Anthroposophical Medical Theory and Human Knowledge

GA 319 — 16 November 1923, The Hague

Sixth Lecture

Allow me to expand on some of the things I mentioned yesterday. What I will say today can, of course, provide no more than a few pointers and suggestions; while, of course, a wealth of evidence could be provided to support everything that needs to be said from the medical point of view, from the perspective that I hinted at yesterday, which of course cannot be discussed today – and in such a short time anyway.

I already indicated yesterday that through the inner training of the soul, one can actually come to distinguish in the human being the actual physical body, then what I called yesterday – as I said, one must have terminology, and one does not need to bother about it — what I called yesterday the etheric body, which is the first supersensible link in human nature; that one then has to distinguish the astral body, which I also discussed yesterday in terms of its effect on kidney function, and finally the ego organization in the human being. When we speak of a person in a healthy or diseased state, it is always necessary to bear in mind that these four aspects of the human being have distinctly different functions that interact and exert mutual effects on one another in both healthy and diseased states. And only when one is able to visualize the unity of the human being from this confluence of four, I might say separate, levels of function, is one also able to gain a true conception of the healthy or the sick human being. I already mentioned yesterday: disease processes are, after all, natural processes. And with unbiased observation, one cannot really find a boundary between the so-called normal, healthy processes of the human organism and the diseased processes if one does not know this structure of human nature and thus knows: if any of these members interferes with the entire human unit more than it should interfere, then this is precisely how the abnormal, diseased functioning of the human being arises.

But we still cannot arrive at an idea of how the various forces, the sensory and the supersensible, interact in this miracle of the human organism, if we do not know one thing that was actually in my mind when I conceived it more than thirty-five years ago, but which I have only dared to speak out in recent years. Only in recent years have I been able to find the courage to say it, and it will be clear from this that the research meant here is no less conscientious than what is considered research today. The following is at issue.

We must also subdivide the human being according to the nervous-sense system, which is primarily localized in the head. But the human being is not such that one can say anything other than: the nervous-sense system is primarily localized in the head organization. It extends over the whole human being, and what I have to distinguish as three or four elements of human nature interlock; and when we speak of the nerve-sense organization, we can really only say, exactly and precisely, that the human being is most “head” in the head, but the head organization, the nerve-sense organization, extends over the whole human being.

Then, what can be called the rhythmic organization of the human being in the broadest sense plays into this nerve-sense organization. The rhythm of breathing and the rhythm of blood circulation are, of course, the most prominent phenomena within the rhythmic human being; but other rhythms also come into consideration: the rhythm of sleeping and waking, the rhythm that expresses itself in the narrower sense in digestion, and so on. Again, the rhythmic system extends throughout the whole human being and is only preferentially localized in the middle of the human being. And thirdly, we have to distinguish – we can look at it in one way or another – the metabolic-limb system. This is the system that primarily serves the movement of the human being and that in turn extends throughout the whole human being. These two systems, the metabolic system and the locomotor system, are also closely connected, which will perhaps become clear from the inner content of the observation I am about to make.

However, these three systems, although they are interrelated, are strictly distinguished from one another, so that we can say: In the nervous-sensory organization, what is physical, etheric, astral body and I-organization works quite differently than, for example, in the rhythmic organization or in the metabolic-limb organization. These four aspects of human nature – physical body, etheric body, astral body and I – are present in all three systems, so to speak, in separate locations, but they in turn engage with each of these systems in a wide variety of ways. And only when we are able to say, for example, how the ego organization or the astral body intervenes in the head system, are we able to speak of healthy and sick people in an exact and appropriate way. I would like to discuss this for a specific case.

Let us take the head organization, and more specifically how the nerve-sense system is localized in the head. Here too, we are of course speaking of the human being as a whole, because what can be said of the head is also present to a lesser degree in the rhythmic human being, in the middle human being, and in the metabolic-limb human being. But the essential point can be grasped through the head organization: the question here is — as I said, with the restriction I have just made — what is localized first in this head organization. The human being is entirely head, but I discuss the head organization in the head in the narrower sense. First of all, the nervous-sensory organization is localized; the various sensory organs of perception have their continued effects in the inner human organism, so we must say if we want to speak exactly about the senses. Now the question is: What do we actually have before us when we first speak of the sensory organization? — Here, too, I can only give a kind of general idea.

The sense organization is usually discussed in an extremely abstract way, so that one speaks of it as if it were mere concepts. The anatomical and physiological basis is discussed, but – as can be seen from the terribly amateurish discussions that can be found in physiology – the actual functioning within the sensory tract is something that is basically never properly considered. For this is something that behaves in the opposite ratio, so that one can say: The respiratory function is in the reverse proportion to the sense function as the blood circulation system is to the digestive function. So the digestive function, if I may express myself crudely, is, so to speak, a condensed blood circulation. Or the other way around: what circulates in the blood is a refined digestive process. And the sense process is a refined respiratory process. I could also say: the breathing process is a coarsened sensory process. These two processes differ quantitatively, not qualitatively. This, for example, is the reason why the methodology prescribed in Indian yoga philosophy for deeper knowledge is not the mere ordinary nerve-sense process, but a certain modified breathing process. What is to be achieved in the practice of yoga in this modified breathing process is nothing less than a coarser realization. There is actually a great deal of wisdom in this lowering of the process of realization into the breathing process through the yoga philosophy of India. But it is precisely what takes place from the senses inwards, a refined, so to speak spiritualized breathing process. In this refined breathing process, I would like to say, in those places where sensory perception first takes place, the function of the I and the function of the astral body must be present in the greatest possible freedom. They must be able to work in the eye, must be able to work in the ear; but they must be able to work in such a way that the effect is really transmitted to the physical organization.

