In the early 20th century, there was medicine as practiced by medical doctors (MDs) and as represented in the United States by the American Medical Association (AMA).

The AMA became, during the first 75 years of the 20th century, one of the most powerful political interest groups in US history and became known as “organized medicine.”^1-3

There were alternatives that emerged early in the 20th century primarily in the form of chiropractic, naturopathy and other “drugless” schools of healing as well as in the work of MDs that diverged from the AMA’s concept of “scientific medicine.” Scientific medicine was based on Louis Pasteur’s “germ theory.”

Germ Theory and Conventional Medicine

At the turn of the 20th century, as Howard Berliner (1985) has documented, straight germ theory (germ x causes disease y) became established as the core of “scientific medicine” in American allopathic medical education. At the time, the major rivalry in American medicine was between allopaths (approximately 60% of medical practitioners) and homeopaths (approximately 30%, the balance being eclectics and physio-medicalists).

Once the substantial resources of the Rockefeller philanthropies were put behind scientific medical education based on germ theory—with the full consent of the AMA—American medicine became synonymous with the germ theory. This, the Flexner Report (1910), and medical research devoted to finding pharmaceuticals to defeat germs to “cure” disease, were all funded by Rockefeller philanthropies and lead to what is considered to be the dominant paradigm in American medicine.⁴

As Berliner documents, this was largely the result of a determination to put the Rockefeller philanthropic resources behind this concept of “scientific medicine” not, at the time, any clear clinical superiority on the part of the allopathic philosophy. As of the period in which this took place, largely 1900 to 1920, there was no clinical validation for scientific medicine in terms of the discovery of specific pharmaceuticals of demonstrated efficacy.

Be’champ, Bernard, and the Alternatives to Germ Theory

The concept of an alternative to the germ theory of disease traces to 2 French contemporaries of Louis Pasteur: Augustine Be’champ and Claude Bernard.

Be’champ’s theory was, put as simply as possible in the biological sense, that “germs” are always present in our environment and do not “cause” disease. Disease is related rather to the physiology of the host, the human (or mammalian) body, not to the germs per se. What we observe in microbiology relative to disease is the resultant byproduct of the body’s failed attempt to reject a pathogenic microbe, a function that a healthy body’s autoimmune system should accomplish.⁵

Bernard’s work in physiology was much celebrated in the 19th century. As noted by Charles Gross (1998): “Today the fame of Claude Bernard rests primarily (if not entirely) on his idea that the maintenance of the stability of the internal environment (milieu interieur) is a prerequisite for the development of a complex nervous system.” But as noted by Gross and others, while Bernard advanced this idea between 1854 and his death in 1874, it “had no impact for over 50 years after its formulation.” Why did this “insight that the ‘constancy of the internal environment is the condition for the free life’ (have) no significance (indeed no meaning) for biologists for more than 50 years?” One major reason was that “Pasteur’s new bacteriology and its omnipresent, omnipotent germs were dominating the biomedical Zeitgeist.”⁶

The Early Integrators

In the pre-World War II years the work of 3 MDs that diverged from germ theory orthodoxy became central to the emergence of an alternative to conventional medicine medicine. These 3 MDs are Henry Lindlahr, William Charles Schulze, and Walter B. Cannon.

Henry Lindlahr and Integration in Clinical Practice

The standard biography of Lindlahr, an early ally of Benedict Lust, the founder of the naturopathic profession, is that of Kirchfeld and Boyle in Nature Doctors.⁷ His own therapeutic philosophy is set out in his 4-volume work Natural Therapeutics published in 1923 and republished in 1975 as edited by Jocelyn Proby, DO.⁸ The 4 volumes are Philosophy, Practice, Dietetics, and Iridiagnosis.

Lindlahr started his own school in Chicago in 1914 and built a substantial sanitarium, clinic, and college operation as well.⁸ A central tenet of Lindlahr’s work, in spite of his medical training, was that the allopathic approach to healing was wrong. There were, he said, “Two principal methods of treating disease. One is the combative, the other the preventive. … The slogan of modern medical science is, ‘Kill the germ and cure the disease’ … The combative method fights disease with disease, poison with poison, and germs with germs …”⁸

On the other hand, “The preventive method does not wait until disease is 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 disease.”⁸

In Philosophy he states: “It is the intent of this volume to warn against the exploitation of destructive combative methods to the neglect of preventive constructive and conservative methods. If these teachings contribute something towards this end they will have fulfilled their mission.”

