Lecture II

If I were asked to map out a course of medical study for people who would want to approach this study immediately and finish it in a certain period of time, I would begin—after the necessary natural scientific background had been acquired—with a discussion of the various functions in the human organism. I would feel bound to begin with a kind of anatomical-physiological study of the foodstuffs as they are worked through from the stage where they are worked upon by the ptyalin to that of being worked on by the pepsin and then taken up into the blood. Then, after considering the general act of digestion in the narrower sense, I would pass on to discussion of the system of heart and lungs and all that is connected with it. I would then discuss everything connected with the human kidney system. The kidney system must then be discussed in relation to the entire nerve-sense apparatus—a relationship not recognized at all today. Then I would lead on to the system of liver, gall, and spleen, and this cycle of study would gradually open up a vista of how things are arranged in the human organism, a vista that would be needed in order to build up the knowledge that it is the task of an anthroposophical spiritual science to develop. Then, with the light that would have been shed upon the results of sense-perceptible empirical research, it would be possible to pass on to therapy.