The site continues to say there are 2 groups of Naturopathist practioners and apparently they don’t like each other.
Naturopathic physicians are licensed/registered primary care physicians that have graduated from four-year graduate schools and receive the same basic science and clinical training as conventional medical doctors. Their training with respect to modalities is different, with a focus on nutrition, botanical medicine, homeopathy, hydrotherapy, physical manipulation, pharmacology, and minor surgery.
Traditional Naturopaths recoginize conventional medicine is needed for trauma and genetic defects but practices in a complementary fashion by applying natural means to improve the patient’s health. Through application of good dietary and lifestyle practices, combined with herbalism, bodywork, spiritual and mental exercises to enable an individual to take ownership and better control of his or her own health and well-being. In the US, only Puerto Rico has licensing for Traditionalist Naturopaths.
Thanks for that information and breakdown on the different types of naturopath, Xgemina. Many people (including myself) were unaware they receive training on a par with MDs, DOs & DCs.
It seems in almost every group or field of endeavor there are at least two factions who operate at odds with each other–creating an opportunity for “balance”, I suppose. IIRC Idaho is currently the only state allowing full prescribing privileges to NMDs. Florida is reportedly set to reciprocate for doctors with an Idaho license.
“Chiropodist” is the chiefly British term, “podiatrist” the chiefly American. They’re regular physicians, but they’re limited to hands and feet.
You’re probably thinking of osteopaths, or DOs. Osteopathic medicine started out similar to chiropractic, except that osteopaths believed that the “subluxations” were in the veins and arteries. However, osteopathy officially abandoned that nonsense in 1949. Nowadays, they’re almost the same as MDs.
Here in the USA the opposite is true. I once referred to a cardiac surgeon as a cardiologist. Somewhat miffed, he said that he was a cardiac **surgeon. ** Specialists in “alternative medicine” have come to call what they do “complementary medicine,” and not “alternative medince.” This is to indicate that what they do should not be in lieu of seeing a medical doctor, but complementary to your medical treatment. (At least so they claim.)
Missing from Polycarp’s list is homeopathist, who treats diseases by by giving minute amounts of a chemical that would cause the disease. Also, the allopath, who treats disease by the use of agents producing effects different from those of the disease treatment. Of course, these are not real doctors.
As long as he referred to ophthalmologist and optometrist, “optician” should also be added, who is the person who makes the lens.
According to Taber’s Medical Dictionary, a practitioner of allopathy (literally, Greek for “other disease”) treats diseases (not patients?) by “inducing a pathologic reaction that is antagonistic to the disease being treated.” So the doctor is in a sense intentionally making the patient sick in a manner which counteracts the way they are already sick–and which is presumably not as severe. Taber’s also says this term allopathy is “erroeously used for the regular practice of medicine to differentiate it from homeopathy.” To most people these days, though, allopath just means medical or osteopathic physician–a “real doctor”.
Opticians are not any kind of doctors, but rather skilled technicians who sell eyewear and grind lenses conforming to the prescriptions of ophthalmologists or optometrists, who in fact are doctors.