Meetings with Practicing Physicians

GA 314 — 22 April 1924, Dornach

First Discussion

A participant asks about the significance of milkweed and dandelion juices as a remedy for leukemia. This remedy presented itself to him during a meditation.

Of course, it is important to take into account the accompanying symptoms, because leukemia can have a wide variety of causes. If it is the case that there can be a clear awareness that one is dealing with a disturbance in the rhythmic human being, then you will be right; then you will come to results. The thing is this: Wherever products are used that come from the plant kingdom and still have the remnants of the etheric body in them – and that is the case with resinous and milky juices, both in dandelion and in spurge; it is also the case with wax, for example in vegetable wax – all these substances have a strong effect on the human rhythmic system. But if we are dealing with something that has its primary cause not in the human being's rhythmic system but in the metabolism – these things merge into one another, but in principle they must be distinguished – then you will hardly succeed. Everything that still contains the etheric body within it has a very strong effect on the internal mobility of the astral body, and thus stimulates the entire activity of the organism from the astral body. And in this way one can achieve success. This is based on the fact that the astral body is strongly influenced by these substances and that, because it acts on the etheric body, it then also causes a balance in the etheric body.

What are the conditions for a smallpox epidemic to occur? It seems that this disease has lost its malignant character. I have observed such cases. What does spiritual science have to say about vaccination?

In this matter, as with smallpox, we are dealing with a strong regression of the ego organization of all three other human bodies, both the physical and the etheric and astral bodies, in the individual. This strong regression, this weakening of the ego organization, can be due to the fact that the person, with their present ego, slips into the egos of past lives; and as a result, there is a strong affinity between the ego organization and the spiritual world. And what is remarkable about smallpox is that there is a certain similarity with what a person goes through when they undergo certain types of initiation. However strange it may seem, this is the case.

When a person, for example, really gets to know the effect of the zodiacal figures on people, such states of knowledge are associated with strong inner shocks. At least a person can undergo this by controlling it more, by working more on the soul, what is present in the case of smallpox, because it is a matter of the person living very strongly in the spiritual during the smallpox illness, albeit in a different way.

It can be said that the risk of infection is extremely high when suffering from smallpox. However, one should not be so careless as to always think of physical mediation in the transmission, but rather that the psychological predispositions are particularly strong in the case of smallpox. Proof of this could be that one can protect oneself very well if one is able to shut oneself away in the right way. I am able to speak about this because once, as a twenty-two-year-old person — I need not mention the circumstances — I taught a pupil whose mother was lying with black smallpox right next to it, separated only by a screen from the room in which I was giving my lessons. I did nothing about it, continued the lessons the whole time until the mother recovered. But I did it quite willingly, especially to see how one can protect oneself when one absolutely takes the smallpox patient, including those suffering from black smallpox, quite objectively like another object, like a stone or a bush, towards which one has no further feelings of fear or any other psychological stirrings, but takes it as an objective fact. In this case, the danger of infection must indeed be highly counteracted. Therefore, after all, the psychic factor can also play a strong role in the infection.

I have never been afraid of exposing myself to the possibility of infection, and in fact I have never been infected and have never suffered from an infectious disease. I was therefore able to determine that simply the consciousness, the strong consciousness of the existence of an illness can be the cause of illness from the astral body. The strong consciousness of an illness can be the cause of illness from the astral body.

And the smallpox vaccination? That is a peculiar case. You see, if you vaccinate someone and you educate them as an anthroposophist, it does no harm. It only harms those who grow up with predominantly materialistic thoughts. In such cases, vaccination becomes a kind of Ahrimanic force; the person can no longer rise above a certain materialistic feeling. And that is actually the most worrying thing about the smallpox vaccination, that people are virtually clothed with a phantom. The human being has a phantom that prevents him from getting rid of the soul entities as far from the physical organism as in normal consciousness. He becomes constitutionally materialistic, he can no longer rise to the spiritual. That is the worrying thing about vaccination. Of course, the statistics are always brought into play. The question is whether so much value has to be placed on statistics in these matters. With the smallpox vaccination, it is very much a psychological issue. It cannot be ruled out that the belief that the vaccination helps plays an incalculably large role. If this belief were replaced by something else, if people were educated in a way that would make them impressionable by something other than vaccination, for example, by bringing them closer to the spirit, it would be quite possible that, against the unconscious intrusion: here is a smallpox epidemic! - by complete consciousness of it: here is something spiritual, even if it is an unauthorized spiritual, against which I must protect myself! would work just as well as one would have to strengthen people against such influences.

