Physiology and Healing E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

''The intention is to take a practical subject and show how our spiritual science with anthroposophical orientation truly can play an effective role in everyday life.' – Rudolf Steiner Following his first major lecture course for medical practitioners, Rudolf Steiner sought to elaborate and deepen his 'extension' of the art of healing from a spiritual-scientific perspective. In this collection of addresses, discussions, question-and-answer sessions and lectures – running parallel to his major medical cycles – Steiner comments on contemporary medicine's emphasis on experimental, materially-based research and its subsequent lack of attention to therapy. Steiner's intention is not to detract from developments in medical science but to build on them with spiritual science – not quackery but a true art of medicine. The medical practitioner has an important task: diseases must be cured, and it is wrong not to intervene and simply to allow 'karma to take its course'. Speaking to audiences ranging from members of the general public to small groups of medical professionals, Steiner offers new insights into our understanding of human organs such as the brain, kidneys and liver, as well as the efficacy of healing substances including arsenic, sulphur, arnica and essential plant oils. He studies a broad range of specific medical conditions, giving advice on cancer, hysteria, rheumatism, gout, skin eruptions, typhoid, diabetes, haemophilia, syphilis, gonorrhoea, asthma, glaucoma, leukaemia, smallpox, insomnia, and childhood diseases such as measles. His commentaries on a raft of contrasting subjects – such as psychiatry, sexual maturity, memory, poisoning and detoxification – present challenging perspectives for patients and medical practitioners. Steiner's surprisingly non-dogmatic advice on vaccination, for example, gives a refreshingly balanced, and perhaps unexpected, point of view. This volume also includes a lecture on eurythmy therapy, a comprehensive introduction, index and notes, and nine full colour plates of Rudolf Steiner's blackboard drawings.

Leseprobe

PHYSIOLOGY AND HEALING

TREATMENT, THERAPY AND HYGIENE

Spiritual Science And Medicine

PHYSIOLOGY AND HEALING

TREATMENT, THERAPY AND HYGIENE

Spiritual Science And Medicine

Thirteen lectures, an address, two discussions and a question-and-answer session held in Dornach and Stuttgart between March 1920 and April 1924

ENGLISH BY ANNA R. MEUSS

INTRODUCTION BY ANDREW MAENDL, MD, AND MATTHEW BARTON

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

CW 314

The publishers acknowledge the generous funding of this publication by Dr Eva Frommer MD (1927-2004) and the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain

Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2013

Originally published in German under the title Physiologisch-Therapeutisches auf Grundlage der Geisteswissenschaft, Zur Therapie und Hygiene (volume 314 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on notes taken by members of the audiences not reviewed by the speaker, and edited by Hans W. Zbinden, MD. This authorized translation is based on the 4th German edition of 2011 which was reviewed and added to by Urs Dietler, working with Andreas Dollfuss and Eva-Gabriele Streit, MD

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach 1965, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 2011

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

The right of Anna R. Meuss to be identified as the author of this translation has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

I am indebted to my colleague Christian von Arnim, eurythmy therapist Ursula Browning, Dr Hans Broder von Laue and Prof. Peter Selg, all of whom have assisted me in fathoming the meaning of some of the more difficult passages (Anna R. Meuss)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 442 1

Cover by Mary Giddens Typeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan

CONTENTS

Editor's Preface

Introduction by Andrew Maendl, MD, and Matthew Barton

I PHYSIOLOGY AND THERAPY BASED ON THE SCIENCE OF THE SPIRIT

LECTURE 1DORNACH, 7 OCTOBER 1920

The mission of spiritual science. Too little therapy in medicine, whilst experimental research is well developed. Unjustifiable hypotheses. The spiritual aspect is not taken into account. Abstractions in physiology and pathology. Development of cancer—from normal activity in the organism to the abnormal. Mania—from illusions that are organic in origin to hysteria. Schelling's way of making observations.

LECTURE 2DORNACH, 8 OCTOBER 1920

Schelling. Inner powers of development up to second dentition. Creative activity arising from this—transforming powers of growth into powers of memory and power to develop thoughts. If transformation is inadequate—carcinoma. Troxler. Childhood diseases—excess of spirit and soul from life before birth. In old age-involution. Organizing power and principles of soul and spirit enter into the structural elements. Tumour development. Unconscious penetration with will activity from our organization—mania. Hypertrophic organizing power in liver and stomach—melancholia, hypochondria, hysteria. Griesinger (psychiatrist). Proletarians became materialists, aristocrats spiritualists.

