Question:
One question about the history of NCNM: I thought that it was spun offof the Western States Chiro School in 1956 in Portland, when that schooldecided to eliminate its ND program. Perhaps someone can help educate mehere

Answer: NCNM lists their official start date as 1956, which is when the school wasfounded in Portland. There was a combination chiropractic/naturopathic collegein the area that did fold or split about that time, but I don't think that itwas Western States. I'm pretty sure that its name started with a P (I got in aconversation with Dr. Bastyr about this several years ago, but don't rememberall the details)

There was definitely a lot of movement around that time of people trying tostart various eclectic/naturopathic colleges to carry on the eclectic traditionas well as the chiropractors trying to redefine their profession. In the earlyyears, both chiropractic and osteopathic training was much closer to what wewould call a naturopathic doctor.

Bastyr officially began in late 1970s, although in those early years it wasonly a couple of classrooms and gross anatomy lab in the basement -- a prettyfar cry from their current campus and enrollment of approximately 150 new NDstudents a year.

If you're trying to do research on the history of naturopathic colleges, one ofthe best sources that I know is a man named Ron Hobbs, currently working asDean of Students at the University of Bridgeport College of NaturopathicMedicine. Ron did a lot of interviews with various members of the communityabout the history of the schools. It would be nice to see a book published onthe history of naturopathic medicine in this country -- there's been verylittle done and most of it tends to be fairly biased to one point of view orthe other (Harris Coulter's works on homeopathic medicine are very good).There's also been a couple of books published about the history of the eclecticmedical colleges, the grandfathers of the naturopathic colleges.