This book offers comprehensive coverage of naturopathic medicine. The principles and values of this profession are already clearly stated (i.e., Find and Treat the Cause; Treat the Whole Person, etc.), but few are the textbooks that provide a clear exposition of what the approach is that differs from what is described as conventional or allopathic medicine. The toolkit – herbs or nutrients – then becomes the defining feature, but this is not the most important attribute. To paraphrase the historian of medicine Harris Coulter – in this approach the body reacts creatively to stressors – and the Empirical school or natural medicine approach is more focused on supporting adaptive responses than suppressing symptoms. Or to put it another way, naturopathic physicians certainly do things to ameliorate symptoms, but their real interest is to discern what disturbances to the determining factors of health lead to imbalances, physiological dysfunction, and are generating the symptoms. This is not an attempt to argue that all health issues can get better on their own or that conventional medical interventions aren’t capable of producing stellar outcomes. Conventional medicine holds great value, but there remains a concurrent need for a naturopathic approach that helps rebuild the body.