If we consider the eye, we find the following. In the eye, first of all, is the physical organization of the eye. In it is the etheric body of the eye, which takes care of the vitalistic aspect. But then we have the astral and the I-organization of the human being; these must work independently for the eye, but they must take hold of the physical substance of the eye. Now, in line with what I indicated yesterday, what is found in the human organism is also found in nature outside, only that the natural process is not found in the human organism as a healthy process, but as an unhealthy one; but there is always a healthy process in nature corresponding to a process in the human organism. What the sense organs perceive outside in nature is most outstandingly encountered when you consider the way it functions, which, I would say, is captured in silica, in quartz, in silicic acid, when you therefore perceive as a living process that which appears to you as something that has become solid, as something congealed, so to speak. All solid bodies are only solidified processes, solidified occurrences. If we look at the silicic acid process, we have to say: where we find silicic acid in nature, where we find quartzite – it is also present in other substances in nature, but most prominently in quartz – we have something in what takes place there that corresponds to what takes place in the human being through the human organization, for example in the eye or in another sense organ. There is no justification for the assertion that we have quartz in there in a substantial sense; but what we have in the eye or in another sense organ is functionally, in terms of the process, the same as what is going on outside in quartz. And again, when we observe this process in the sense organs, which proves to be identical with the process in quartz, we come to the conclusion - and this is now also shown by mineralogy in the analogy of external natural , that of all the factors that can be involved in such a process as we have in the quartz process, the one that is least able to interact harmoniously with it is that which is carried by the organization of phosphorus. If you look at what has become fixed in phosphorus in nature outside, as a living process, and take the living interaction of the two, you have the same process that you have in the human eye, as a representative of the sense organization in general. And through this interaction of one process, which is like the phosphorus process, and another process, which is like the silicic acid process, the eye is the organ that can intervene in the physical organization of the eye, which is present as the ego and as the astral body in man. Everywhere the physical organization must create the basis for the spiritual to intervene in the right way.

Now something else is the case. If the process that takes place in the eye through this interaction of the phosphorus process and the silicic acid process, which represents an intimate, harmonious interaction of the two, were to continue into the brain, we would be completely filled with a sensory process, we would be completely given over to nature, we would not be lifted out of nature as human beings. But we have to lift ourselves out of nature as human beings. And for this to happen, a different process must take place in the brain than in the senses, a process that separates the human being from the processes of nature. While something actually takes place in the eye that is only a continuation of an external natural process into vitalization – the sense organs are actually like gulfs that extend into the human being – something must separate in the brain and become independent.

This happens again through a process that we also find in nature. What, if I may express myself in psychological terms, perception turns into an idea with the help of the human organization, is a process within the nerve-sense organization that corresponds to those processes that we find in lead. Therefore, we can say: When that which is perceived by the eye goes back further into the nerve-sense system, then a process must meet it that is the same as the lead process. Only through this can man also think what he perceives. This is what makes the brain a thinking organ; otherwise it would also be a perceiving organ. In this way, man becomes independent.

In saying this, I have indicated something that is characteristic in the organization of the head. I said, therefore, that the same thing that takes place outside in the lead process must take place in the organization of the head in order for the thinking process to come about in man.

Let us now take the lead function and not bring it into the nervous system – when a person is born, the lead is there from nature itself, the lead function is there, without the substance of the lead being able to be detected – but let us now bring the lead function into the digestive system and into the rest; life itself takes care of this, for example sometimes in lead poisoning. If you now observe in all phenomena what lead does to the metabolic limb of man, you get a picture that is presented in various individual symptoms, but which is actually most characteristically summarized in the symptom complex of dementia senilis or cerebral arteriosclerosis: you then get the picture of the human organism decaying in old age. In other words, if I apply the same process that ensures my independence as an organic being in the brain to the other pole of the human being, to the digestive system and to the limb system that is connected to it, then I get a clinical picture; what is a disease process in the metabolic-limb system is a necessary organic function for the nerve-sense human being. If I therefore regard sclerosis as a slow dying, I must also say that in a certain attenuated form it must continually function in the human head, where it is the normal state.

Thus the three members of the human being are distinct from one another: what is the normal state in the nervous-sense organization is a manifestation of disease in the other member of the human organism. But as I said yesterday, how should we approach therapy?

We have to relieve the astral body and the ego organization of the task of dealing with the disease process, when the disease process is allowed to run rampant. So what must we do when we have sclerosis? We must approach it in such a way that we relieve the human astral body of the digestive limb system of what it has to do with the aging, disintegrating, sclerotic body. And we can do that by giving it to the lead, the lead in a certain dosage. And this has led to our finding a remedy for this, which you will find in our list as remedy number 1, as the remedy for arteriosclerosis. It is therefore clear from the outset, through real knowledge of the human being, that the sclerosis can be substantially alleviated by introducing lead into the human being in the appropriate way; only now one must bring the lead to effectiveness. It is not necessarily the case that just because I have introduced the lead into the organism, it is actually effective. Here the further insights of a true knowledge of the human being are of help.

