British naturopath Harry Benjamin, N.D. writes:

“Germs take part in all disease phenomena because these are processes requiring the breaking down or disintegration of accumulated refuse and toxic matter within the body which the system is endeavoring to throw off. But to assume, as our medical scientists do, that merely because the germs are present and active in all the decomposition processes connected with all dead organic matter, they are the cause of the death of the organic matter, is in question. Germs are part of the results of the disease, not its cause.”

Naturopaths see germs as scavengers assisting in cleaning up wastes. With this in mind, they have confidence that nature heals and that the body will cleanse itself of the cause of illness. If your body is clean and healthy, they say, germs are irrelevant for “susceptibility” does not exist. Germs are not considered causes of disease.

Naturopathic treatment offers the following approach: first build health, and illness will automatically decrease. To let the body cleanse itself is to let the body cure itself.

Dr. Andrew Saul defines Naturopathy as “a system of therapy in which the patient is treated without the use of medical remedies of any sort, but with correct dieting, exercises, baths, fasting, manipulations, etc.” Dr. Saul states that the first and- most fundamental principle of Nature Cure (Naturopathy) is that all forms of disease are due to the same cause, namely the accumulation in the system of uneliminated body wastes and toxic ingesta. The second principle of Nature Cure, he says, is that the body is always striving for its good no matter how ill-treated; and that all acute diseases are nothing more than self-initiated attempts on the part of the body to throw off the accumulations of impairing substances which interfere with its proper functioning; and that all chronic diseases are really the results of continued causes and suppression of acute diseases by devitalizing drugging and therapies.
The third principle of Nature Cure, according to Dr. Saul, is that the body contains within itself the power to bring about a return to a normal condition of well-being known as health, providing the right methods are employed to enable it to do so