If the circumstances are as they are, for example in our area, where the influence through education and so on is very difficult, how should one behave there?

You just have to vaccinate. There is no other way. Because fanatical opposition to these things is what I, not for medical reasons, but for general anthroposophical reasons, would not recommend at all. Fanatical opposition to these things is not what we are aiming for. Instead, we want to use insight to change things on a large scale. I have always regarded this, when I was friends with doctors, as something to be combated, for example with Dr. Asch, who absolutely did not vaccinate. I have always fought against that. Because if he does not vaccinate, someone else will. It is a complete nonsense to be so fanatical in the details.

Dr. Kolisko: As a school doctor, I observed that children who start school show a tremendous inner restlessness, which manifests itself particularly during sleep, so that the parents of children aged 6 or 7 complain that the children are plagued by nightmares, by motor restlessness, and that they have difficulty falling asleep. What are the circumstances that lead to this?

The conditions that children show when they start school, that is, in Germany, stem from the fact that, due to the nutritional conditions that have prevailed for years, rather than the general conditions, the inner ability to digest food - not the process that takes place in the stomach, but the inner ability, where it is important to drive the food pulp out of the intestines - is highly disturbed. It is the case that these children actually become incapable of properly interacting with their astral body in the etheric body. As a result, these children are usually unable to really transfer what they take in as food, even if they take it in through charity, into the organism. Every food has its own inherent laws; it must pass through a certain stage of digestion, every food must pass into the inorganic state. This is something that is not known in external science, that, for example, the protein we consume as vegetable or animal protein must be thoroughly disorganized, converted into the mineral state and then reconverted into human protein. The whole process takes place in the state nascendi, but it does take place. This transmutation must take place, otherwise the process does not take place as a human process, but as a foreign one. So we can say that within the human skin, roughly speaking, apart from the presence of direct salts, there must be nothing that occurs outside the human organism. There is nothing within the human skin that is outside except salt. Everything else is transmuted. Now, just when their etheric body is becoming free – it becomes free when they enter primary school age – these children lose the ability to organize this freed etheric body in the right way, starting from the astral body. This is what causes this digestive disorder. They have extra-human processes in them; and such things must be combated quite rationally physically. We have this remedy, which we prepared when we had some particularly bad examples of such children. I believe you will always have excellent success in this direction. Dr., do you remember the pale little boy in the second class? What about him?

He is much better.

He is now quite decent, relatively.

We have also used it on many other children.

That was the next occasion: there was a pale boy whom the doctors had already given up on; he was supposed to die in the near future. We used this remedy on him: calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate. It turned out that this remedy was very effective in promoting digestion; then the internal conditions improved. It is always the case that shortness of breath and breathing difficulties occur when the astral body cannot work properly. If it is held back, shortness of breath occurs, which can also be the cause of hidden anxiety. All this can be improved with this remedy. This remedy is of the

manner that one can say that if a person is no longer able to benefit from what he eats, despite eating, then this remedy is an extraordinarily good one.

What do you do for spinal paralysis?

What are the symptoms?

Just tenderness over the affected vertebra. The x-ray shows that the affected vertebra may have melted together a little on one side, that the vertebra has now taken on this (shown or drawn) shape instead of its normal shape.

It is natural that in such things, where there are such localized conditions, it is very difficult to approach the matter if one does not go back to the primary cause. Which vertebra is it?

The sixth thoracic vertebra.

Is there any kind of external mechanical insult that can be proven?

No, but the finding is that it is derived from pulmonary tuberculosis.

But there are changes in the hilar glands.

It is the case that in the x-ray image, larger shadows are found at this point, which enter the lung tissue in a scattered manner.

How old is the patient?

Thirty-five years.

Has he had this problem for long? Has it been noticed for long?

