Ordnungstherapie: Bircher-Benner’s Laws of Order for Health

Table of Contents

1. Health as Order
2. Coining the Term in 1937
3. The Nine Laws of Order
4. The 1938 Book and the London Lectures
5. Food: The First Laws of Order
6. Light, Air, Water, Breath and Movement
7. Rhythm, Sleep and the Life of the Soul
8. Order Lived: The Day at Lebendige Kraft
9. His Warnings About Civilisation’s Disorder
10. Bircher-Benner, Kneipp and the Five Pillars
11. Ordnungstherapie in Naturopathy Today
12. Key Research Papers
13. Connections
14. Featured Videos

1. Health as Order

The starting point of order therapy is a simple claim about what health is. In the summary of the medical historians Jörg Melzer, Dieter Melchart and Reinhard Saller, Bircher-Benner’s concept rests on the idea that health is order, or harmony, in the human being — physically and psychologically — in the environment and in the daily course of life, and that illness occurs when disorder appears in one of these fields.

The German Wikipedia article on him puts the same idea in one sentence: in a violation of the Ordnungsgesetze of the biologically given conditions of human life, in body and in soul, Bircher-Benner saw the root cause of almost all diseases. A Swiss health-careers magazine summarises it more bluntly still: the basic cause of all illness was to be sought in a disordered way of life. Three things follow from this way of thinking:

• The whole person. Order therapy, the same article says, is a treatment that takes in the whole person, Psyche und Soma — mind and body together.
• Prevention and cure are one task. The Swiss historical lexicon describes his health teaching as both preventive and curative in design, striving for inner harmony, with the relationship of soul and body at its centre.
• The patient must take part. If disorder in daily life causes illness, then restoring order is something the patient has to live, not something a doctor can hand over in a bottle.

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2. Coining the Term in 1937

The word Ordnungstherapie is now so familiar in German naturopathy that its origin is often forgotten. Melzer and colleagues set out in 2004 to answer exactly that question — who formed the term, and what does it mean? Their answer, from a study of twentieth-century literature and database research:

• The author was Bircher-Benner. The term is often linked with the Bavarian priest and water-cure pioneer Sebastian Kneipp, but “term and definition have been founded by the Swiss physician” Maximilian Bircher-Benner.
• The year was 1937. In 1937 he defined order therapy as a complex concept of natural healing, introducing the word as an umbrella term for the whole range of naturopathic therapies he used.
• Nine rules of conduct. The therapeutic setting of order therapy, they write, “is defined by 9 rules of conduct to maintain order,” covering nutrition, the skin as an organ (exposure to light, air and water), breathing, movement, rhythm of life and psyche.
• His own two headings. For all these aspects Bircher-Benner himself used the terms somatotherapy — diet therapy, sun and light therapy, hydrotherapy, exercise therapy, breathing technique and the ordering of the rhythm of life — and psychotherapy.
• Learned over forty years. He chose these methods, they write, after learning them “from 1897 onwards in an eclectic manner” and after gaining therapeutic experience with them — 1897 being the year he opened his first small private clinic on the Zürichberg.

The historians Elisabeth Meyer-Renschhausen and Albert Wirz, writing on his life in 1999, likewise refer to his “Nine Laws of Order.” Order therapy was thus not a late change of direction but a name, given two years before his death, for the way he had practised for four decades.

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3. The Nine Laws of Order

Bircher-Benner’s own wording of the laws is in his 1938 book, which we have not been able to read in full. A modern summary of the “Neun Ordnungsgesetze des Lebens” (“Nine Laws of Order of Life”) that he recommended for a healthy way of life was published by Swiss public radio, SRF. We give it here in the original German with our English translation; the phrasing is SRF’s summary, not a quotation from him:

1. “Die pflanzliche Rohnahrung übt Heilwirkung aus.” — Raw plant food has a healing effect.
2. “Die Ernährung ist ausgewogen, vollwertig und mehrheitlich vegetarisch.” — Nutrition is balanced, whole and mostly vegetarian.
3. “Die Nahrungszufuhr ist sparsam und deckt nur den tatsächlichen Bedarf.” — Food intake is sparing and covers only actual need.
4. “Das Kauen und das Umfeld beim Essen haben für die Nahrungsaufnahme und -verwertung grosse Bedeutung.” — Chewing, and the surroundings in which one eats, matter greatly for the intake and use of food.
5. “Licht, Luft und klares Wasser üben über die Haut günstige Heilreize aus.” — Light, air and clear water give favourable healing stimuli through the skin.
6. “Richtiges Atmen ist Lebensgrundlage.” — Correct breathing is a foundation of life.
7. “Körperbewegung wirkt gesundheitsfördernd.” — Bodily movement promotes health.
8. “Zur Gesundheit gehören ein natürlicher Lebensrhythmus, ein gesunder Schlaf” — Health includes a natural rhythm of life and healthy sleep…
9. “…und ein ausgewogenes Seelenleben.” — …and a balanced life of the soul.

