Anthroposophical Medical Theory and Human Knowledge

GA 319 — 15 November 1923, The Hague

Fifth Lecture

Above all, I thank Dr. Zeylmans and all of you for giving me the opportunity to express some thoughts here about the – if I may say so – medical consequences of the anthroposophical method of research. Of course, it will only be possible to give a few brief hints in the two short hours, and given the deviation of the point of view that I will have to choose from the one in use today, it will also be particularly difficult in the two short hours to get beyond the fact that much of what needs to be said, from today's point of view – from the point of view that one is used to – may seem quite paradoxical, perhaps more than paradoxical. But those present will know how, in the course of the historical development of mankind, we have learned to rethink many things; and so, at least to begin with, there will also be a certain tolerance for the fact that a point of view that arises out of genuine, conscientious research must appear paradoxical.

But the first thing I would like to say in the way of an introduction is that the medical consequences of the anthroposophical research method are not about opposing anything that would have to be absolutely “new” to what today's conscientious medicine, built on the natural science that has become customary for centuries, has to say. The research method I am talking about does not want to overthrow, but rather the opposite: by looking at the various things that have emerged from natural science for medicine in recent times from conscientious sensory-empirical methods, it has to take on board the fact that modern medicine points everywhere to an area that is still difficult for it to enter, for the reason that, yes, because the research methods are basically so conscientious has arisen, that modern medicine refers everywhere to an area that is still difficult for it to enter, for the reason that, yes, because the research methods are basically so conscientious, so exact, so exact in relation to the sensory-empirical methods that we are all familiar with. But precisely because of what natural science has become great, because of what has enabled it to provide such a meaningful basis for medicine, precisely because of this, certain paths to knowledge of the human being and thus to healing have been made impossible. And so allow me to start today by mentioning some principles and then to go into the peculiarity of some of our remedies, which are typical, which are characteristic, tomorrow.

We did not choose this path from the outset, saying to ourselves: Anthroposophy must know everything, so it must also have something to say about medicine. That is the agitator's method. But we, on truly anthroposophical ground, want to take the standpoint of genuine scientific knowledge, at least in our fundamentals. And so it has come about that this medical movement has arisen within the overall anthroposophical movement, because doctors, especially doctors in Germany, but basically doctors in all countries, have found that current science and medicine raise questions that cannot be answered with the methods in use today, at least not from diagnosis, from pathology, to rational therapy. Then these doctors came and asked whether anthroposophy, with its special kind of knowledge of the human being, might have something to say about medicine, about a knowledge of the human being that can go somewhat deeper into the human being than one is able to do with the methods currently in use. And so, I would say, the challenge, especially from those medical doctors who were dissatisfied or who had fallen into a certain skepticism as a result of their studies and practice, led to the development of what I will be talking to you about today and tomorrow. From the outset, we did not take the view that we could now introduce all kinds of amateurish ideas into a conscientiously conducted field of research that had been put into practice. And when the founding of Kommender Tag in Stuttgart and Futurum in Switzerland suggested that the field of medicine should now also be cultivated, it came about that I said: Certainly, what Anthroposophy has to give can throw light on the preparation of remedies, but one should not simply start from preparing remedies, but everything that is done in this direction should be in the strictest connection with medicine, with real practice. And so our institutes came into being, which are indeed institutes for preparing remedies using the methods I will talk about; but these institutes are connected to clinical institutions, and in the course of time I will often refer to that clinical institute which has now become exemplary in the first place: that of Dr. Wegman in Arlesheim, which is directly connected with the Goetheanum, our anthroposophical university in Switzerland. There it is indeed possible, through constant contact with the sick, to enter into a living connection with regard to therapy, which, through the anthroposophical method of research, is to be cultivated as the great question of our time.

But we have not yet been satisfied with that either. We have affiliated actual research institutes to these institutes. And we have affiliated a biological institute and physical institutes, but I will not speak of them for the time being, as they are still in the early stages of their work. At the Biological Research Institute – which I want to mention so that you can see that we want to work with the same exactitude that is otherwise required – we have already recorded two findings. Please don't take it as silly vanity of mine when I express my conviction – oh no, it's important to honestly express what one can be convinced of based on the available results – when I say: Despite some individual methodological objections that one could still make, these two results are such that they can point the way to how we can strive for the same exactitude that is otherwise striven for today in the scientific basis of medicine.