About three months. I have four such patients, all of them women. Two of them have a trauma on their back from falling down the stairs. In the other two, the x-ray image is such that one could conclude that the problem originates in the lungs.

Can't you prove that the neighboring vertebra is also affected?

Not a single one. In one case it is the tenth, in other cases the sixth. These are adults, about 36 to 39 years old. In one child the case is traumatic, in a twenty-year-old girl it is also traumatic.

In such a case, one would have to try to examine whether the lungs – the matter does not of course have its cause there – have insufficient space at some point, perhaps because they have been expanded. And in this case, one will find something in the area where the lungs unfold towards the front. And there it will be a matter of finding further dilations in some area of the lungs, expansions, for this shrinking - it is a shrinking process. Perhaps it is not in the lung area; it could even be in the bone of one of the ribs. That would have to be looked for. Then it would be a matter of using something that is suitable for balancing the formation of the human body. Now we have a substance that is excellently suited for balancing traumas. That is tobacco. Injected in dilution, it proves to be what balances deformities. If the aim is to bring the remedy to work freely in the organism, phosphorus must be used. Then it will certainly be possible to achieve healing processes in this way. It can definitely be said that healing processes will be achieved if the person concerned is under twenty-eight years of age. But it is not impossible, especially in women, to achieve healing processes even at a later age. And when you have very stubborn natures that are very reluctant, you would have to get them to be cheered up artificially, to cheer up their growth forces, their vital forces a little, and in this way promote the effect. That is what I mean, that in such a case you could do that.

In connection with what has been said about syphilis, I would like to ask how a patient who has received mercury and salvarsan can be freed from the damage caused by the medicine.

The following can be done to alleviate damage caused by mercury: give the patient a very hot bath every day or every other day and let the patient sweat profusely. This alone will greatly stimulate the body to defend itself against the mercury. It is necessary to defend oneself against the mercury to the very depths of one's bones when one has been treated with it. For you have perhaps all heard that after mercury cures, small droplets of mercury can be detected in the bones when an autopsy is performed. When the organism is strengthened by the hot baths, it is already a strong helper to the organism. That it helps sufficiently can be seen from the fact that the bathwater turns black from the returning mercury. Did you not notice that? You have to notice it! Because you don't understand why the bathwater is so dark. If that does not happen, then an arsenic bath should be taken, with about 5% of an arsenical water added to the bath; again, the patient should take a warm bath and, in particular, it should be ensured that the peculiar smell of ink that arises is actually smelled by the patient, so that he has a sensory impression of it. (Gap in the text.)

In such a case, a follow-up cure is needed. The mercury may have been almost completely removed, but the destructive tendency introduced by the mercury remains in the organism. We must bear in mind that mercury has an extraordinarily strong effect on the human organism. One must consider: what is mercury for the human organism? If you follow the embryonic development, you have an ascending embryonic development, that is, from the germ rising to what becomes a human being, and you have a descending development, something that falls away, that is gradually destroyed. The regulator of this destruction is that which, in the human being, is the inner mercurial nature. And if it should turn out that there are too many vital forces, then you could check it by means of mercury, which works constitutionally towards the destruction of the human being. This destructive tendency of mercury must be combated psychically. If you can induce a person to pursue a completely abstract science quite regularly, geometry, for example, dutifully for half an hour every day, then that is the follow-up cure. Sharp, logically connecting and separating thoughts that engage the mind and help to develop inner activity, not passive surrender to the world, but this inner activity, is what must actually be applied for a very long time. Then you will be able to heal someone of the forces of Mercury.

Sometimes women develop nodular hardenings in the mammary gland. Is it safe to use Viscum prophylactically, even if the diagnosis of carcinoma is questionable?

Have you found that prophylaxis in this case causes any damage?

You once said that with this remedy, which is being considered for a disease, there is also a risk of causing something in the wrong case.

We use the viscuminjection in a very specific way. Let us assume the case of an error in the diagnosis. That can be the case. Of course, one would not proceed prophylactically because one has diagnosed that carcinoma is in its early stages. As soon as the tendency is there, prophylaxis can no longer do any harm. But let us assume that an error has occurred. Now we inject seven times in a row; then we take a break. If there really had been an error, we would see it immediately, because a kind of carcinomatous tendency would have arisen that would immediately disappear when we did the second seven injections. We would not go any further. What would be created would be transformed again by a similar process. If one is careful, it is quite impossible to do any harm with Viscum treatment.