LECTURE 3DORNACH, 9 OCTOBER 1920

In spiritual science, the aim is to encourage not quackery but the art of medicine. Neoplasms and mental diseases. Threefold nature of the human organism with functions defined rather than spaces. See Steiner's Riddles of the Soul. Sensory perception and ideation bound up with degradation and elimination. Will processes with constructive processes in metabolism and limbs. Rhythmic system. Healthy balance—interaction between constructive and destructive processes. Poisoning and detoxification. Whole of nature—plant development process away from centre of earth. Goethe's metamorphosis of plants. Example of silver birch—development of root, bark, leaf. Potassium salt deposits in birch bark. Opposite direction—development of protein—albuminization. Development of rheumatic conditions and gout. Treatment—birch leaves. Development of inflamed skin eruptions—potassium salts from birch bark. Rational stage of science. Goethe. Study of medicine. For therapy—seeing natural functions together with functions of the inner organism to perceive the pathological aspect. With spiritual science the aim is to bring health to science.

LECTURE 4DORNACH, 9 OCTOBER 1920, EVENING

Trust between public and medical profession. Neurosensory system encroaching on metabolism and limbs and vice versa. Typhoid fever. Normal organization—full awareness of I nature or selfhood penetrates the etheric and physical in the sphere of soul and spirit. Awareness of I nature reduced. Mind and spirit go their own way. Look at purely spiritual I activity on the one hand, and the vehicle for it in the organism, the blood, on the other. Bridge from physiological and pathological to therapeutic—bringing about processes in the blood so that it withdraws from I activity but functions in a similar way. System of forces in human blood and alongside it I activity in mind and spirit. This system of forces may get independent if there is too much phosphorus. Hyperaemia in the skeleton as against calcification process. Phosphorus processes in brain and bone. Small doses for rickets—taking the physical I structure back to soul activity. Small doses of phosphorus cure rickets and other inflammatory conditions. Conversely, carbonates are effective if mind and spirit are bound up too much with the structure, and also for pulmonary tuberculosis. Life in head system conscious, in limbs unconscious. Massage improves connection between mind and soul on the one hand and physical on the other. Arms and hands constructive, legs and feet destructive. Diabetes—exaggerated I activity in organic sphere. Essential vegetable oils in bath are medicinal. Problem of heredity. Female organism develops more out of cosmic, male organism from earthly forces. Full meaning of Earth evolution through human I activity. Reproductive powers in male and female. Haemophilia. Future study of medicine. Progress in medicine only with spiritual research.

II ANTHROPOSOPHICAL BASIS FOR THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE

LECTURE 5STUTTGART, 26 OCTOBER 1922

Basis of spiritual investigation for medicine and physiology other than mystical and gnostic approaches. No supersensible views in medicine since Galen. The four elements of Galen. Developing inner abilities—seeing the element of spirit and soul and the spiritual cosmos. In anthroposophy, full recognition of empiricism based on sensory perceptions. Guidelines for empirical research from science of the spirit. All factors taken into account. Liver, brain and blood cell compared to germ cell. Relationship of organic principle to universe not secondary. Stream of heredity. Structure of brain. Theodor Ziehen, Herbart. Brain—three-dimensional reflection of our life in ideas. Meynert. Image-based insight and structure of brain. Breathing process and inspired insight. Metabolic process and intuitive insight. Brain reflects mind and spirit; these enter wholly into metabolism. Act of will goes as far as metabolism. Recognizing the four structures of aggregation in human beings. Ascending and descending processes. Kidneys are organs of excretion to outside, liver to inside.