The first work to come out of our research institute is a work on the function of the spleen, and since I can only give you two lectures, only suggestions, you will forgive me if I can only point out some of them. In the course of anthroposophical research work, the function of the spleen has become particularly interesting to me, and I will have to speak about what can be called the spiritual scientific method. Through these methods, it has become clear to me how special the spleen function is in the human organism as a whole, which, as you know, is a kind of crux for anthropology. The human being - I can only hint at this now - carries within him the most diverse processes, including those that require rhythm. These processes include not only breathing and blood circulation, but also rhythms of a larger scale, for example, the rhythm of digestion. Now, the rhythm of digestion is something that is demanded by human nature itself, but which, in the way it is demanded by it, can never be maintained. According to the demands of his organism, man should actually eat and drink with an enormous rhythmic regularity. He cannot do this, because even if he organized the times for his meals with great pedantry, this would not yet result in the rhythmicity demanded by the organism actually being able to be maintained. For one day one eats this, the next day something else, and one would have to proceed with an almost immeasurable knowledge of the details if one were to do all this. Breathing and blood circulation have it easier, but the rhythm of digestion is, because we are dependent on our contact with the outside world, something that cannot really be met. Now the functions of the spleen are designed to compensate for and correct those irregularities that necessarily occur in the digestive rhythm, by combining these spleen functions with the entire digestive function in the broadest sense. That is what I realized at the time. Now, at our Biological Research Institute, through methods that are as exact as the clinical methods of today, even if some objections can be raised with regard to the details, this has been fully empirically confirmed by the work on spleen function. It is a work that one would like to believe, if it had been done in an ordinary clinic, would have made a great impression in the field of medical thinking. That this has not happened – and this is not a case of silly vanity, I assure you – and that this work, carried out with such enormous dedication by Dr. Kolisko, is still relatively unknown today, is solely due to the fact that it was created on anthroposophical ground.

The second work is such that a scientific-medical “belief” has been made to the extent that it can become an exact science.

You will not assume that I want to somehow advocate here for the much-disputed area of homeopathy in its relation to allopathy, it does not occur to me, because I know how much lay and dilettantish there is in ordinary homeopathic thinking. But it cannot be denied that in highly diluted substances, even in the external physical sphere, the most extensive effects may be present. Therefore, it cannot be assumed from the outset that substances in high dilution cannot have effects after all. Just think of the numerous effects that are exerted when inhaling any substances that are present in an extremely fine distribution. We often do not consider that when we have people sit in a bath, it is much more important that they inhale what evaporates, whereby certain substances are in a very strong dilution, that this is much more important than what the bath does externally. But all of this was previously a kind of scientific belief. We have now actually tried to scientifically substantiate this belief – within the limits, of course, in which it is justified; the results must not, of course, become a panacea – by producing dilutions in a ratio of up to one part in a trillion, so that we can really say: it is no longer a matter of the ordinary material effect coming to light, but of the function that lives in the materials, which passes into the medium. In this case, we are dealing with nothing other than the functional form. We have, however, managed to prove that the diluted entities develop rhythmic effects that are astonishing. We used the growth of seeds for this purpose. We were precise and careful in our selection of seeds. We germinated the seeds in metal solutions, using the metal compound in the appropriate dilution, and we were really able to prove how the metal solutions, diluted one to ten, one to twenty, one to fifty, one to one hundred, one to five hundred and so on, affect the growth forces of the plants. The resulting curves are interesting and show a great deal of regularity, so that we can say: At a certain dilution, the vitalizing force is still influenced in a certain way; if you continue to dilute, this influence decreases. If you go further, the greater dilution then has a greater influence on the vitalizing force. This results in a descending and an ascending curve, which then express the effects of highly diluted entities that can be precisely justified. And so the small part, the excerpt of what – I say explicitly – is misused by homeopathy, has been elevated to the rank of an exact field of research. I do not say this in order to attach greater importance to these results in the first place; I say it only to show that we are making every effort not to work in a dilettantish, amateurish way outside of science, but to place ourselves squarely on the ground of current research methods in use in science. But from there we must then go further.