Dr. Köller: I had a conversation with a lay doctor about carcinoma treatment. I told him that I believe Viscum is a cure for this. He replied that this would be the case, but that one would have to take something else, namely Quendel; otherwise one would not have the possibility to get to the disease with Viscum. Quendel is what provides the possibility.

Did the man know this on his own initiative?

Dr. Köller: I got to know him because he had performed a remarkable healing. A girl who was almost blind came to see him. He is an eye diagnostician. It is not clear how he does it. He has 750 kinds of tea. It is so difficult to have a conversation with these people. They are all very optimistic. He said that everything can be cured, even cancer. He didn't ask how we do it, he just said it was through mistletoe. He told me that he and a few friends had once been walking through a landscape and had come across a cherry tree with mistletoe on it; the tree was stunted and had cancer. The man said to himself that there was a great healing power in mistletoe.

Viscum is the specific for carcinoma. There is nothing to be done about it. Of course, because basically every disease is treated differently, since every organism is in a certain condition, the remedies are sometimes supported by the addition of something else. It is possible that he has cured with mistletoe. He does not use it as an injection. In that case, it is possible that something else would be needed as an addition. But when Viscum is used as an injection, it is the specific remedy. You just have to pay attention to the differences in the individual case, whether you have the mistletoe from an oak tree, a cherry tree or another tree, such as an apple tree. The essential thing is that the use of mistletoe juice really depends on the fact that we actually have to enhance its effect. I don't know if you have seen that we are not seeking to use Viscum in such a simple way, but that we need an apparatus to do so. First we bring the mistletoe juices into a vertical movement, and then we let a horizontally rotating movement penetrate them. The aim is to make the mistletoe juice drip and to circulate it in drops, combining it again with mistletoe juice in horizontal circles, so that a special structure is created right down to the smallest circles. This is actually only the healing effect of the viscum, which arises. Of course, it is an effective remedy in itself; but the absolutely specific remedy only arises in this complicated way. The only thing that can be said is that when the disease occurs in a complicated way, quendel is used. Because the pure carcinoma, which is a self-contained disease, is not like influenza or flu, for example, where all sorts of things can be added. It is a self-contained disease that is treated with a self-contained remedy.

It is interesting that a person comes up with something like this just because of what he has told you and what you have said, but it is only a mask, not a mask known to him; because the knowledge can only come to such a person in his sleep. The Lord gives to his own in his sleep, truly. There is a prophetic foresight in his sleep that he is looking for mistletoe. Then he remembers this unconscious prophetic experience just as he comes to the mistletoe. A conversation takes place that is quite insignificant for the matter itself. It must be clear that a certain foreknowledge is possible, especially in cases of illness. You can rely on that. I remind you of the case of Schleichs: the person concerned knew that he would die the next night.

Dr. Köller: Basically, it turned out that he also cures in other ways. He said that he had not been at rest; he did not believe that I would get anywhere.

He does not inject. If you give the remedy mistletoe as an internal medicine, you cannot hit the cancer. You hit more of his soul. But you are hitting a malformation in the etheric body, which expresses itself through an impairment of the sensory. You cannot heal internally with mistletoe, only through injection. I understand what he is saying to you; he doesn't dare to approach the matter.

Is the cause of cancer the same in women and men? Is the cause different in the upper and lower human being? I believe I have noticed that the remedy satisfied in the case of stomach cancer but did not satisfy in the case of uterine cancer. Success was clear in the case of stomach cancer in men. In contrast, the matter drags on in the case of uterine cancer. In some cases we cannot get at it; we always injected into the periphery, even in the case of uterine cancer.

It is of course the case that you have to decide whether to inject further away from the site of the cancer or to get very close. If you can get very close to the site, you will achieve results more quickly than if the cancer is in a place where you cannot get close.

With the uterus, you can get close all around, while with stomach cancer you are much further away.