His work is consistent with Walter Cannon’s physiological insights and a decade before Cannon’s Wisdom of the Body was published he wrote in Philosophy:

The diet expert, the hydrotherapist, the physical culturist, the adjuster of the spine, the mental healer and the Christian Scientist, pay little attention to the pathological conditions or the symptoms of disease. Each of these, in accordance with his theory of disease and cure, regulates the diet and habits of living on a natural basis, promotes elimination, teaches correct breathing and wholesome exercise, corrects the mechanical lesions of the body, or establishes the right mental and emotional attitude, and, in so far as he succeeds in doing this, builds health and so diminishes the possibility of disease. The successful doctor of the future will have to fall in line with the procession and do more teaching than prescribing.⁸

Lindlahr strongly advocated for Be’champ’s theories, especially in his Philosophy volume. He had discovered Be’champ’s work, he said, through the earliest work of E(thel) Douglas Hume.⁸ Specifically, Lindlahr noted that he had then “made a careful study of (Be’champ’s) last work, entitled The Blood, in which he summarizes the mycrozymian theory of cell life.” From this study Lindlahr found “a rational, scientific explanation of the origin, growth and life activities of germs and of the normal living cells of vegetable, animal and human bodies.”⁸ At 2 points in PhilosophyLindlahr discusses at length the understanding of Be’champ’s work that he has gained from his own intense study of Be’champ’s writings, and how from his own clinical observations and experience, and from Be’champ’s work, he comes to advance 3 primary manifestations of disease. These manifestations of disease include (1) lowered vitality (vitality is the body’s strength of positive resistance and recuperative power, the “vital force” of cellular function); (2) abnormal composition of blood and lymph; and (3) accumulation of waste, morbid matter, and poisons in the system.⁸

William Charles Schulze and Integration in Medical Education

Schulze was an MD (of Rush Medical College) who in 1914 purchased the National School of Chiropractic and broadened its curriculum to include the basic sciences as well as “physiological therapeutics” and mechano-therapy.⁹The name was changed in 1920 to the National College of Chiropractic (NCC). His most enduring influence may have come from acquiring and merging Lindlahr’s school after Lindlahr’s untimely passing in 1924, and in his mentoring influences on W. A. (Alfred) Budden, DC, ND, of Portland’s Western States College, and later on Joseph Janse, DC, ND, the postwar president of National College (1945–1983).⁹

As Keating and Rehm noted about Schulze:

Part of the Schulze legacy is the tradition of broad-scope, “rational chiropractic,” or what Palmer called “mixing.” As an MD, Schulze had been trained in medical and presumably some minor surgical procedures, but he had apparently committed himself to “drugless healing” early in his career. However, drugless healing, which involved a variety of naturopathic methods, was anathema to the Palmer branch of the profession. The physician-chiropractor would quickly run afoul of the adiagnostic, non-therapeutic, subluxation-only forces in the profession.⁹

Schulze sought “to promote a professionalism among students and doctors which could rival that of medical competitors” and under Schulze, NCC introduced laboratory courses in pathology, biochemistry, bacteriology, and toxicology, together with a “strong commitment to diagnostic training” all in response to the adoption in the late 1920s of the Basic Science laws. NCC adopted a motto: FOUR WAYS TO BEAT THE BASIC SCIENCE LAW: 1. Study Basic Science; 2. Study Basic Science; 3. Study Basic Science; and 4. Study Basic Science. Schulze came in for much criticism from the “straights” in chiropractic and this only increased after he purchased the Lindlahr School of Natural Therapeutics from Henry Lindlahr’s estate and transferred “the entire student body and the better part of the faculty” to NCC.⁹ In 1928, this part of the National school was formed into the National College of Drugless Physicians, which was National’s ND degree program.

The National College of Chiropractic Journal became a voice that extended beyond NCC itself by the early 1920s, becoming a professional voice as well, challenging B. J. Palmer’s “straight” chiropractic philosophy as well as the antagonism of Morris Fishbein, MD, the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). This voice was first found under the NCC Secretary, A. J. Forster, MD, DC, and then “under the editorship of William Alfred Budden, DC, ND, an English immigrant and former economics instructor at the University of Alberta who graduated from the NCC in 1923.”⁹

