Dear Colleagues:

I have been corresponding recently with an Austrian newsletter reader, Dr Johanna Osztovics, who has kindly opened a window for me to the world of neural therapy in Europe. I was aware of course that neural therapy originated in Europe, and that it is widely practiced in the German and Spanish speaking countries. However the language barrier has prevented me from knowing much about its current status, short of the annual "Medizinische Woche" (medicine week) in Baden-Baden, which some North Americans attend.

The Austrian neural therapy association website has links with many other national societies including Belgium, Bulgaria, Columbia, Czech Republic, Germany (several societies), Greece, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey. (I was aware that neural therapy is being practiced in Turkey as this newsletter has several subscribers from there.) What a pity that there is not yet a single neural therapy association in the English speaking countries.

I was interested to learn about some of the topics currently preoccupying Austrian neural therapy leaders. They include questions such as "What are the core concepts of neural therapy?" and, "Are these principles being applied in too narrow or too wide a fashion?" In my opinion these are discussions well worth having, particularly among those teaching and writing about neural therapy. Educational programs must be designed, and the line between what is neural therapy and what is not, is not always clear.

I noticed this at the international conference on neural therapy in Quito last March. Some of the lectures were only very loosely linked to neural therapy, but were likely of interest to most attending because they appealed to inquiring minds. Because neural therapy is outside the standard conventional medical curriculum, only those physicians with a lively curiosity are likely to come across it and learn it.

I have to keep this in mind when writing this monthly newsletter. Often I come across something really interesting in my practice and would like to share it. However if it does not "fit", I have to discard it. My reasoning is that readers of this newsletter are searching for information about neural therapy - a rare commodity in the English speaking world.

The pioneers of neural therapy recognized early an overlap with acupuncture and that acupuncture points are portals into the autonomic nervous system. I also have been teaching for many years that the osteopathic term "somatic dysfunction" is a musculoskeletal manifestation of an interference field and follows the same rules as do the better-known forms of interference fields.

The discovery by Klinghardt and Williams that applied kinesiology can be used to detect interference fields opened up energetic possibilities in neural therapy (at least for the English-speaking world. Similar discoveries were being made independently and perhaps earlier in South America by Payan and Duque.) Crosby's invention

So we see that the core concepts of neural therapy are firmly embedded in the matrix of general medicine. And these also interconnect with some concepts that are not currently "mainstream". In practical terms this means that neural therapy works best when practiced by physicians who think broadly and deeply, and are skilled in many other aspects of medicine. More than a technique, it is a "way of thinking" that not only benefits the patient, but also provides profound intellectual satisfaction to those who practice it.