Hi Swan,

I like the poetic images of the vis and your referral to your term biopsychosocial.  It is diffecult to actually capture what a person is, let alone how the Vis works.

All the Best,

Bill 

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From: Swan <swanoir@...>
Reply-To: NDPhilosophy@yahoogroups.com
To: NDPhilosophy@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [NDPhilosophy] Re: Vis Medicatrix Naturae
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 19:53:54 -0800

 Dear Jared,

Here is an attempt I made at writing about the vis in 1991, just as I was beginning my first year at Bastyr. Enjoy.

Gary Piscopo

           To offer an informal introduction, naturopathy's emerging health care outlook ascribes to an ecological orientation based on Hippocratic principles.  Central to this view is the importance of adaptive and informational parameters. Whereas biomedicine's mechanistic orientation is  defined by the classical medical design, naturopathy's ecological outlook can be defined by an information – systems medical (infomedical) design.  Within this design, "subjective" elements such as spiritual, emotional, psychological, and sociocultural factors can be recast as informationally – active processes.  Modeling of these factors, where appropriate, could then proceed via post classical and cybernetic protocols.

An increasingly important goal of contemporary medical investigation is understanding how the activity of the human system influences the individual's health and susceptibility to disease. The general systems strategy inherent in the naturopathic model allows for a number of advantages in this regard over the reductionistic strategy of the biomedical model.  First, the general systems strategy allows for the re-integration of behavioral and psychosocial data that is arbitrarily ignored within the biomedical model.  This permits the naturopathic practitioner to make valuable distinctions within the medical problem space, particularly at the higher system levels.

Second, the systems perspective serves as an organizational guide, allowing naturopathic clinicians to target their interventions to the appropriate level of the human hierarchy.  Such an approach affords the possibility of the greatest efficacy at the lowest cost with the lowest level of side effects for procedures within naturopathy's treatment range.  Finally, because it is an integrated conceptual outline based on findings from biological, psychosocial, and cognitive disciplines, the general systems strategy avoids the fragmentation found in biomedicine.  Instead it generates a common framework that can accommodate the preventive, curative, and rehabilitative aspects of total patient care.  In cases that lie outside naturopathy's therapeutic sphere, this framework provides a communication interface with which to confer with other health professionals.  The outcome is more effective referrals and better patient management.

            According to the naturopathic model, the human person is a biopsychosocial whole who is intimately connected to the environment.  This dynamic is thought to be mediated by a series of cyclic, cybernetic processes.  Therefore, rhythmic phenomena such as the temporal organization of the human system play a significant role in naturopathic therapeutics.  Using a naturalistic rather than a mechanistic metaphor, naturopathy models the mind-body not as a machine but as in intelligent, self-organizing entity.  Structurally, this entity is conceptualized as forming a totality comprised of several hierarchically arranged levels of organization.  Within this totality are innate self-healing or auto-poetic processes which make up the vis medicatrix naturae.  These processes are conceived as being cyclic, nonlinear, and open rather than linear, deterministic, and closed.  Assisting the vis medicatrix naturae is the cornerstone of the naturopathic approach…

Because the individual is modeled as a series of interactive levels, disease is not viewed as a discrete entity.  Rather, it is seen as a hierarchical process manifesting as a pattern of disruptions.   As these disruptions can occur on a variety of levels, naturopathy recognizes both physical (matter/energy) and informational (data/meaning) type interventions.

            Similarly, health is seen as a multilevel processes that incorporates emotional, spiritual, sociocultural, psychological, and physiological aspects.  The result is the integrated capacity of the system to adaptively adjust to a wide array of environmental challenges.  The term "adaptive" is a quality-of-life concept that refers to the ability of the organism to maintain a viable steady-state in a given milieu.  The milieu itself is defined by a variety of environmental, physiological, and personal values.  Naturopathy's diagnostic and therapeutic modalities are designed to identify, restore, stabilize and /or increase the level of adaptivity of the individual system.

            Naturopathy's therapeutic outlook follows logically from this conceptual framework.  As opposed to the physicalistic, engineering approach of biomedicine, naturopathy offers a synergistic, information – oriented treatment approach.  The focus of this approach is the strengthening of the individual's adaptive resources relative to their environment.  Therefore, it is felt that treatment, to the extent appropriate, should be "natural".  That is, it should reflect the fact that the human system is genetically adapted to specific material and informational inputs.  Looking to respect this biological heritage, natural therapeutics confines itself to evoking a therapeutic response through low-level invasive, life-style intensive treatment methods…    To this end, naturopathy attempts to create a healing milieu by providing both physiologically and informationally-active therapeutic measures.  The ultimate aim of the approach is to assist the human system in reaching its maximum level of stability, function, and health.