According to a report presented to the United States Congress in 1970 by the now-defunct National Association of Naturopathic Physicians:

Naturopathy is the technique of treatment of human disease which emphasizes assisting nature. It can embrace minor surgery and the use of nature's agencies, forces, processes, and products, introducing them to the human body by any means that will produce health-yielding results.

Naturopathy is based upon the tendency of the body to maintain a balance and to heal itself. The purpose of naturopathic medicine is to further this process by using natural remedies . . . as distinct from "orthodox" medicine (allopathy and osteopathy), which seeks to combat disease by using remedies which are chosen to destroy the causative agent or which produce effects different from those produced by the disease treated. . . .

Naturopathy places priority upon these conditions as the bases for ill health: (1) lowered vitality; (2) abnormal composition of blood and lymph; (3) maladjustment of muscles, ligaments, bones, and neurotropic disturbances; (4) accumulation of waste matter and poison in the system; (5) germs, bacteria, and parasites which invade the body and flourish because of toxic states which may provide optimum conditions for their flourishing; and (6) consideration of hereditary influences, and (7) psychological disturbances.

In applying naturopathic principles to healing, the practitioner may administer one or more specified physiological, mechanical, nutritional, manual, phytotherapeutic, or animal devices or substances. The practitioner's end aim is to remove obstacles to the body's normal functioning, applying natural forces to restore its recuperative facilities. Only those preparations and doses which act in harmony with the body economy are utilized, to alter perverse functions, cleanse the body of its catabolic wastes, and promote its anabolic processes.