It helps then to be able to distinguish in the human organism between the building up and the breaking down forces. The latter are active, for example, in sclerosis, where the human organism is disintegrating. In the main, in the brain, the human organism is constantly disintegrating, because the brain is constantly filled with a slight sclerosis; this is in its organization. So everything depends on our ability to distinguish between the processes of degeneration and the actual vitalization processes, the anabolic, growth processes. If we can distinguish between these two processes, we can then look at that part of the human organism which carries the anabolic processes in the most eminent sense: in early childhood, the whole human organism. It is not yet overburdened with organs for thinking, with organs for the rest of the soul's activity; it initially lives in the organization of growth. If we now take the relationship between the milk function and the human child organism, we find that the milk function contains the plastic forces that the organism needs in childhood. In later life, we cannot obtain the still-necessary plastic forces in the same way as we do when we consume milk during childhood. Even in very old age, we still need plastic forces, formative forces, that transform the food we take in into the forms of the organism. It turns out that nothing promotes these plastic, formative forces and the assimilation of the absorbed substances into the human organism more than the often quite weak enjoyment of honey. Honey has a similar effect on the metabolism of the limbs of an elderly person as milk has on the brain of a child – and especially on that of a child. This indicates to us that there are special formative forces in honey that we cannot discover by simply analyzing it chemically, but only if we actually recognize in all its vitality the relationships that human beings have with the other substances in the universe. And this formative capacity of honey – for a more precise interpretation, it turns out that honey takes hold of the human organism in such a way that the astral body in particular can exercise its formative forces – these effects of honey can then be supported by adding sugar, provided that the human organism can otherwise tolerate it. Thus you will find that our first remedy for sclerosis, composed and functioning in a particular way, is made of lead, honey and sugar.

But this also indicates that it depends on how you do something like this. Because in a sense, an inner functioning of the forces of lead with the forces of honey and sugar must arise in the preparation itself. This preparation is made in such a way that when it is introduced into the human organism, it takes on the sclerotizing forces there. It takes the sclerotizing forces from the astral body and the ego organization of the person; these are thus released again and can now work for the normal, healthy organization of the person. But what I introduce into the human organism with this preparation is what the ego and the astral body had to do earlier, and which therefore were not free and diverted their functions to the disease process. Now I hand over the disease process to my preparation. The particularly effective element here is the lead; it takes over the sclerotization, because it is, after all, its own nature to have a sclerotizing effect. But I must first seek out the paths through the plasticity of the organism, through which I bring the lead to where it is needed: this is done by combining it with honey and sugar.

Thus our preparations are made in such a way that they contain what can take over a pathological process. But they are also composed and processed in such a way that what I want to introduce into the person to take over the pathological process can spread throughout the organism in the right way. Thus our preparations are absolutely rationally manufactured. As a result, it actually comes about – this could always be observed from step to step by Dr. Wegman at the Arlesheim Institute whenever we applied our preparations – that in healing in this way, what is necessary is to know that the human organism is like this: if I apply something to it, it must cause a corresponding change in it. If I now observe the change as it happens, I observe the process, which is the healing process; I observe what I have presupposed. And this is so important in our method: we do not test externally and determine by statistics, but rationally predict what must happen, and then it can be checked, even at the very first stage of what occurs, whether one is actually producing the corresponding effects.

In this way you can also see how the silicic acid contained in equisetum, which I mentioned yesterday, works. I have already mentioned that the special way in which silicic acid is contained in equisetum has an effect on kidney function. Today, it is no longer observed, anatomically or physiologically, that the nervous-sensory system can only be separated from the circulatory and metabolic system to a certain extent. In a sense, all organs are sensory organs again, and the kidney is already a particularly important organ in the human abdomen. So if, in the sense I explained yesterday, I use silicic acid as it is present in equisetum, I increase the sensitivity of the kidneys and thus act on those processes in the human organism that result from a dulling of the inner sensitivity of the kidneys.

What we see in an outstanding way in the sense organs can be applied to a certain extent to the whole human organism. This becomes particularly clear when we consider the effect of phosphorus in a particularly striking case. It is certainly extremely interesting to observe the physiological and anatomical processes that occur during human embryonic development. Now in human embryonic development we have two interacting processes, which are usually not very well distinguished when viewed anatomically and physiologically today. First of all, there is everything that is grouped around the development of the fertilized egg. Then there is everything that takes place in the chorion from the environment, from the uterus and so on, from the female organs surrounding the embryo. When we study this, we naturally see that everything that is organized is permeated not only by the physical organization but also by the etheric, astral and I organizations. If we now look at this process — I would call it a centrifugal process because it is a radiating process — and consider what starts from the actual fertilized germ cell, develops more and more through differentiation develops more and more, and what becomes the central embryo, then on the one hand in this process we have as the main effect, as the most predominant effect, something that can be found in the process that is recorded in the silver substance. As paradoxical as it may sound, in the silver substance we have something that can increase until excretion takes place – and it is an excretion – which takes place in the secretion of the ovum in the human organism. In silver, in the functional aspect of silver, we have the excretory forces that are at work in the human being, out in nature, in the silver substance. From the fact that silver has such an eminent excretory effect, you can see the tremendous importance of silver in the appropriate dosage for the human abdomen in general. And therefore, if the necessary binders and additives are used to introduce the silver substance in a fine dosage into the digestive process, it is possible to act precisely on the elimination processes. If the elimination processes are blocked, it is possible to act on them in an extraordinarily significant way.

But if we now take that which now has a centripetal effect, which emanates from the uterus, that is, enters from the outside, we have there again, in an eminent sense, in an external substance, namely phosphorus, that which emanates from the walls of the female birth organs inwards, which emanates from there and acts towards the embryo. From this, one can see the significance of the forces contained in the functioning of phosphorus. They work in exactly the opposite sense to silver; they work in such a way that they drive everything into the human being. While silver, for example, develops the tendency to excrete, especially for the lower abdomen, phosphorus develops the tendency to drive into the body. So that in silver we have something that most eminently evokes the forms of the physical body of the human being, whereas in phosphorus we have something that extinguishes these forms, that drives into the human being and extinguishes the physical organization, making this physical organization extinguished for the astral body and the ego. So phosphorus is what drives the astral organization and the ego out of the human being. In this respect, silver and phosphorus are polar opposites.

