Biomedicine and naturopathic healing in West Germany. A historical and ethnomedical view of a stormy relationship.

We trace the history of medical pluralism in Germany from the perspective of a clinically oriented medical anthropology. The continuation of naturopathic medicine in both formal and informal health care illumines fundamental epistemological issues. Cultural and social forces in Germany shaped the scientific and technical development of medicine, which continues in a form distinctly different from that of medicine in North America. The construction of clinical reality in German practice is distinctive and edifying for a cross-cultural understanding of medical systems of knowledge and praxis.