That is quite right. But on the other hand, there is much more communication between the surface and the stomach than between the surface and the uterus. The uterus is a more internal organ. However, the different success is not justified by the fact that there is a difference between men and women. There must be other conditions. All sources of error must be excluded. It is definitely the case that some of our remedies have gained a reputation for being less effective because the remedies in the way they used to be prepared were not as stable. Now, I believe, this no longer occurs in the same way; when they have aged, they will no longer work less well.

For some of the remedies, we are still in the experimental stage.

It has become much more apparent to me that the carcinoma remedy, as it has been manufactured so far, loses a great deal when it is one year old, while it is absolutely effective when it is not particularly old. So this matter would also have to be excluded, excluded as a source of error, and included. Possibly a considerably larger dose would also have to be used for uterine cancer.

A participant would like to ask about a girl who is now 29 years old and who went insane between the ages of 18 and 19. As a child, she was always unruly and naughty; now she has become completely dull. Especially during her period, she became wild. During the time when she became more and more dull, she also became increasingly fat; she now weighs 97 kilograms. So before she was what you might call a naughty girl; then between the ages of 18 and 19, a great increase in this naughtiness, dullness, stupidity, non-reaction, raging during the period, so that the straitjacket had to be applied; then she became more and more dull, less and less responsive, fatter and fatter, with regular periods. She was treated with thyroid extract with the result that the dullness and fattening subsided.

These symptoms all indicate that she had a very weak ego organization. And it is very likely that in such a case, a strengthening of the ego organization can be achieved by a silica cure, a silicon cure, whereby one would have to advise taking the cure twice, i.e. taking silica and taking silica baths. Also Equisetum, that is a good thing. It is likely that one can achieve something for her in this way.

She received silicic acid for a while, but not baths, two years ago; but everything has remained the same.

I would emphasize the effect of silicic acid through baths, especially because this, if it were to be effective, would already have a specific effect. The peculiar rhythmic states that occur through silicic acid would hold back this fat formation, would also combat dullness, and would make her more sociable. It could also be that she is in a state where she does not absorb silicic acid. In this case, an experiment should be made with a very highly potentized phosphoric acid salt, with phosphoric acid potassium. One would have to bring the matter to effectiveness again.

On further question:

The silicic acid to about the sixth decimal place. But really use quartz for internal administration, and equisetum for baths.

Question about a neurasthenic patient. The matter responded very well to formic acid injections, but came back this year and did not go away despite formic acid injections. Eventually, I went down the wrong track by taking out an ingrown toenail, after which the matter got even worse. I tried formic acid again, reinforced with silicon; but I couldn't get through. The pain became unbearable, radiating from the foot to the calf. It was a variety of pains, sometimes rhythmic. I had to give him morphine injections, which I had to increase a lot; I barely touched him to keep the pain within tolerable levels. He couldn't sleep anymore. He would sit holding his foot, complaining of terrible pain; I tried alternating foot baths. The foot had to be amputated halfway up the calf. I ask because unfortunately the process also wants to appear on the other leg. What can be done?

In such a case, it is important to determine what the primary cause is.

He traces it back to his time in the military, when he usually didn't have very good shoes. He is 47 years old and often had to lie in the wet.

But could the pain have occurred first not in the leg but perhaps in the abdomen? It is quite possible that the whole case originates from a deformation at some point in the intestine, that he received a splinter, fell off the horse, pushed himself up, and that this caused an intestinal deformation. This intestinal deformation has the peculiarity of migrating downward and causing such conditions as you have described in the legs, first in one, but then jumping over to the other. Usually this ends in bone tuberculosis. But if the case is as likely as it is, you can achieve something with the remedy that works against the deformation: tobacco. In such a case with tobacco enemas (see note 5. 326).

He smokes quite a lot.

That has nothing to do with it. Tobacco smoke does not affect the organism in the same way as when you use tobacco by injection or as enemas. You only need very diluted enemas if you use them. It has a completely different effect on the organism. When smoking, the tobacco does not have time to exert its re-deforming effect.