For the rhythmic and intellectual person, that is, for the circulatory system and for the nerve-sense system, there is another polar opposite to phosphorus: that is lime, or carbonate of calcium. This carbonate of calcium, when introduced into the human organism, has the peculiar tendency to have a secreting effect. Indeed, it is the case with calcium carbonate, with lime, that the centrifugal, radiating forces of the human being actually show up in an outwardly natural way in the lime; whereby, when these radiating forces become too strong and disease formations arise as a result, I can use lime preparations to reduce these disease processes. But what I am trying to say becomes particularly clear if we now consider how the lime supplied to the human organism is something that is excreted everywhere in the human organism. I would like to say: in the lowest human being it has a competitor in silver, but it also has an excretory effect there; so that lime excretes both watery and airy substances from the organism everywhere. The forces of lime localized in the human organism are therefore also everything that underlies human exhalation. Lime has the power within it that acts as an engine for exhalation. And again, it has the forces within it that expel warmth in the nerve-sense organization, causing a kind of cooling of the nerve-sense organization. So in the lower human being, in the metabolic-limb human being, it expels fluids; in the rhythmic human being, it expels the air substances; in the nerve-sense organization, it expels the warmth ether – or warmth, if you prefer.

In each of these relationships, phosphorus has the opposite effect to that of lime. You can see this again in the image of phosphorus poisoning. It introduces the liquid into the metabolic limb-man, or rather, the solid in a dissolved form, so that it is the driving force for inhalation, for all inward respiratory processes. It introduces the airy element into the organism in such a way that it has a warming effect on the nerve-sense organization. — But because lime is the expelling element, it prepares the way in the human organism for the functioning of the astral body and the I organization; these can then enter.

It is precisely through what lime expels that the astral body and the I organization can enter the human being. On the other hand, the physical organization that phosphorus drives in drives the astral body and the ego out. You can study these things in the most superficial way by observing that lime, so to speak, fetters the awakened ego and the awakened astral body to the physical body everywhere. But what does it mean when the astral body and the ego are fettered to the physical body? It means that I suffer from sleeplessness. If I cannot bring the I organization and the astral body out of the human organism, I suffer from sleeplessness. The function of lime, if it is not counteracted by the phosphorus function, is continually a cause for us to suffer from sleeplessness and thus from all the processes associated with it. The moment you introduce the phosphorus process into the human organism, you promote the ability to sleep; so that you promote what brings out the astral body and the ego from the human organism, because these are out during sleep. In the most eminent sense this property belongs to the phosphorus function; to a lesser degree it belongs to the sulphur function. And if we have irregularities in the rhythmical system, we can also apply sulphur instead of phosphorus. If, for example, we are dealing with insomnia, which shows its symptoms in the rhythmical human being, we will have to deal with some sulphur preparation for the healing process.

These can certainly only be indications. But these indications are intended to show that in all that is aimed at here as a rational diagnosis, rational therapy is already included. For if I proceed physiologically, then, for example, in the human head there is a refined process of sclerotization. By using such expressions, which connect the human being with the nature surrounding him, I can now call that which underlies thinking in the human brain as an organic function a lead process. I see this lead process, without the substance of lead, in the human nerve-sense organization; I see it as poison in the other organization, in the metabolic-limb organization. The one picture shows me in a terrible way what always takes place in a more delicate way in the nerve-sense organization. But I can also know now: if I introduce the lead function, the lead process, into the metabolic-limb human being, then I thereby take from this metabolic-limb human being in relation to the astral organization what must be taken away. And in doing so, I have allowed the healing to take place. So I no longer distinguish between diagnosis, pathology and therapy, because they all flow into one another. You recognize the disease and you know the process in the external nature that can take over this disease process in the human organism. You recognize one from the other. It is precisely this, between which today a terrible abyss gapes: pathology and therapy, that is interwoven, made one through this rational anthroposophical basis of medicine.

On the other hand, however, the disease processes themselves are also illuminated in a corresponding way. Let us take an illness that is always laughed at when we mention it because it is considered a very insignificant illness by doctors – at least by doctors in Central Europe; I don't know if this is the case in the Netherlands – only for the patient this illness is quite unpleasant: I am referring to migraine. It is only understood when one knows that it consists of a process that should not be in the nerve-sense organization at all - in the head - namely, a metabolic process that is hypertrophied, so to speak, the fine metabolic process that always takes place in the head. So there is a metabolic process in the head that should not be there, and the task now is to take this metabolic process away from the head. How do you do that? Well, first of all, you are faced with the task of introducing into the person what can take up this metabolic process, what can carry it out itself. From what I said earlier, you will now find that this is silicic acid. I said of it that it must enter into the sensory organization, which is also irritated in migraine. If we bring the silicic acid process into the human sensory organization, then we work in such a way that we take the morbid migraine process out of the head. But we must first bring the silicic acid process into the head. If we want to form the preparation so that it can be taken in through the mouth, we have to make sure that it does not get stuck somewhere in the digestive process. To do this, we have to make the astral body as active as possible, so that it carries the silicic acid up through the entire digestive process in rising waves, which we introduce into the head organization through the preparation. We can only do this if we promote the upward flow of the absorbed silicic acid by doing something to make the astral body as effective as possible. That means that we have to throw out of everything that mediates between the abdomen and the head – namely the rhythm of circulation – everything that could prevent the astral body from working actively. This happens when we apply sulfur. Thus, in our preparation, processed in a certain way, we must find silicic acid and sulphur. But in the human organism it must be so that not only does something work upwards, but especially when we attack the rhythmic system, the rhythm must go up and down. We follow the respiratory rhythm up and down, follow the circulation rhythm up and down. This rising and falling is most essentially promoted by that function which again lies in the substance of iron. And this, what we want: to flood upwards once, but then to prevent it from becoming established at the top, so that only something settles at the top and the whole person is not taken up, this is achieved by preparing a preparation in a certain way, containing iron, sulfur and silicic acid. In this way we obtain our preparation, Biodoron, which serves in the most eminent sense to relieve the patient of the migraine in the head, but then also to reintroduce what we have removed from the head into the right way of organizing the human being as a whole.