The list matches the fields named by Melzer and colleagues in their analysis of his 1937 definition — nutrition first, then the skin with light, air and water, then breathing, movement, rhythm of life and the psyche. Four of the nine concern food, which shows how central diet remained: order therapy did not replace his raw food teaching, it placed it inside a wider frame.

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4. The 1938 Book and the London Lectures

Bircher-Benner set out his laws of order most fully in a book published the year before he died. The Swiss historical lexicon lists it as Ordnungsgesetze des Lebens als Wegweiser zur echten Gesundheit (“The Laws of Order of Life as a Signpost to True Health”), 1938. Catalogue records give slightly different forms of the title:

• The German edition. A 1992 reprint is catalogued as Ordnungsgesetze des Lebens. Drei Vorträge für die «Food Education Society» (“Three Lectures for the Food Education Society”), a reprint of the edition published by the Wendepunkt-Verlag of Zurich, Leipzig and Vienna in 1938.
• The London lectures. The Wellcome Collection’s record of the English translation notes that it is “based on lectures given to the Food Education Society at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Oct. 1937” — the same year Melzer and colleagues date his definition of order therapy. It was the second time he had addressed that society; his earlier talk, The Prevention of Disease by Correct Feeding, was given at University College London in January 1933.
• The English edition. The translation, by D. E. Hecht and E. F. Meyer, was published in London in 1940 under the title The Hell of Ill-Health, 128 pages with eight plates. The Wellcome record gives the German original as Ordnungsgesetze des Lebens als Wegweiser zur Gesundheit.

The book stood at the end of a long run of writing on the mind as well as the body. His two-volume Der Menschenseele Not. Erkrankung und Gesundung (“The Distress of the Human Soul: Falling Ill and Getting Well”) appeared from his own Wendepunkt-Verlag in 1927 and 1933, and his autobiographical Vom Werden des neuen Arztes (“On the Making of the New Physician”) in 1938. SRF notes that besides his monthly journal Der Wendepunkt, founded in 1923, he published numerous works on psychotherapy, diet therapy, hydrotherapy, Lebensordnung (“order of life”), order therapy and the training of physicians.

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5. Food: The First Laws of Order

Nutrition heads every list of Bircher-Benner’s laws, and the first four laws in the SRF summary are about eating. They condense the diet he had taught since 1900 and described in his own words in London in 1933:

• Raw plant food heals. His Rohkost (“raw food”) cure rested on his theory that raw plant foods carry the most stored sunlight; see Sunlight Food: Bircher-Benner’s Theory of Food as Stored Sunlight and Bircher-Benner’s Raw Food (Rohkost) Therapy.
• Fruit first. “I employ the plan of giving fruit at the beginning of every meal,” he said in 1933. “The empty stomach likes and digests the fruit better than when full and — what is most important — the appetite for cooked food is gradually reduced.”
• A raw course every day. “Once daily, at the principal meal, a dish of various raw vegetables, prepared as hors d’oeuvres and always accompanied by salad of some green leaves, is served.” Wholemeal bread followed, with “rightly-prepared, conservatively-cooked vegetables and potatoes, with as little meat as possible.”
• Sparing intake. In the same address he faulted the habit of thinking one is “nourishing themselves better by eating large quantities, or by eating many different kinds of foods, by ‘snacks’ and ‘in between’ meals of a sweet or stimulating nature.”
• Chewing. Raw food, he said, “demands thorough mastication and thorough mastication accomplishes wonders,” and he invoked the American chewing advocate Horace Fletcher.

The best known single dish of this order was the apple-based d’Spys, the original Bircher muesli, served at the start of the meal: see The Original Bircher Muesli (“d’Spys”) Recipe and History.

