Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to highlight the metaphysical conceptions of nature that explain naturist oppositions to medical innovations after the Second World War.

Paper long abstract:

The French naturist milieu of the post-WWII years was animated by actors with varied profiles from scholars to entrepreneurs and prophets. It can be gathered loosely around the shared goal of living and healing naturally. It was therefore within this “cultic milieu”, which has constituted a matrix favourable to the development of the movement of opposition to vaccines, that naturopathy has emerged in France. However, vaccines were not the only medical innovations to be debated by naturist actors. Antibiotics were also criticised. The arguments of naturists were not only medical, but also based on philosophical stances and spiritual believes. They were, and still are, related to metaphysical conceptions of nature, which this paper seeks to highlight.