Following graduation returned to Bielefeld as a general practitioner, later serving as director of a hospital for the poor.

Nasse was a member of the somatic school of psychiatry that was popular during the first half of the 19th century in Germany.

He believed that diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders depended on investigation of the somatic activity of a patient, formulating his belief system on the basis that physical disease produced a disturbance in the relationship between the psyche and the soma.

Nasse is credited for introducing the practical experience of "bedside diagnosis" into the university lecture hall.

In addition, with Carl Wigand Maximilian Jacobi (1775–1858), he published a short-lived journal titled Zeitschrift für Heilung und Beurtheilung krankhafter Seelenstörungen (Journal for the healing and diagnosis of pathological mental disorders).