A boy who is now eleven years old learned to walk when he was one, and could also speak a little. When he was two years old, he was standing a little too close during a shooting exercise with cannons. It is said that he has been deaf and dumb ever since. His speech is an incomprehensible babble, and he hears absolutely nothing. Is there anything that can be done? He can walk; he even looks very intelligent.

Otherwise, there are no disorders except for not hearing and speaking? What happens if you somehow make an impression on the eye?

Then he reacts just like a normal person; only in the ear and in speaking is there a change.

How was the second teething?

Quite normal at seven and a half.

One would have to assume that in some way the vitality of the auditory nerve has been broken. Now, after all, we have had quite considerable success with edelweiss, especially in the 10th decimal; or first in the 6th, then in the 10th, to revive the auditory nerve. There have been failures, but basically these have been observed in fairly old people; not really in younger people. I do think you can try this. It is indeed extremely difficult to treat these devitalized nerves; but one can certainly be successful with edelweiss under certain circumstances.

During the war, a female patient had suffered some kind of shock. She believed that her fiancé was dead. She was alone at home and had no one to talk to about it. Since then, she has become epileptic. The attacks always occur before her period. The attacks occur with tongue biting and so on, very typical. As soon as the period begins, it is over. She is in an institution for epileptics, even though the seizures only occur before her period.

How is she treated?

(Answer missing)

In such a case, you start with belladonna. If that doesn't help, you move on to reindeer moss in 6 decimal, and finally you administer fly agaric. It is very difficult to say anything specific in this case without seeing the patient. There could be any number of underlying causes.

A fifty-year-old man had a very hard time in his earlier years. For eleven years he had rheumatoid arthritis, which killed a brother of his. Now there is still a change in the left knee. Until two years ago, he had episodes of blood rushing to his head. Two years ago, a clear change occurred. He gained weight, and the rush of blood to the head disappeared. But what occurred was what he briefly describes as asthma. He has breathing difficulties, he has to gasp for breath when he talks. I have the impression that the problem is now in the bronchial tubes.

At 48 years old. Just as the rush used to be to the head, now it's to the chest. Now it happens that the man sometimes turns a little blue; it just needs to be quiet for him to turn a little blue.

It's possible.

It is very likely that this man is able to convert too much of the oxygen he has taken in into carbonic acid, so that he always has too much carbonic acid in his blood. You can test whether the man does not feel relieved when given air with more oxygen. If that is the case, then it is quite clear. Then the man produces too much carbonic acid, and it is necessary to give this man - what is he? —

• engineer —

to add silicon in the first decimal place, i.e. five percent, and he should be encouraged to do so, if he has taken it, for about half an hour after taking the silicon, to make some kind of mental effort. Then he can get better. He then manages to reduce the excessive carbonic acid production capacity.

We must now conclude, and continue tomorrow in the same vein.

I don't find these types of questions fruitful. The individual gets a lot out of them, but the others don't get much out of them. One should ask more general questions, something more interesting. Tomorrow it should be done a little differently. Don't you agree, Doctor?

I am prepared to answer anything that is asked. You can give a whole lecture on each question. I could have talked about the subject until now, when the first one asked; but then only one person would have had their turn. I think it was quite good to hear something varied. It's not important that we are satisfied, but that the audience is.

I think that something is being done here, as in the way clinics are held at the university, because the way of asking the question does not allow for the other question of how one can develop understanding within oneself.

That would come immediately if a question were asked about it. So tomorrow, ask a question about it, then it can come about. I don't think it's completely useless to go into this question. But other answers come up. We just evaluate them in such a way that the audience can be satisfied.

What about deepening the diagnosis? We can think about a patient in many ways. A lot of questions arise, and one often faces the difficulty of deciding what to do. Intellectually you cannot; you have to make a volitional decision. I would like to ask: Is it not possible to push back this intellectual volitional impulse at that moment, so that what you have to do comes to you? Perhaps you could say something about that?

You mean how one can make the diagnosis more transparent?

In treatment, you are faced with various possibilities. You can't decide whether to use herbal or mineral remedies; you have to decide on something. You should be able to approach the patient from deeper grounds and to merge all these ideas together so that you arrive at knowing that this is the right thing to do.

We will make something up tomorrow and then develop an idealized diagnosis.