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6. Light, Air, Water, Breath and Movement

The next three laws turn from the plate to the body’s contact with the natural world. In Melzer’s reading of the 1937 definition, these belong to the “skin as an organ” — exposed to light, air and water — together with breathing and movement. Bircher-Benner had gathered these methods long before he named them:

• Water. As a young doctor he travelled to study the water cure, including the methods of Kneipp and of Wilhelm Winternitz in Vienna, and visited the clinic of the German nature-cure physician Heinrich Lahmann near Dresden, according to Meyer-Renschhausen and Wirz. His first clinic of 1897 was described by the Swiss historical lexicon as a private clinic “for dietetics and physical healing methods.” See the site’s page on Hydrotherapy.
• Light and air. Sun and light therapy — Heliotherapie — and air baths were part of the sanatorium programme. SRF notes that at Lebendige Kraft he prescribed movement in the open air, gymnastics, air baths and hydrotherapy.
• Breath. “Breathing technique” is one of the somatotherapies he listed under order therapy, and “correct breathing is a foundation of life” is the sixth law in the SRF summary. The site’s Breathwork page covers modern breathing practice.
• Movement. Exercise therapy, gymnastics, gardening and Terraintraining (graded walking on hilly ground) were all part of the sanatorium day, as described in section 8.

Light held a special place in his thinking. His whole theory of nutrition treated food as stored sunlight; in his order therapy, sunlight reached the body directly through the skin as well as indirectly through the plants on the table.

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7. Rhythm, Sleep and the Life of the Soul

The last two laws concern time and the inner life. “Order of the rhythm of life” is one of the somatotherapies Melzer and colleagues list in his 1937 definition, and the eighth law in the SRF summary joins a natural rhythm of life to healthy sleep. In practice this meant early rest: at the sanatorium on the Zürichberg, the German Wikipedia article records, Nachtruhe (“night’s rest,” lights out) began at 9 p.m. The site’s Sleep Hygiene page looks at sleep habits in modern terms.

The ninth law, a balanced life of the soul, was the one he wrote about at greatest length. Psychotherapy was the second of his two headings for order therapy, beside somatotherapy, and his historians stress how central the mind was to him:

• Mind and body together. The Swiss historical lexicon says the relationship of soul and body has central importance in his teaching.
• An early influence. As a student he was influenced by the Zurich psychiatrist August Forel, who used hypnosis and campaigned against alcohol, according to Meyer-Renschhausen and Wirz.
• The books on the soul. His Der Menschenseele Not (1927 and 1933) dealt with the distress of the human soul in illness and recovery.
• Art and music. The sanatorium programme included, beside the physical regime, a personal turning to art and music.

In his 1933 London address he tied bodily and mental distress together directly: “All these physical ills correspond to mental and psychological distresses and suffering. Countless millions are condemned by the feeding habits of the time to an unsuitable life and thereby the whole of human society suffers.”

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8. Order Lived: The Day at Lebendige Kraft

Order therapy was not only a theory; it was a timetable. From 1904 patients at the sanatorium Lebendige Kraft (“vital force”) on the Zürichberg lived by it. The German Wikipedia article describes the day as “streng geregelt” — strictly regulated:

• A walk before breakfast. A walk was scheduled before breakfast. Meyer-Renschhausen and Wirz describe a long forest walk; a swissinfo.ch history of Swiss health resorts describes order therapy as “first having a stroll in the morning before you had any breakfast.” The weekly newspaper der Freitag notes that instead of a lavish breakfast, patients got a morning walk followed by Birchermuesli.
• Physical training. A programme of körperliche Ertüchtigung (“physical fitness training”) with movement therapy, gymnastics, hydrotherapy, gardening, Liegekur (rest cure lying down in the open air), terrain training and heliotherapy.
• Garden work. Swissinfo.ch lists “a raw fruit and vegetable diet, work in the garden and hydrotherapy” as the core of the regime.
• Air baths. SRF names movement in the open air, gymnastics, air baths and hydrotherapy among his prescriptions.
• No stimulants. Alcohol, coffee, chocolate and tobacco were not part of the regime, according to Meyer-Renschhausen and Wirz.
• Early to bed. Lights out at 9 p.m.

The most famous comment on this order came from the novelist Thomas Mann, who stayed in spring 1909. In a letter he called the sanatorium a “hygienisches Zuchthaus” — a “hygienic prison” (swissinfo.ch renders it “a hygienic jail”). Der Freitag adds that he felt like a “Gras essender Nebukadnezar,” a grass-eating Nebuchadnezzar. Yet the same German Wikipedia article reports that Mann also praised the therapeutic effect as “zuvor nie dagewesen” — something never seen before. His impressions are said to have fed into his novel Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain). For the sanatorium’s full history, see The Lebendige Kraft Sanatorium in Zurich (1904–1994).

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9. His Warnings About Civilisation’s Disorder

If health is order, then a whole society can fall ill by falling into disorder — and Bircher-Benner believed that was happening. He opened his January 1933 London address with that warning:

“After a century of astounding progress in science and technology, in hygiene and medical surgery, the civilised world finds itself almost unexpectedly faced with threatened bankruptcy in every department of life. Each year the distress increases and the future looms dark.”