What can be said for the subordinate disease, the trivial disease of migraine, will, in principle, be more serious if the opposite is pursued. When, in particular, the process where breathing changes into the – as I said earlier – refined breathing, which then appears as the nerve-sense process, this process, which should actually only take place in the lower part of the uppermost part of the human being, roughly – and this is only an approximation and a rough expression – in the area between the lungs and the lower regions of the face When this process, this particular nuance of the human circulatory process, forces its way through and this process, which has already become a nerve-sense process, namely a nerve-head process, now takes place in the human intestinal tract, then we have a process that must be in the human being; only it does not belong in the intestinal tract, but in the head. There it has its normal place. If it enters the intestinal tract, it becomes typhoid. And we have simply grasped what a natural process is – every disease process is a natural process – that is, what such a disease process can be in the human being: something that is justified in another place is dislocated in this case. At a certain point in the organism, the process that plays a role in typhoid phenomena is normal; in the intestinal tract, it is a disease. It is a disease that presents itself in this way.

We must now have something in the head organization where the external world can have a particularly strong effect. We know that the head is the part of the body we feel least; but we feel the environment through the head. The environment must flood into our head. So we have something in our head with which we live most strongly in the outside world. We have only two such organizational links with which we live so strongly in the outside world: first, the head itself, namely that part that I have just characterized, where breathing passes into the nerve-sense function; and then we have something else that will seem very paradoxical to you. But when we have more thoroughly studied the medical literature on this subject, which we will accomplish in the very near future, then you will take a look at the things that can be found there, and you will see how the liver function, in particular, is something that, in a completely different way, most closely reflects the outside world within the human organism. The outside world acts in the liver as if the other organism were almost not there at all. This is the special nature of the liver function. But if what should be localized in this way as the actual bed for the external effects, if that occurs where it should not be, namely in the intestinal tract, then we have something in this intestinal tract that is functionally alienated from the human organism. If we now look again in the wide expanse of nature for a way to internalize again, so to speak, this externalized mode of action in the intestine and to restore it to human functioning, then we are presented with the process that is solidified in antimony. Antimony is a body that reacts in an extraordinarily fine way to the forces of its surroundings. The antimony structure is like revealed dynamite. Imagine these bundle-shaped radiations, try to feel how it wants to break free from becoming a mineral through the so-called saiger process; then you can see: antimony is, so to speak, mineral-sensitive, it internalizes external influences. This is particularly evident from the fact that under certain conditions antimony can be treated electrolytically. If it is then brought to the cathode, an explosion occurs at the slightest provocation. When all this is recognized, when it is known how antimony relates to the forces that play everywhere in the universe, then it can also be recognized how the antimony process, when properly processed and introduced into the organism, can take up the typhoid process; so that in turn the I and the astral body can be freed from their work on the typhoid process and the person can thus gradually be restored to health. This is how I tried to indicate the principles of what can be called rational medicine. Over time, our preparations, of which there are already almost two hundred, have always been developed in two ways. At first, a fairly large number of doctors came together who had become somewhat skeptical of current therapeutic methods and who asked whether it might not be possible to use anthroposophical knowledge to find relationships between the human being and the environment that could indicate something in the surrounding substances and in their processing and application that could provide a remedy. Now, in anthroposophy, there is a very detailed and exact knowledge of the human being, a knowledge of the human being according to body, soul and spirit, as well as a detailed knowledge of nature according to the different realms of nature and the different ingredients of the natural realms. And so the first thing I was set the task of doing was to go, so to speak, the way of seeking out natural processes and examining the extent to which these natural processes represent disease processes. So I went from the outer nature into the human being. This is how you first find the sclerosis remedy that has taken this path. I have tried to find out how plumbum metallicum and some plastic-dynamic system, as it is in honey, sugar or milk, can work. In this way, a number of remedies have been developed, initially from the outside in.

The question then arose: how can these remedies be brought into the world? I said: I do not want to have a remedy factory without clinics assigned to it. So the clinics came into being. And once a number of remedies were available, the clinics began to use these remedies. That is how the situation I just described came about. And now that I am in Dornach myself, Arlesheim and Dornach form one entity, and the institutes in Arlesheim are affiliated to the Goetheanum, it has been possible for me, through close collaboration with Dr. Wegman, to now go the other way for a further series of remedies, to look for the path from the disease process: where can this natural process corresponding to a disease process be found? In other words, to start with the human being and arrive at the natural substance in question. In this way, everything that can be found as a remedy flows together, especially in Arlesheim, where Dr. Wegman's Clinical Therapeutic Institute is located. What I discussed yesterday, the true courage of healing — is affiliated with the International Pharmaceutical Laboratory, which is concerned with the production of the appropriate remedies, which are to be brought into the world in the most diverse ways and which you can get to know if you are interested. I do not want to be agitational, I just want to discuss the scientific basis of the matter. But something has come about precisely in these two converging paths, which also gives great certainty for these things in purely external-empirical terms. And it is particularly satisfying when one is able to speak to an audience like yours, which has been made possible by Dr. Zeylmans inviting me to do so and invited you to attend, and you again had the kindness to come, which seems to be connected with the fact that Dr. Zeylmans himself wants to orient this institute here in the way it has now been discussed. Because I have to assume that the fact that I was allowed to give these lectures seems to indicate that an institute is to be established here that will serve as proof and evidence of what we are striving for in our clinical-therapeutic institutes, but also of an extraordinarily large number of private physicians. And from the relevant literature, you will be able to see for yourself that we not only have statistical material that is at least as reliable as clinical statistics usually yield, but that in many respects this also leads to the certainty that comes from the accuracy of the predictions, that in addition to this certainty, a particularly large statistical material is available.