It is historically understandable that, given the tremendous successes that have emerged in the last few centuries, at least in the natural sciences, in the 19th century, humanity was, so to speak, hypnotized by what sensual-physical observation and exact experimentation could yield. But as far as knowledge of the human being is concerned, and even in terms of ordinary physical knowledge of the human being, it is not possible to go so far with these research methods that an inner understanding of the nature of the human organization emerges. And this is simply because, on the one hand, great and tremendous progress is being made in our knowledge of the human physical organization, but, on the other hand, precisely because of the exact and fruitful nature of these research methods, a whole part of the human being, which is just as real as the physical human being, is simply being excluded. The greatness of scientific research can also be seen from the fact that it has thrown out of our knowledge of man with tremendous energy that which is the spiritual-soul man, who - as we shall see - must be understood in the medical sense no less as a reality in practice than the physical man. To do this, it is necessary for me to first tell you a few basic principles about the anthroposophical research method in general, especially insofar as it leads to knowledge of the human being.

The fact is that today, in all our research, we simply stop at how we have become in our soul constitution, which also includes our cognitive ability, through what culture has already brought up as our school education, as education within the conventional sciences. That is where we stop. We do not say to ourselves: as a two- or three-year-old child, we still look quite unlike our soul mood and constitution in later life. We develop; we become quite different in the course of, say, fifteen years of our human youth. In our eighteenth or nineteenth year, we have abilities that we do not have as a two- or three-year-old child, let alone earlier; these develop from within us. Why should it not be possible to raise the question: Is it not possible for an adult to remain relatively capable of development? Is it possible to arbitrarily, so to speak, complete this development of the soul life? Of course, at first it is a question of inner trial. But anyone who tries, who really tries to go beyond what is today considered the norm of human soul development, to attain other soul abilities, can do it, will succeed! More details about this can be found in my books “How to Know Higher Worlds”, “Occult Science: An Outline” and others. In principle, I will only hint at this, that we are able to develop further what we otherwise have as thinking, what we know from its application not only in ordinary life but also in current science when we experiment and interpret observations. When this is said, people usually start saying: Yes, now he is coming up with a “mystical development.” But if you want to contemptuously point to the mystical development — if you want to use the word — that I am talking about here, then you should also contemptuously point to mathematics and geometry. The essence of mathematics and geometry is this: that one moves in full deliberation from one position to another, that there is absolutely nothing of the subconscious, in which suggestive can play a role. This deliberation, this full awareness, must follow us everywhere in the object, in mathematics and geometry. The same thing that we do inwardly with the object, when we proceed exactly, can be applied to the development of our own soul. Not in that mystical conspiracy, with which one often speaks about mysticism, but in full clarity, the soul can be further developed in relation to its ability to think, but not by brooding within itself, but by proceeding from quite definite, clearly comprehended ideas and from there — just as it happens in mathematics for the object — now taking in nothing but that by which one can pass with full composure from one content of consciousness to another. If this is applied as a truly inwardly exact method of developing the soul for a sufficiently long time — it takes longer for some, shorter for others — then one does indeed gradually come to grasp thinking, not as it is otherwise passive, but in its activity; so that one, while otherwise passively following with one's thoughts what one can observe, comes to experience an inner activity.

This inner activity of thinking gives the first real insight into what is supersensible in man, the first stage. I would like to say: if one approaches man from the outside – and one can chart the whole blood dynamics – then in the blood dynamics one has, so to speak, a picture of man, of a part of man, seen from the outside. But by proceeding as I have indicated with regard to thinking, one comes to experience oneself inwardly filled with a second human being, with the human being who is independent of the physical organism.