Others, he said, blamed the World War, economics or materialism; to him “as a medical man” one cause had “remained too much in the background,” and he quoted Nietzsche: “Everything begins in physiology.” He then listed the changes of the nineteenth century that he held responsible:

• More meat. “Prosperity, increased pretensions and scientific aberrations have in many ways greatly augmented the consumption of meat per head of the population.”
• The loss of raw food. “Bacteriology has banned raw food and created canning.”
• Refined foods. Refined sugar had “risen to unprecedented heights,” and whole-cereal foods had largely been replaced by white flour.
• Daily stimulants. Tea, coffee, cocoa and chocolate had become “a daily indulgence,” and for many, alcohol had become habitual. “Stimulation and intoxication, instead of nourishment, ruled the palate to an hitherto unknown degree.”
• Additives and the soil. Artificial colouring and chemical preservatives were added to food, salt was refined, and “the very ground on which food was grown was poisoned by the use of artificial manures.”

He summed up the result in a phrase: “Obviously we are faced by the physiological decay of civilised humanity.” And he blamed medicine for going along with it: “Misled by chemical theories of nutrition, the medical world realised so little the disadvantages of these changes that no impressive or successful protest was raised.” The laws of order he presented in London four years later were his answer — a set of rules by which individuals could restore, in their own lives, the order he believed civilisation had lost.

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10. Bircher-Benner, Kneipp and the Five Pillars

Today Ordnungstherapie is usually taught as one of the “five pillars” of Kneipp therapy, and many readers assume Sebastian Kneipp (1821–1897) invented it. The history is more tangled:

• Kneipp’s five pillars. In a 2014 English-language review of his legacy, Cornelia Locher and Christof Pforr describe Kneipp’s holistic treatment concept as founded on five pillars: hydrotherapy and phytotherapy (herbal medicine), exercise, balanced nutrition and “regulative therapy” — the usual English rendering of Ordnungstherapie.
• The word is Bircher-Benner’s. Melzer and colleagues conclude that the term and its definition were founded by Bircher-Benner in 1937, forty years after Kneipp’s death, even though it “is often related with” Kneipp.
• The pillar came later. They add that “the classification of Ordnungstherapie as one of the 5 pillars of the Kneipp therapy was only done by Kneipp physicians in the middle of the 20th century and needs to be thought over.”

The two men were not strangers to each other’s work: as noted above, the young Bircher-Benner travelled to study Kneipp’s water methods. But the idea of naming a therapy after order itself, and defining it through nine rules of conduct, was his.

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11. Ordnungstherapie in Naturopathy Today

Bircher-Benner’s umbrella term has outlived him. Melzer and colleagues write that in German-language medical books Ordnungstherapie now belongs to the five therapies that define European naturopathy — diet therapy, hydrotherapy, exercise therapy, phytotherapy and Ordnungstherapie — though its interpretation “ranges from health education to body-orientated forms of psychotherapy.” They also note that his own concept, with certain limitations for herbal medicine, already comprised the therapies that now define the field.

Later research on the same subject has looked at programmes built on these ideas:

• The Kneipp cure. A 1999 cohort study in four spa clinics in Bad Wörishofen followed 363 patients through a three- to four-week course combining hydro-, exercise and herbal therapy, dietetics and “ordnungstherapie”; the authors reported improvements in pain, self-rated complaints and medication use that largely held for a year. A 2021 systematic review of Kneipp therapy studies from 2000–2019 included 25 sources, of which 14 were controlled studies.
• Mind-body medicine in Essen. At the department of naturopathy and integrative medicine of the Kliniken Essen-Mitte, part of the University of Duisburg-Essen, Gustav Dobos and colleagues described in 2006 how mind-body medicine — drawing on stress research, psychoneuroimmunology and Antonovsky’s salutogenesis — had been built into German integrative medicine alongside traditional European naturopathy. The health educator Anna Paul has led “die Ordnungstherapie und MBM” (order therapy and mind-body medicine) in that clinic for more than 25 years, according to her university profile.
• Lifestyle programmes. A 2015 review from the same group pooled 12 randomised trials of mind-body programmes — lifestyle changes such as diet and exercise combined with relaxation and psychological elements — in people with coronary heart disease, reporting fewer cardiac events.

German medical journals also carried short articles titled “Regulative therapy” (1958) and “Regulation therapy — self-reliant therapy within natural medicine?” (1999). The nine rules he gave in 1937 — eat mostly raw and whole plant food, eat sparingly, chew, seek light, air and water, breathe well, move, keep a natural rhythm with good sleep, and look after the life of the soul — remain the core of what German naturopaths still call order therapy.