However, it will be of particular importance if we can find a cure for those diseases that today can only be treated surgically, such as carcinoma. If one can say that any process can be dislocated, then this must be said of carcinoma in particular. It is a dislocated process, a process that should actually only take place at the outermost periphery, within the sense organization. It is very interesting to observe how this function, which belongs at the periphery of the body – and specifically at the periphery of the body that is prepared for this – can become dislocated and then appear as a carcinoma, which is actually, now not a nervous function, but which is actually a sensory function. In this way, one comes to recognize, in a deeper sense, the peculiar parasitic nature of the carcinoma. And then one comes to the point – not in the simple way that one would usually expect – of being able to produce something in the preparations, which usually consist of the various juices of the Viscum species, that can conquer the carcinoma by medicinal means. We have already achieved at least some good, promising partial successes; but we can only speak of partial successes because we have only recently completed the apparatus that produces the viscum preparation as it should be produced. Nevertheless, the preparations made so far have already led to very good prophylactic cures. In the case of carcinoma, it is particularly important to recognize it at the right time, which patients usually make difficult; but a carcinoma recognized at the right time can be combated medically with such preparations as we make from Viscum. I do not wish to speak here about the value or lack of value of surgical treatment, nor about the fact that it is often necessary; I only want to point out that, based on a true knowledge of the human being, even the most severe cases of illness can be considered in such a way that, based on such knowledge of the human being, one can arrive at healing processes from within.

This is essentially what I wanted to say to you as a matter of principle about our endeavors that have emerged from anthroposophy, what I wanted to say in relation to the path that leads from the external nature to the inner being of man and vice versa. I would just like to point out in conclusion that it is precisely from these methodical observations that something of enormous importance emerges: namely, how to introduce into the human being that which is intended to relieve the disease process in the organism. And if it is the case that the human being is a threefold creature, with a nervous-sensory organization, a rhythmic organization and a metabolic-limb organization, then healing also breaks down into threefold processes. These three processes are as follows: firstly, medications taken internally, which enter the human organism, so to speak, by the same route as the digestive process. The second type is through injections, where we try to bring the process, the function, into the rhythmic organism through the injection. And the third healing method is through the bath, where we work from the outside. The latter is an effect on the nerve-sense process, where we act more coarsely from the outside; but the effect of the bath is a perceptual activity pushed down to a lower level.

Let us follow these three forms in phosphorus. When we use phosphorus as a preparation, mixed with other things, chemically or otherwise processed, per os, internally, then we must be clear about the fact that it primarily promotes the absorption of fluids into the human organism. If we have to relieve the human organism of a disease process that, as it were, forces the fluid out of its own space, as for example in certain inflammatory phenomena at the periphery or in such phenomena that are trivially similar to nosebleeds, when we apply phosphorus internally, it relieves the astral organism and the ego of the disease process, as it were, in the functioning of the fluid. If we prepare a medicine in the appropriate dosage to inject, and we introduce phosphorus into the circulation process, then what we take from the organism must also be connected with abnormal circulation processes. If, for example, we observe accelerated breathing, some intensification of the heart activity, but especially something like an excessive secretion of bile, which also belongs to the rhythmic, then we can – and the same applies to a whole series of other processes, I will mention only the obvious – have an extremely favorable effect by injecting phosphorus. If we encounter something that plays more on the psychic side, the brain functions are such that they involuntarily drive the person to a kind of flight of ideas, the person cannot stop his thoughts, he gushes out his words and this escalates to the pathological, then we can work through appropriate baths in which phosphorus is dissolved, precisely to slow down the flight of ideas.

I mention this only as an example, but what is stated in this example can be multiplied a hundredfold. In this way, the human organism can be helped in three ways. It depends on how it can be realized.

On the other hand, there is the fact that one can approach people directly in a therapeutic way, which now works from the outside into the metabolic system: the dynamics of the world in which the human being can be placed. And we are really doing this with good success through eurythmy therapy. Eurythmy is something like spiritual gymnastics, but it can be developed into an art. Under Dr. Steiner's direction, we have already shown a large part of Central and Northern Europe what can be achieved through the art of eurythmy, and performances of eurythmy art were also given here in The Hague some time ago. In eurythmy, the transformation of human speech into human movement functions is immediately apparent to us in an artistic way. If you consider what science knows about this today, namely how hand and arm functions are related to the organization of speech – right-handed people have their speech center on the left side of the brain, and left-handed people vice versa – you may not completely deny what can be achieved through anthroposophy: that all human speech is actually related to human mobility. We can follow the way in which the legs and feet move when consonants are pronounced, especially palatal sounds. We can follow how the arms move and how this is transmitted through an internal switchover to what then becomes air movement when speaking. But all speech can in turn be traced back to movements of the individual human being or of human groups. This then gives rise to artistic eurythmy. But this can be transformed again in such a way that one develops what is initially presented as an art in such a way that one lets the movements concerned, which arise from the whole human being, from body, soul and spirit — ordinary gymnastics only arises from the physiological nature of the physical organism — be carried out by the human being as a eurythmy therapy gesture in context. We have developed a complete system for this in Arlesheim. When it is applied systematically, it has an effect on the person, and in this way the inner healing process can be supported in an extraordinarily fruitful way through eurythmy therapy, according to the three different types that I have described. This eurythmy therapy works in such a way that the process that comes about in normal human life as a result of walking, running and so on, whereby there are always inner processes that are connected with the breakdown and build-up processes of the human organism, that this process, where the human being is placed in a dynamic, has an effect on the inner processes. There are strict rules for this. So I can have people carry out a eurythmy therapy system of gestures that has such an effect on the organism that, for example, catabolic processes that do not want to take place must take place in the right way; or that another eurythmy therapy system counteracts excessively strong catabolic processes.

So everything comes down to understanding the healthy and sick person in terms of body, soul and spirit. Then you simply see in him what health or illness represents. And then you already have the therapeutic process in what you see.