Anyone who thinks that something suggestive is occurring is ignoring the fact that the methods I am referring to here are absolutely exact methods, in which everything is experienced in full composure; so that one can arrive at precisely what might be even the slightest suggestion in the depths of the soul and reject it. The path one follows with this method is exactly the opposite of that which can introduce anything suggestive or autosuggestive into consciousness. But one comes to the following:

If one observes the gradual development of the child with the precise observation that one acquires through such a development of thought, then a significant difference arises between the whole constitution of the child up to about the change of teeth, up to the seventh or eighth year, and after that. The difference that exists between the earlier and later stages is such that one must first acquire the ability to pay attention to it. Otherwise one overlooks it, does not pay attention to it, but one must start precisely there, I would say, with the courage to approach the human being and such observations really as precisely as one has otherwise become accustomed to in physics in the course of more recent research. In physics we speak of latent warmth and of warmth that actually occurs. We speak of the fact that through some process a state of warmth that would otherwise remain latent in some substance, that is, within the substance, can come out. Whatever external physical science has arrived at, we must also arrive at. We must be able to have the courage to do this, the courage with regard to the development of the human soul, for example. And if one has this courage to do research, the following emerges: one sees — one only has to understand how to focus one's attention on it — how, in the case of a child who has changed teeth, inner soul forces arise that were not there before. Not even education has progressed so far as to be able to say anything about this, because it is not observed precisely, because the curves do not rise steeply and fall deeply, but because it is a matter of subtleties and these subtleties must be observed with a different, spiritual eye; that is why little attention is paid to them today. But for those who acquire the ability to conduct spiritual research, it turns out that everything we call the ability to remember, for example, is radically changed when the teeth change. The ability to remember is one that, with a certain elementary power, still allows the organism to shoot out what the child presents in their memory. That special kind of memory experience, where one goes back and has the feeling that one is going back to the experience, that only occurs with the change of teeth.

So countless things in the mental experience only occur with the change of teeth. They are then there; they did not reveal themselves before in the child's nature. Where were they? They were in the child's nature, just as latent warmth is in a substance; and those organic processes that have only their external symptom in the change of teeth have brought out what was previously in the organism and working on it, just as some physical process brings out the latent warmth from a substance. Today, psychology speaks of psychophysical parallelism and the like; it cannot come to the conclusion that there may be a connection between what we have in psychology today: the soul, thought of in a completely abstract way, and what comes to light anatomically and physiologically, because the two things are such that, if you look at them in such an abstract way, you cannot find a bridge from one to the other.

But the human being is, after all, a developing being. If we look at what is present in the soul after the change of teeth, what has emerged in the soul, we can say: the same forces that now confront us as the metamorphosed thinking in the soul were previously organic forces, acting as forces for the growth of organs in the child; so that here we have an empirical relationship between the life of soul and the life of body, which one must seek only at the right time in human development.

If we now carry out the mental exercises I have mentioned, we come once more to something similar in this thinking, something that is as strong and active as the thinking still in the organism. That is the second person that one discovers in oneself: it is on a higher level than the ordinary, merely passive thinking, but what we have as a second, etheric body - I ask you not to be offended by the term - thoroughly organized. So it is not a matter of the anthroposophical research method that one now speaks of an imagined etheric body, but that one can in fact - I can only give hints here - empirically show how what one finds through the special methods of knowledge is really active in human nature; because when we look at a child, what we later find in thought is at work. If I want to understand the forces of growth in the child, if I want to know how there is something particularly vitalizing in it, then I have to do it in what I call imaginative knowledge, because that makes it an inner content of consciousness. If, for example, the forces that are growth forces in the child later pass over into the life of the soul, but then work passively, and if there are healing powers in these growth forces, then I can only explore these healing powers if I now, in turn, come to look at and inwardly experience what the vitalizing forces are, using the actual spiritual scientific method. This makes it possible to see in these things not mere fantasy but something that is active in the human organism, and thus to make outer anthropology a real anthroposophy through inner empiricism.

And just as one finds this second human being through a special training of thinking, so, if one goes further, within these two humans, the physical and the etheric, a third can still be found. But do not be put off – because terminology is needed everywhere – if I call it the astral human being, anthroposophy already indicates the reasons for this. I will only hint at the constitution of man himself.

