orientated towards generally practiced methods of pharmacognosy, basic biological research, and clinical evaluation. With these achievements, phytotherapy is receiving general acceptance and has become part of the modern »Schoolmedicine« (or university medicine). Another orientation has been interested in the history of medicine and culture and its dealing with traditional views of herbal remedies as well as traditional anthropological and nosological concepts, from which older indications and applications are to be understood in a new way. In parts, this kind of thinking is a topic of elaborated, also scientifically orientated naturopathy, the seriousness of which cannot be doubted. As a typical example, the concept of »warm« and »cold<, constitution and diseases is given. Multiple effects of garlic can be described uniformly as »warm« or warming. The example of connections based on reflexes within the organism and of the importance of the gut system for the general immunological regulation is to show the value and the importance of phytotherapy with gastroenterological effects even for clinical indications, that are surprisingly unfamiliar to usual interpretations of nosological entities. They are based on special concepts of naturopathy.

Keyword(s): Phytotherapy

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