In this way, we would like to work towards rational therapy in all modesty. I know that today there are still many objections to such rational therapy, that it is perhaps regarded as paradoxical or even worse by those who have now struggled through all the difficulties of what is officially recognized today. But such things have often been around in the world. However, I can assure you: I would find it more comfortable not to talk about these things; because I know how much one still comes up with and falls for today from what one has as a habitual way of thinking and because I can already make all the objections myself, I would find it more comfortable not to talk about it. But there are reasons to talk about what one believes needs to be introduced into the cultural process of humanity. Out of this sense of duty, you take the magnitude of the thanks that I would like to express to you for attentively following my remarks, which could only be suggestions in the two hours.

Question and Answer Session

Question: Do you imagine that there are vibrational differences? About lead,....

Dr. Steiner: I have nothing against interpreting the processes involved in one way or another. However, it seems to me that, for practical purposes, this is a theory of what these processes consist of. Such theories could suffer the same fate as the emission and undulation theories of light. What is important to me is what is qualitative about the matter, what actually aims to show that ultimately the whole functioning, which is actually only localized in the lead substance as I have it before me in physical space, that this whole functioning externally represents the same as internally the processes that make the brain, so to speak, a suitable organ for independent thinking in relation to dependent perception. In this respect, the fact that we are accustomed to thinking of the inner processes of the organism as a schematic continuation of outer processes in nature makes the presentation more difficult. For example, we talk about the fact that carbonic acid is formed in the human organism from carbon through the absorption of oxygen; we call this a combustion process (listeners:... in the state of becoming!) — You are saying the word that I would have had to say later! — It is actually the case that we often speak of combustion in physiology and medicine. But these are just as little combustion processes as they take place on the outside, just as little as it can be a matter of a process that is not ensouled or spiritualized in the case of a human being. The connection between oxygen and carbon is also ensouled and spiritualized. So that the process occurs in the nascency and remains, but is also ensouled and spiritualized. So that I have captured the process in the nascency and the process now becomes a natural process by continuing outside, while if it starts from the nascency and works in the human organism, it becomes a different process.

Take, for example, the processes that I have just described as a kind of lead process that takes place in the human brain. Yes, what are they in the human organism? This brings us to a very delicate chapter. We can study the processes in the human abdomen, for example. There we find that the absorbed substances also undergo a certain metamorphosis, that then something is excreted. Let us now consider these excretory products and compare them in a really meaningful way, not just by proceeding chemically, for that is the least we can do. Proceeding chemically is about as useful as trying to understand a clock by looking at a gold mine, a glass factory, and so on. Of course, these things are all very important, but just as I do not learn anything about the clock in this way, I can learn just as little about the functions of the potato in the human organism if I know that it has so many carbohydrates and so on. I learn more if I know what the potato's function is in the plant itself, how it is actually a stem, a rootstock. If I know the level of its organization, then I begin to understand how I can compare these processes with what happens in humans. It comes down to how the process is different from the process that is fueled by legumes. The process that is fueled by the potato goes further up into the head function than the one that is fueled by legumes. If I can go into all this, then I will finally come to recognize that metamorphoses take place in the digestive tract and that the excretion products are only the processes that have stopped halfway. And where are these processes that go all the way through? These are the processes that take place in the nervous sensory system. The nerve-sense and perception process is a process that is carried to its conclusion. What goes on in the human excretory organs represents a process that has come to a halt. The intestinal contents are a brain that has not fully materialized, as paradoxical as that may sound. It is simply a different process at a different place in the organism, which is half of the process that occurs in the head.

When I consider all this, I am able to look into these process effects of the human interior, and then what presents itself to me is what now first arises for me to compare between the process that is outside, the lead process, and the process that takes place in the human brain. Then I can start, if I want to verify something, to look at what happens in lead. I observe the lead as it oxidizes, melts, what it otherwise does in melting. I go further into the geology and geography of lead. I see how lead binds, how it is connected with other substances. Then I already get images that can confirm what appears to the person who can observe the lead, who in fact sees a kind of aura of the lead, which is similar to the aura that forms the nervous substance of the brain.

And so we can speak of these connections, I attach particular importance to this, while of course leaving it up to everyone to make hypotheses about whether these are vibrational differences. But that is actually the physics of the matter, not what is physiologically important.

Question: I would like to ask whether you can recognize these inner processes that you have mentioned in any other way than we ordinary people.

Dr. Steiner: The inner processes are not observed through the usual external sensory empiricism. They can only be observed in their after-effects on the corpse or in some other way, through conclusions drawn from external events. They cannot be observed there. They only become observable when the methods I spoke of yesterday are applied, and as you can find them in the books mentioned yesterday. You see, for the realization, the human being actually becomes transparent at first. And then you can indeed speak of really, let us say, seeing the liver process. The derivation only refers to the fact that one must also mentally dissect out the liver; but what can be asserted must be looked at. When I look at the whole person, I see a jumble of all sorts of things. I must now remove everything that is not the liver, in my mind also. I must therefore dissect out the liver in the spiritual sense first. This is more difficult for one organ than for another. It is more difficult for the liver, for example, but then it is also more fruitful, because certain liver diseases can, I am convinced, only be understood at all in this way. But it is possible to understand every organ.

A member of the audience: Yesterday we heard a beautifully constructed system, but the foundations are not yet clear to me. You divide the human being into a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and a fourth element. If that is the case, then it is understandable that we also have an etheric kidney, an astral kidney and a fourth kidney. But what if it is not so? You should have first proved this division into four parts of the being. The therapy was similar. For example, you did not say why you chose Equisetum, since there are many plants that contain silicic acid. As far as I know, Equisetum has no therapeutic powers. Today you said: We make preparations that are rationally manufactured. You should prove that! We know nothing of these functions you describe. On the whole, I have not grasped what the main thing is. The whole thing is logically constructed, but I lack the premises.