When one has come so far as to really experience this second, etheric man inwardly independent of the physical man, then one has a content of consciousness. With reference to this, I can say: One feels almost as secure in it as one feels in one's physical body in normal waking consciousness. One already feels this second man. Therefore, the next step, which must follow, is much more difficult inner work: to find out what I have described as the etheric human being. Because you only get the rest by gaining the strength to sucker out this etheric human being. This must now be done very consciously, so that you, as it were, drive out again after driving in. Generally speaking, the preliminary exercise for this is not easy. Ideas that have stuck with you for a long time, that were so present that they occupied your entire consciousness – but again in full consciousness, so that there is nothing suggestive about them – are difficult to switch off, because they work in consciousness with much stronger force than ideas that are fleetingly established in everyday life and from ordinary observation. But once one has practiced freeing one's consciousness in general, in a more conscious way, from whatever may be present in it, then one can also learn to use suggestion to make this figment of one's own imagination disappear and to create an empty consciousness. This consciousness is then exactly in the state in which man would be if, after entering the ordinary dreamless sleep, he were suddenly to perceive around him a different world, if he were to wake up not in the body but outside the body, and also not in the physical world but in a spiritual world.

This awakening can be brought about by doing what I have just described: after first energizing the consciousness in the strongest possible way, so that it acquires an etheric content, one then empties it again, has the empty consciousness, the mere awakening, without any of the content one otherwise has in life or in science. To produce empty consciousness – you know how difficult that is in ordinary life, because when you let the sensations of the senses disappear in ordinary life, the person simply falls asleep. But in this way, as I have described it, you come to the empty consciousness that merely watches, but it does not remain so for long. Then the spiritual world enters, above all a third human being, a person who is actually now only an inner function, only inner mobility and activity. The second, etheric human being, is the vitalizing one, the third, astral human being, is mobility, activity.

Then there is a fourth human being that makes it possible for us to be human in the fullest sense of the word. Perhaps I will have the opportunity to elaborate on this in the course of the lectures; for now I will only hint that this is the actual I-human being, because what I have described so far is also possessed by the animal: physical body, etheric body and astral body. But the human being also has the possibility of experiencing this combination of his limbs within himself, not in the abstract but in the concrete. If the human being not only produces empty consciousness, thereby grasping the spiritual world, but if he now goes further and energizes the experience of the spiritual world even more, then he comes up to the full conception of the I.

In this way, one can form a picture of what gradually becomes the content of the human being through anthroposophically exact methods. This content of the human being is now truly there. Just as warmth, which was first latent and then brought up and became real warmth, manifests itself in its physical effects, so that which is etheric body, astral body and I definitely manifests itself in the human being. And we only understand the human being if we can truly consider this interaction of the four members of his being.

Let us look at a single aspect. Let us look at a single aspect so that we can form an idea of how these things can interact, for example the kidneys and kidney function in humans. In every single aspect of the human being, the four aspects of human nature interact to a greater or lesser extent. When we study kidney function, what we can observe in the corpse or otherwise is only the sum of physical effects. However, this sum of physical effects is energized by what I initially called the etheric body, that is, by that part of the etheric body that contains the vital functions for the kidney in particular. But this is again permeated by the astral body, and it is only in the interaction of these members of human nature that we can inwardly comprehend the human being, whether in the case of a single organ or a system of organs. Now let us take the case of detecting some kind of irregularity in kidney function. I need only refer to this in general terms, since you are a professional in this field. And anyone who sees through the whole thing as I have indicated will see that in some way the physical kidney function and the etheric kidney function oppose the astral kidney function. So that is a typical case. One can come to the conclusion that the physical and etheric kidney organization offer resistance to the astral kidney function — which one only gets a view of when one has established empty consciousness. But now it is like this: when a living organ, the kidney, offers resistance through its physical and etheric organization to the astral, then, because otherwise the organ would atrophy, the astral organization must intervene more thoroughly more energetically; and therefore, in special cases, of course (I always relate to specific cases), we have a particular concentration of the part of the astral organization that corresponds to the kidney on the kidney activity. In other words, the astral kidney function becomes much stronger in itself than it is allowed to be called upon to be according to the whole constitution of the human being; so that the one who sees through the kidney function in this way has the picture: Here the astral body is performing work in the kidneys that it withdraws from the totality of the human being in which it must be active; it develops a process in the kidneys that should not actually be there. Due to the particular abnormal developmental aspects in the physical and etheric kidneys, the astral kidneys are overburdened.