From the mid-1920s, Schulze was involved more in professional activities than in day-to-day operations of NCC, and always in the “mixer” camp; first in the American Chiropractic Association (ACA) and then starting in 1930 in the successor National Chiropractic (NCA). Schulze then followed a busy, nationwide speaking schedule in the early 1930s, speaking consistently for the broad-scope professional values of the NCA as taught at NCC/NCDP. At the 1934 annual meeting of the NCA (May 1934) Schulze—a regular speaker at these annual meetings—noted in his speech that at the time “harmony among Chiropractors and Drugless practitioners, especially the Naturopaths, was good to look upon.”⁹

In 1934, Dr Schulze joined a convention tour coined “the Northwest Circuit” organized by C. O. Watkins, DC, of Montana that had its speakers speak at NCA-affiliated conventions held in Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Washington, British Columbia, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. The Washington stop was for the meeting of the Northwest Chiropractors Association, and was a gathering of 300 attendees from Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Northern California, and British Columbia in September.⁹

1934 was the last full year that Dr Schulze was actively engaged; he was in ill health for much of 1935 and passed away in September 1936. When he passed away, one of the very many appreciation letters honoring his productive life was sent by Dr Robert Carrol as the president of the Washington State Naturopathic Association, saying, “The entire drugless profession has lost a friend and teacher.”⁹

As Rehm and Keating (2002) noted as Dr Schulze’s great accomplishment, “Schulze created an intellectual environment that would be rivalled in the middle age of the profession only at Budden’s Western States College.”⁹

Walter B. Cannon and Integration in Medical Research

Cannon did extensive research in physiology, his area of teaching at Harvard. He concurred with Bernard’s concept of the “internal environment” of the human body and coined the term homeostasis to describe the bodies need to respond physically to the external environment to maintain a stable internal environment, which he described as a primary function of the central nervous system.¹⁰ His concept—that through what he called “The Wisdom of the Body”—mammalian forms such as the human body “may be confronted by dangerous conditions in the outer world and by equally dangerous possibilities within the body, and yet continue to live and carry their functions with relatively little disturbance,” something that Hippocrates had called vis medicatrix naturae.

In a distinctive passage in The Wisdom of the Body, Cannon set forth a concept that became central to the postwar chiropractor-naturopaths:

The fathers of medicine made use of an expression, ‘the healing forces of nature,’ the vis medicatrix naturae. It indicates, of course, recognition of the fact that processes of repair after injury, and of restoration to health after disease, go on quite independent of any treatment that the physician may give …

In the first place, the well-trained physician is acquainted with the possibilities and limitations of self-regulation and self-repair in the body. He is instructed in that knowledge and employs it not only for his own intelligent action but also as a means of encouragement for the patient who looks to him for counsel …

Again, the physician realizes better than the layman that many of the remarkable capacities of the organism for self-adjustment require time—all of the processes of repair belong in that class—and that they can play an important role in restoring the organism to efficiency only if they are given the chance that time provides …

Furthermore the physician realizes that he has at his command therapeutic with which he can support or replace the physiological self-righting or self-protective processes we have been considering …

Finally a great service which the physician renders is the bringing of hope and good cheer to his patients. He has seen at work in many cases the restorative processes of the organism. …When we are afflicted and our bodily resources seem low, we should think of these powers of protection and healing which are ready to work for the bodily welfare.¹⁰

Lindlahr was the greatest directinfluence on the post-WWII philosophy of natural therapeutics, the central core of “drugless” or “non-medical” philosophy. Lindlahr’s and Cannon’s work have a remarkable consistency between them though Lindlahr is largely influenced by Be’champ and Cannon by Bernard. Together they advanced the work of these two 19th-century French scientists into the 20th century, and in doing so advanced a scientific basis for an “alternative” to the germ theory that was at the core of conventional “scientific medicine.” Schulze pioneered the education of physicians in a professional “drugless” therapeutics consistent with the theoretical work of Lindlahr and Cannon.

Note: Please let the author know at George Cody on LinkedIn or ten.tsacmoc@gnitlusnocydoc your thoughts, questions, and criticisms.

Biography

• 

George W. Cody, JD, MA, BA received his undergradute degree from Stanford University, his law degree from Willamette University and his masters degree from University of Washington. He practiced law for 25 years, and has worked in public affairs, health policy and medical history research. His original history of natural medicine is part of The Textbook of Natural Medicine.

Article information

Integr Med (Encinitas). 2018 Feb; 17(1): 18-21. PMCID: PMC6380988PMID: 30962773George W. Cody, JD, MA

*Copyright © 2018 InnoVision Health Media Inc.

Articles from Integrative Medicine: A Clinician’s Journal are provided here courtesy of InnoVision Media

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