Dr. Steiner: In such a matter, it is of the utmost importance that one can see two things. Firstly, when something like this occurs and is discussed, as I have said, in two hours one can only point out the things, give directives and so on. Furthermore, I have made it clear through the whole way of presenting it that we are in the process of becoming, but that we are also willing to continue working. Now, when we speak of proofs, it is the case that this is not actually based on a completely scientific concept. And this stems from the fact that today we have become accustomed to only bringing forth proofs from what can actually be observed sensually. In another sense, no medicine has any proofs either, except in the sense that it can be observed sensually and physically.

I have now spoken of the fact that sensory observation can be further developed and modified by something higher. Yesterday I indicated that there are methods by which one can do this and I pointed to writings by which one can arrive at such methods. This, however, constitutes something for the whole so-called system of proof, which I can only make clear by means of a comparison: when we are here on earth, we talk about the fact that something that I place in the air is heavy and falls down, falls to the ground, then it has a basis. So we have to say that for a certain way of thinking that is based on sensual empirical evidence. If you go further, you come to the point – and I happened to experience this once as a boy, when someone told me – that if the earth were floating, it would actually have to fall down. This mutual support and bearing of the cosmic bodies and cosmic spaces is the image for what underlies such a science as I have meant today. The whole thing bears and supports each other. We are dealing here with a completely different area. Of course, you will not be able to support yourself very well if I can only select a few things from something as detailed as medicine in two hours in order to give you an idea of the perspectives. You have to bear in mind that the desirable could only come about if you now had four years of faculty study, built on the aspects that I discussed today. If one started from the medical preparatory studies with the assumption that there is a real, spirit-permeated natural science, and if a physiology were built up in the same way, passing into histology and into pathology-clinical, then, however, because things would approach people in the appropriate detailed way, we would find them just as plausible as the medical system can be plausible today.

Today I can give nothing more for these things than perspectives and suggestions.

The first thing is that today we have become accustomed to mentioning only what can be proven sensually, and that we do not take into account how things support each other. But the other thing is this: when you do, say, mathematics, for example, any science that is done rationally, how do you want to do it otherwise than by having one position supported by the other? Mathematics is something that supports itself reciprocally. If one were to talk about mathematics for two hours, even less would be gained than in today's discussion, although suggestions could also be made there. The moment I build a bridge with the help of mathematics, I speak of verification. And I have simply hinted at this when I said: I do not attach any importance to the remedies if clinics are not attached to them and one cannot see how the remedies work. If one has the diagnosis as I have explained it and comes to heal, and if after two or three days one can already see how things work, then the verification is there. Another method of verifying medical constellations is not known in conventional medicine either. Take the healing method of phenacetin. Statistics are compiled; it is verification that counts.

What I wanted to show is that in empirical medicine today we are at the stage where we only start from statistics. Here it depends on luck whether the connections are found. But this can be transformed by looking at the person in a rational therapy.

If today we say: a function such as that of phosphorus is effective in this or that way on the human organism, then it is a matter of setting about examining the We F'ru ww. mode of action. But I have indicated how the effects of lead and phosphorus can be in the human organism. And when it is said that one cannot speak of a phosphorus function or an equisetum function, then I must point out that what a substance is is in fact only a momentarily captured state. What then is lead? One can find a name by chance because we live in a certain temperature range and in this range lead exists in a fixed state. In other world situations it is something else, it goes through metamorphoses. In fact, we are not dealing with something that is fixed at a particular level, but with processes that only show themselves to be fixed. But one can indicate how the fixation occurs.

You spoke of horsetail. Of course other plants also have these constituents, like horsetail. I am expressing myself very carefully. I said of horsetail: Of course other plants also have these constituents; I quote horsetail as a characteristic because it has ninety percent silicic acid, other plants do not have that; thus the silicic acid effect is the prominent one.

If someone says, “To my knowledge, equisetum is not a medicinal plant at all,” this means no more than that the healing effect of equisetum has simply not yet been observed. We observe it very often. These are things that depend on how experience expands.

I understand every objection and could make it myself. But just think of how many objections were raised against the Copernican system. The Catholic objection was raised until 1827, only from then on was it also introduced in Catholic schools. You really wouldn't get very far in civilization if you only stuck to the objections. Not that I, having said all this, would immodestly present the things. But it all rests on work! It does not rest on carelessness to speak of the effectiveness of the smallest entities. If you look at the writings that lie here: for years, efforts were made to verify the matter in the laboratory. The objections you have raised apply, but everything can be objected to, that goes without saying.

Audience member: As soon as you accept general relativity, you are not referring to states.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, but relativity is also relative. Someone once wanted to make Einstein's theory of relativity plausible to his audience by taking a matchbox and a match. And he said: I can now pass the match past the box, which I am holding still; but I can also hold the match still and pass the box past it: the same effect. It's relative. — I would have liked to shout at the gentleman: Why don't you nail the box to the wall, then it requires a little more. Then we enter into the relativity of relativity. And when we look at the human body in motion, we come to the conclusion that motion is not determined by coordinate systems or reference systems, but also by fatigue and organic changes, which already takes me a step from the relative to the absolute. I would like to say: relativity is again relative and asymptotically approaches absoluteness.

I see the importance of the concept of relativity in something else. We are accustomed, from the point of view of physical assumptions, actually so far in the usual theories, to consider everything in such a way that we relate it to a place in space and to the course of time. We also write the formulas in physics in this way. In fact, we cannot get by with such a way of looking at things in physics. Rather, we have to consider only the spatial relationship of one thing or process a to another b as two properties. This is where we come up with fruitful ideas. This is where we come to regard relativity as something more or less – even for qualities – as something more or less justified, but relatively justified.