Now it is a matter of pushing the diagnosis to this point. It is known that the astral part of the kidney now has something to do that it does not actually have to do in the normal functioning of the organism; it performs something that it should not actually perform, but which the kidney, as it is in its diseased, pathological state, or as the etheric kidney, now demands of this astral part. This leads to the first part, to the very first link in a view of the nature of the patient. The disease processes should actually be the greatest mystery for the thinking person, because they are, after all, natural processes. But the normal processes are also natural processes. How do these abnormal processes, these disease processes, come to be in the midst of the normal processes? As long as one regards the human being only as an equally valuable tissue of physical substances and functions, one does not actually arrive at a possible distinction between what is physiological and what is pathological; but one does arrive at it when one knows that the kidney can undergo a metamorphosis in which it develops physical processes that the normal kidney does not develop because in the normal kidney there is a right harmony between the physical, etheric and astral kidneys. This is what one first sees.

The question now is: how can this disease process, which must simply be explained in terms of an excessive demand on precisely a supersensible part of human nature, possibly be eliminated? How can we get the astral person to function normally again?

In these discussions, I always want to look at something very specific and individual. I do not want to talk about a severe kidney disease, because the principle of the matter can also become clear to us in the case of a mild kidney disease. But just so that I can indicate how to deal with such a kidney, I would like to start from a very specific example.

What we know is, first of all, that we must now free the astral body from its work on the kidney, which is deformed in the broadest sense. There is a process going on there that the human astral body should not be doing; we have to get it out of the abnormally running process of the kidney.

If we now gain the kind of knowledge that first looks at the human being and then at the world, the following emerges with the method I have described. We turn our gaze from the human being to the outer nature. We come to study the special nature of Equisetum arvense. If we study this horsetail, not so much emphasizing the individual substances it consists of, but rather looking at the process that lives in it, then we come to the following: Today it is common, because materialistic thinking has taken hold of everything, that we state for everything organic: it consists of so much protein, fat and carbohydrates and so on. We look everywhere for what the external chemistry can indicate as the individual components of a substance, and in this way we arrive at the elements, as they were called; but that is not what is of primary importance in what I have in mind here. What interests us most about equisetum is that when we analyze it, that is, when we break down its functions, we find that silicic acid is the main constituent among the substances that remain. It must therefore be present in such a strong way that it predominates, still exerting its silicic acid function in equisetum. In analyzing, we do not recognize the substance as such, but we do recognize what significance the substance has. And that must also be recognized.

Equisetum is a plant; in it we do not find an astral body, but we do find a physical body and an etheric body. We study Equisetum arvense and find that silicic acid plays a particularly important role. Of course, there are other plants that contain silicic acid. We also find that certain sulphuric acid salts play a role and finally we find that the most important constituents that still assert their nature, their essence, in Equisetum, are silicic acid — but not the “material”, but the silicic acid function — and the sulphur function. And now we find something very remarkable. If we are able to see through the special kind of connection with the spiritually developed powers, what is around the sulfuric acid salts in connection with the silicic acid, SiO2, we find that there is there is a process, a functional connection that we can now transpose into the human organism, either orally or – in the case of other processes we do not have to choose the oral route – through a bath or by injection. The significance of these individual methods will be discussed later. But if we introduce the equisetum into the human organism in a certain way – but it is better not to use equisetum as such now, and that is the basis of the essential way we prepare our remedies, because although the effects are there, visually, they are not as permanent – if we now study the functional relationship between silica and sulfur and then try to imitate it in the preparation, we have the opportunity, by implementing what can be studied in the case of Equisetum in the more or less inorganic preparation, to develop stronger effects on the human organism than those achieved by using the mere plant as a tea or the like. This is particularly important for the production of our remedies.

If I now introduce into the human organism the functional relationship between sulphur and silicic acid in the right way, then simply through the special quality of this functional relationship the following happens: the process that the human astral body has to carry out while the disease is present is now taken from the kidney. If I introduce into the kidney the functioning of sulphur and silicic acid in Equisetum arvense, I relieve the human astral body of what would otherwise have to be done by the deformed kidney (deformed in the widest sense); I let the disease process, so to speak, be done by something that I have introduced into the body.