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Key Research Papers

1. Melzer J, Melchart D, Saller R. [Development of ‘Ordnungstherapie’ by Bircher-Benner in naturopathy of the 20th century]. Forsch Komplementarmed Klass Naturheilkd. 2004;11(5):293-303. — PubMed PMID: 15572870
2. Meyer-Renschhausen E, Wirz A. Dietetics, health reform and social order: vegetarianism as a moral physiology. The example of Maximilian Bircher-Benner (1867-1939). Med Hist. 1999;43(3):323-41. — PubMed PMID: 10885127
3. Locher C, Pforr C. The legacy of Sebastian Kneipp: linking wellness, naturopathic, and allopathic medicine. J Altern Complement Med. 2014;20(7):521-6. — PubMed PMID: 24773138
4. Leuchtgens H, Albus T, Uhlemann C, Volger E, Pelka RB, Resch KL. [Effects of Kneippism, a standardized complex therapy, on pain, quality of life and use of medicines: cohort study with a one-year follow-up]. Forsch Komplementarmed. 1999;6(4):206-11. — PubMed PMID: 10529580
5. Stier-Jarmer M, Throner V, Kirschneck M, Frisch D, Schuh A. [Effekte der Kneipp-Therapie: Ein systematischer Review der aktuellen wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse (2000-2019)]. Complement Med Res. 2021;28(2):146-159. — PubMed PMID: 33049739
6. Dobos G, Altner N, Lange S, Musial F, Langhorst J, Michalsen A, Paul A. [Mind-body medicine as a part of German integrative medicine]. Bundesgesundheitsblatt Gesundheitsforschung Gesundheitsschutz. 2006;49(8):723-8. — PubMed PMID: 16850159
7. Cramer H, Lauche R, Paul A, Langhorst J, Michalsen A, Dobos G. Mind-Body Medicine in the Secondary Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease. Dtsch Arztebl Int. 2015;112(45):759-67. — PubMed PMID: 26585187
8. Schlegel L. [Regulative therapy]. Hippokrates. 1958;29(2):33-5. — PubMed PMID: 13512979
9. Jüptner H. [Regulation therapy--self-reliant therapy within natural medicine?]. Forsch Komplementarmed. 1999;6(1):56-7. — PubMed PMID: 10213885
10. Eklöf M. [They searched help across the borders. Patients from Sweden in Switzerland at Dr Bircher-Benner’s health resort in 1928-1939]. Lakartidningen. 2008;105(3):147-50. — PubMed PMID: 18290517

PubMed Topic Searches

1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Ordnungstherapie
2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Bircher-Benner
3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Kneipp+therapy
4. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=mind-body+medicine+naturopathy

Further Reading

• Bircher-Benner MO. Ordnungsgesetze des Lebens als Wegweiser zur echten Gesundheit. Zurich: Wendepunkt-Verlag; 1938. English translation by Hecht DE, Meyer EF: The Hell of Ill-Health. London: John Miles; 1940. Wellcome Collection catalogue record
• Bircher-Benner MO. The Prevention of Disease by Correct Feeding. Address delivered to the Food Education Society, University College, London, 6 January 1933. London: Food Education Society; 1933. Wellcome Collection scan at the Internet Archive
• Jagella-Danoth C. Bircher-Benner, Maximilian Oskar. Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz, version 1999, edited 3 November 2010. hls-dhs-dss.ch
• SRF Musikwelle. Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner und das Birchermüesli (the “Neun Ordnungsgesetze des Lebens”). srf.ch
• “Maximilian Bircher-Benner.” German Wikipedia (sanatorium daily routine; Thomas Mann). de.wikipedia.org
• Leybold-Johnson I. Sun, mountains and Bircher muesli. swissinfo.ch, 27 March 2010. swissinfo.ch
• Bucher G. Aus Schrot und Korn. der Freitag. freitag.de
• Dr. rer. medic. Anna Paul, staff profile, University of Augsburg. uni-augsburg.de

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Connections

• Dr. Max Bircher-Benner and the Raw Food Cure
• Max Bircher-Benner: Life and Career
• Sunlight Food: Food as Stored Sunlight
• Raw Food (Rohkost) Therapy
• The Lebendige Kraft Sanatorium
• The Original Bircher Muesli
• Dr. Max Gerson and the Gerson Therapy
• Hydrotherapy
• Forest Bathing
• Breathwork
• Sleep Hygiene
• Nutrition and Orthomolecular Pioneers

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