Background
Lust was born in Michelbach, Baden, Germany.
Lust was born in Michelbach, Baden, Germany.
Meanwhile, Lust studied osteopathy and various schools of healing that eschewed the use of drugs and surgery.
Benedict Lust was a pioneer in what has come to be called Classical Naturopathy and a facilitator of holistic methods in the United States. As a youth, he became ill and was cured by French Sebastian Kneipp, a famous advocate of the water cure, a popular form of healing in the 19th century.
He eventually traveled to the United States as Kneipp"s official representative and in the late 1890s organized the water cure movement, especially among the many first generation German Americans.
After opening an early health food store, he began publishing several German and English language magazines advocating hydrotherapy and natural cure. One of his regular customers at the time was Bernarr Macfadden, the popularizer of physical fitness and natural medicine.
He attended and graduated from the New York Homeopathic Medical College in 1901. He obtained his osteopathic degree in 1902 from the Universal College of Osteopathy in New New York
He soon opened the American School of Naturopathy in New York City, the first naturopathic medical school in the world.
He went on to establish health resorts known as Yungborn in Butler, New Jersey and Tangerine, Florida which acted as the Winter Campus for the American School of Naturopathy until 2001. He also founded the American Naturopathic Association, the first national professional organization of naturopathic physicians. In 1918 he published the Universal Naturopathic Encyclopedia for drugless therapy, and also published Nature’s Path magazine.
Paramahansa Yogananda was one of several Indians who wrote articles for Nature’s Path in the 1920s, gaining wide exposure to a large American audience.