This is the beginning of every healing process. You have to know the disease process. You first have to have a rational pathology, you have to know the disease process and you have to research where in nature something can be found that can exactly reproduce this disease process. For one must not believe that one can always fight the disease process everywhere in a disease, but one must actually catch it. What the disease process is, must be caught by something that is known in its dynamics, as here with Equisetum sulfur and silicic acid. Then one gets out that which, as in this case of kidney disease, used to function as the astral body. And by getting this out, one must also ensure that the person is strengthened internally through diet and so on, so that they can apply all their inner strength more energetically than usual. That is, one must devote some energy to the entire astral body. Then one gets the astral body, which has now been released in its entirety in this way and in the corresponding case, to extinguish the disease by means of the healthy part of the astral body, if one first has the excessive activity of the astral body take over from an external function.

This is how one arrives at a rational concept of healing. As a rule, this healing always consists in intercepting the disease process by means of an inserted process from outside and then, by energizing, inducing what is already in the person to overcome the disease process, while one cannot do this as long as — as in this case — the astral body has to turn its activity one-sidedly towards the kidney, which is different from how it should be. What I have just described is the case, or can be the case, with all those disease processes that are based on organ irregularities that - as I would like to call it - have a centrifugal effect, an inward centrifugal effect. The kidney is a secretory organ that first secretes inwards, even if the excretion goes outwards, it secretes inwards. And if you take my point of view, pathological processes must be understood in such a way that the cure consists in inducing a centrifugal process in the kidneys by introducing Equisetum arvense, a process that radiates out from the kidneys.

There are other processes that show us the polar opposite of what I have just mentioned. And here I do not wish to mention a serious illness, but rather, to discuss the principle, something that, although it only attracts more or less distant attention compared to the actual deeper illnesses of the human being, is, above all, extremely unpleasant for the patient: that is hay fever, hay fever catarrh. If we want to combat this, we must bear in mind that we are dealing with a very serious constitutional disorder. Ultimately, however, it can be traced back to a weakening of the astral body with its powers, this third, internally mobile human being, which occurs peripherally in the human being. We can trace hay fever back to early childhood, where we have general illnesses that we usually do not pay much attention to, which then specialize into what occurs later in life as hay fever. And if we know that this hay fever is based on the astral body weakening in relation to certain functions, not reaching the physical body and etheric body, then it must be our primary concern to energize this astral body inwardly, to lead it back to its proper functions, so that when we have to deal with more outward-directed centrifugal effects in the pathological, we now counteract them with something else. In the example of kidney disease, we have, as it were, intercepted the disease; we have considered the astral body in such a way that, when it is freed from its abnormal work, we only need to energize it, to strengthen it; then, when we relieve it of what it had to do with the diseased kidney, it will already be working in the direction of health. This is not the case with processes such as hay fever. In such cases we must not try to stop the disease process; instead, we must set in motion a process that is the exact opposite of the disease process. It has been found that we can stimulate the astral body to perform a function that it can no longer perform because it no longer has access to the physical and etheric bodies. This can be done by using certain fruit juices that which have skins, and which actually show centripetal effects within the fruit, and when we prepare the corresponding preparation from these fruit juices, as an ointment for milder cases and as an injection for more severe cases. We drive it back to the physical body and ether body, and in this respect, we can indeed show some very nice successes. Dr. Wegman has injected numerous patients with our hay fever remedy and has had the most wonderful successes in this area. It is entirely possible, from this way of thinking, to bring about a meeting between the astral body, which has become sluggish, and to energize it, so that one can see in this process, which one causes with the injection – these processes then have a certain affinity to particular organs; so if we use a particular fruit juice, it has a particular affinity to particular organs; one then one has to find out the particular points and know the currents in which the affinities express themselves – one can see how those physical functions that occur through that which has become sluggish and inert in the astral body, which would not occur if they were held by the astral body, how these functions really cease to occur when we now intercept the astral body itself. Before, we intercepted the disease process; now we intercept the process in the particular area on which we want to act. Thus, with regard to the preparations we use, we have to distinguish between processes that work more centrifugally, as I described in the case of the kidney process, and healing processes that work more centripetally, as for example in the case of the hay fever remedy.

