Vis medicatrix naturae
Encyclopedia
Vis medicatrix naturae is the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 translation of the Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

, νονσων φνσεις ιητροι, a phrase attributed to Hippocrates
Hippocrates
Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos was an ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles , and is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine...

 but which he did not actually use. The phrase sums up one of the guiding principles of Hippocratic medicine which is that organism
Organism
In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homoeostasis as a stable whole.An organism may either be unicellular or, as in the case of humans, comprise...

s contain “healing powers of nature”.

Hippocrates

Hippocrates believed that an organism is not passive to injuries or disease
Disease
A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...

, but rebalances itself to counteract them. The state of illness
Illness
Illness is a state of poor health. Illness is sometimes considered another word for disease. Others maintain that fine distinctions exist...

, therefore, is not a malady but an effort of the body to overcome a disturbed equilibrium. It is this capacity of organisms to correct imbalances that distinguishes them from non-living matter.

From this follows the medical approach that “nature is the best physician” or “nature is the healer of disease”. To do this Hippocrates considered a doctor’s chief aim was to help this natural tendency of the body by observing its action, removing obstacles to its action, and thus allow an organism to recover its own health. This underlies such Hippocratic practices as blood letting in which a perceived excess of a humor is removed, and thus was taken to help the rebalancing of the body's humors
Humorism
Humorism, or humoralism, is a now discredited theory of the makeup and workings of the human body, adopted by Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers, positing that an excess or deficiency of any of four distinct bodily fluids in a person directly influences their temperament and health...

.

Renaissance and modern history

After Hippocrates, the idea of vis medicatrix naturae continued to play a key role in medicine. In the early Renaissance, the physician and early scientist Paracelsus
Paracelsus
Paracelsus was a German-Swiss Renaissance physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and general occultist....

 had the idea of “inherent balsam”. Thomas Sydenham
Thomas Sydenham
Thomas Sydenham was an English physician. He was born at Wynford Eagle in Dorset, where his father was a gentleman of property. His brother was Colonel William Sydenham. Thomas fought for the Parliament throughout the English Civil War, and, at its end, resumed his medical studies at Oxford...

, in the 18th century considered fever as a healing force of nature.

In the nineteenth-century, vis medicatrix naturae came to be interpreted as vitalism
Vitalism
Vitalism, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is#a doctrine that the functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct from biochemical reactions...

, and in this form it came to underlie the philosophical framework of homeopathy
Homeopathy
Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine in which practitioners claim to treat patients using highly diluted preparations that are believed to cause healthy people to exhibit symptoms that are similar to those exhibited by the patient...

, chiropractic
Chiropractic
Chiropractic is a health care profession concerned with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disorders of the neuromusculoskeletal system and the effects of these disorders on general health. It is generally categorized as complementary and alternative medicine...

, hydropathy, osteopathy
Osteopathy
Osteopathy and osteopathic medicine are often used interchangeably for the philosophy and system of alternative medical practice first proposed by A. T. Still MD, DO in 1874....

 and naturopathy. As Bynum notes, "Search the Internet for vis medicatrix naturae and you will find yourself in the land of what we now politely call 'alternative' or 'complementary' medicine".

Relation to homeostasis

Walter Cannon's notion of homeostasis
Homeostasis
Homeostasis is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties like temperature or pH...

 also has its origins in vis medicatrix naturae. "All that I have done thus far in reviewing the various protective and stabilizing devices of the body is to present a modern interpretation of the natural vis medicatrix.". In this, Cannon stands in contrast to Claude Bernard
Claude Bernard
Claude Bernard was a French physiologist. He was the first to define the term milieu intérieur . Historian of science I. Bernard Cohen of Harvard University called Bernard "one of the greatest of all men of science"...

 (the father of modern physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...

), and his earlier idea of milieu interieur
Milieu interieur
Milieu intérieur or interior milieu, from the French, milieu intérieur, is a term coined by Claude Bernard to refer to the extra-cellular fluid environment, and its physiological capacity to ensure protective stability for the tissues and organs of multicellular living organisms.-Origin:Claude...

 that he proposed to replace vitalistic ideas about the body. However, both the notions of homeostasis and milieu interieur are ones concerned with how the body's physiology regulates itself through multiple mechanical equilibrium adjustment feedbacks rather than nonmechanistic life forces
Vitalism
Vitalism, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is#a doctrine that the functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct from biochemical reactions...

.

Relation to Evolutionary medicine

More recently, evolutionary medicine
Evolutionary medicine
Evolutionary medicine or Darwinian medicine is the application of modern evolutionary theory to understanding health and disease. It provides a complementary scientific approach to the present mechanistic explanations that dominate medical science, and particularly modern medical education...

 has identified many medical symptoms such as fever
Fever
Fever is a common medical sign characterized by an elevation of temperature above the normal range of due to an increase in the body temperature regulatory set-point. This increase in set-point triggers increased muscle tone and shivering.As a person's temperature increases, there is, in...

, inflammation
Inflammation
Inflammation is part of the complex biological response of vascular tissues to harmful stimuli, such as pathogens, damaged cells, or irritants. Inflammation is a protective attempt by the organism to remove the injurious stimuli and to initiate the healing process...

, sickness behavior
Sickness behavior
thumb|350px|right|[[Michael Peter Ancher|Ancher, Michael]], "The Sick Girl", 1882, [[Statens Museum for Kunst]]Sickness behavior is a coordinated set of adaptive behavioral changes that develop in ill individuals during the course of an infection....

, and morning sickness
Morning sickness
Morning sickness, also called nausea gravidarum, nausea, vomiting of pregnancy , or pregnancy sickness is a condition that affects more than half of all pregnant women. Related to increased oestrogen levels, a similar form of nausea is also seen in some women who use hormonal contraception or...

as evolved adaptations that function as darwinian medicatrix naturae due to their selection as means to protect, heal, or restore the injured, infected or physiologically disrupted body.
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