The Constitution of the General Anthroposophical Society

GA 260a — 4 May 1924

The School of Spiritual Science XI

In the unfortunately short courses for practicing physicians, due to the impossibility for the participants to stay longer at the Goetheanum, the important question of the relationship between diagnosis and therapeutic measures in the sense of truly rational medicine was addressed and explained using two case histories from the Clinical Therapeutic Institute under the direction of Dr. I. Wegman. It became clear that such rational medicine is only possible if one takes seriously the view that the physical organization of the human being is shaped and permeated by the soul-spiritual human being, and accordingly strives to recognize the individual organs not only as physical formations, but as spiritual power formations.

In the course for younger physicians and medical students, special attention was paid this time to the inner development of the physician. By training the corresponding spiritual abilities, one can come to directly connect the essence of the sick person and that of the healing methods as a whole in one's view. Through this, however, the will to heal develops as the special soul mood that the physician needs. As presented in this course, the development of this will to heal does not appear as a separate — abstract — human ability, but always arises in a highly individualized form, corresponding to the appropriate view of the illness; it identifies with the knowledge of healing in the individual case. Thus, anthroposophy does not introduce a mystical fog into medical expertise, but rather the opposite: a precise understanding of the illness and the resulting precise therapeutic action. The intensity with which the participants have embraced what is intended here will ensure that some people will indeed seek the deepening and broadening of the art of healing that is so badly needed in the near future.