When you consider these things, you might think at first that they are imaginary. Most people in the present day also believe that they are imagined. That is why I attach great importance to the fact that we not only produce such remedies, but that our institutes work in line with this medical way of thinking. Now, when examining these remedies, one is in a different situation than when trying out remedies in a purely empirical way. In the latter case, one is mainly dependent on statistics, which tell us: if the number of cases in which a remedy has helped is very large in relation to those in which it has not helped, then statistics will help us. But if we start from a method such as I have described, we see to a certain extent from our understanding of the disease process what must occur in a particular healing process. Pathology and therapy become one! Because the thing is this: if I recognize through diagnosis what is going on in the diseased kidney, then it is the same process, only on a different level, that I have to apply in therapy: I have to intercept the process; I have to introduce something into the human organism through the combination of sulfur and silicic acid so that I myself produce what presents itself to me as a pathological process. I heal by developing a therapy that is an imitation of the disease process at a different level, and that must be carried out by the astral body. For example, if I introduce the function of equisetum into the human organism, I leave it in the etheric body, and I relieve the astral body of its work on the diseased kidney.

In this way what is otherwise juxtaposed and can only be found together by pure empiricism – pathology and therapy, is transformed into an absolute unity. If we recognize the nature of the disease process in this way, we must find in the outer nature how, for example, a particular kidney process is imitated in Equisetum arvense; or if we recognize that the bile secretion process in the liver is really its inner nature in certain forms of the disease, we find this form of disease of the gall secretion process, for example, in Cichorium intybus, then we are able, through the way in which the function proceeds in Cichorium intybus, to relieve the astral body of the liver in the gall secretion process of what it would otherwise have to do. We thus advance in healing in such a way that pathology itself is actually nothing other than therapy. This is how therapy becomes a truly rational science. — If, for example, we are familiar with the wonderful connection that exists between iron and certain mucilaginous plant components and salts of Anisum vulgare, we can see how there is something functional in this aniseed, particularly in the seeds of Anisum [Pimpinella anisum], which is one with certain hyperinflammatory blood disease processes. We can relieve the blood of these disease processes by using a preparation that is modeled on the connection between certain plant mucilages and the iron in aniseed. In this way, we not only free the astral body, but, when it comes to blood diseases, the ego organization is also involved.

In this way, we come to turn our gaze to the whole of nature. What is beautiful nature outside is actually nothing but an imitation of disease processes. In the human being, these are disease processes on the inside, while outside it is the wonderfully beautiful nature. But one must understand the connection and know how to bring disease functions into the human being from the wide field of natural processes and thereby relieve the supersensible members of human nature of disease processes. Now one no longer has to rely on statistics! For if one recognizes such a connection by inner insight, and observes how the effects must occur, then it is the same as in a physical experiment carried out correctly in an exact scientific way. There one does not proceed according to statistics either, but one knows, for example from Mariotte-Gay-Lussac's law, that this is an exactly executed experiment which, if it is carried out exactly, is also conclusive. With human beings it is not as simple as with a physical experiment, but it is actually the same if one can see through the process of the illness and say: this or that must work, and then see step by step how it works. What is necessary – and this is precisely what is available to such a high degree in the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute of Dr. Wegman in Arlesheim – is that one really banishes all medical skepticism; because that is actually what continually puts the strongest obstacles in one's way. What Dr. Wegman has is the courage to heal. The courage to heal is part of everything! Then you also come to see the disease process and start to counter it, so to speak, intercepting it. But then it becomes particularly important to see how it all actually happens, if you don't want to be sloppy; but to follow the healing process step by step. And then you also know where something is not in order; then you have to go back and investigate where you have overlooked something. But if you then have the courage to heal in every single case and actually do not presuppose anything else, do not want anything other than healing, than courageously healing the disease processes, then you have that, from which you can feel most strongest stimulus, as a scientific basis for medicine that does not merely want to work out rational therapy from an exact pathology as a consequence, but which already has the healing process in the diagnosis. Then one cannot speak about the disease process other than that one already has the therapy at the same time as the diagnosis. One then describes the kidney disease in such a way that the description is very similar to what happens in Equisetum arvense: one transfers what one sees in the kidney to an external natural process; so that one describes in such a way in the diagnosis that the diagnosis contains the healing process.