LECTURE 6STUTTGART, 27 OCTOBER 1922

The different functions of human beings. The bodies or levels of existence. Living in the I point. Sexual maturity is peak of animal development. Human beings—physical body, laboratory investigations; etheric organization, structure of functions in enlivened fluid sphere. Solids are deposited in fluid element. Astral organization intervenes in airy element. Internal gas exchange in solid and fluid has laws. Fluctuating form given to airy organization. I organization intervenes directly in differentiated temperature levels. Route which foods take to lymph and blood streams. Ptyalinization means being taken into sphere of life. Then transmitted to vascular system, in cardiopulmonary tract, from the inorganic to sphere of life. Oxygen we breathe in takes the etheric into the physical. Carbon fixes the physical organization. Carbon—physical organization. Oxygen—etheric organization. Protein synthesis. Kidneys provide connection between the astral and the other organs—power of sentience, soul quality. Effects of cold and heat—excretion from kidneys. Significance of allantois and amnion for investigation of germ cell. Renal system and nitrogen—metamorphosis of uric acid and urea. I organization in warmth structure in hepato-biliary system. Animal sequence and hepato-biliary evolution. Lethal childhood diseases with secretion of bile. I organization—hydrogen. Annual plants, potatoes, cockchafer grub. Different structures of substances in flowers, leaves, roots, seed. Medicinal teas.

LECTURE 7STUTTGART, 27 OCTOBER 1922, EVENING

LECTURE 8STUTTGART, 28 OCTOBER 1922

LECTURE 9 ON EURYTHMY THERAPY (GIVEN IN THE MEDICAL WEEK)STUTTGART, 28 OCTOBER 1922

Purpose and significance of eurythmy therapy. Metabolic system and neurosensory system working together in human speech. Eurythmy as metamorphosis of ordinary speech sounds by enhancing the will principle and reducing the ideation principle. General health-giving action of active involvement in art of eurythmy. Eurythmic forms reflected inwards with eurythmy therapy, due to repetition. Eurythmy therapy given by physician or in close collaboration with physician. Sound diagnosis. Vowel and consonant principles working together, e.g. in dentition L, A, O; renal conditions S, A, B, P. Human organs in polarity of centrifugal and centripetal dynamics, mutual regulation with eurythmy therapy. Artistic mood. Eurythmy therapy and therapy as such. Massage. Physical exercises. E movements to gain strength, I movement to harmonise association between left and right sides of organism, movements with index finger and big toe, and eye. Complete U form in eurythmy therapy, standing to attention. O form—sensing the whole muscular system. Conscious awareness as a healing factor. E forms and U forms to regulate relationship between activities of astral and etheric organism. Gentler eurythmy therapy for pregnant women, pelvic diseases, paralysis. Warning not to overestimate the method, amateurism. Sound physiology as basis for a therapy which works ‘in the light’. Correcting misapprehensions.

III ASPECTS OF THERAPY

LECTURE 10DORNACH, 31 DECEMBER 1923

Syphilis. Medicament—mercury. Action of ether body in system of metabolism and limbs. Ether body and physical body and I acting together in neurosensory system. Diagnosis is a whole case history. Syphilis—I organization predominates over ether body in pelvic region. Treatment with mercury ointment. Side effects. I organization lives in cosmic rounding-off powers. Problem of mercury dosage. For treating syphilis—find phantom of I organization with Astragalus exscapus (hart's milk vetch)—I organization going its own way. Also meditate abstract ideas—varying triangular form. Polarity of glaucoma and otitis, hypertrophy of vitreous body activity. Treatment for glaucoma—calcium carbonate and extract of aerial root. Astral body activity above diaphragm polar opposite to its activity below. Development of nerve substance. Essential oil of flowers for lower astral body. Substance from cosmic surroundings via respiration for neurosensory system.

LECTURE 11DORNACH, 1 JANUARY 1924

LECTURE 12DORNACH, 2 JANUARY 1924

Gonorrhoea. Toxic effect of male and female seed. Parasites. Treatment—alkali carbonate, oil of eucalyptus compresses. Asthma close to purely physical. Mental diseases may be purely physical. Cause of asthma in embryonic life—mother subject to shock and worries—action on mucosa of respiratory organs. Inner lack of appetite. Proper connection between ether and astral body interrupted—sage leaves, nut leaves, oak bark, willow bark, Veronica officinalis. Meditation on breathing. Nervous breakdown, sleeplessness, automatic thinking—eurythmy therapy, Equisetum baths, work with vowels. Proliferation of palatal mucosa— weakness of ether body—Apis, Vespa, honey, milk. Diseases of spinal marrow—difficult to treat—phantom of I and astral body due to silica action. Arnica, potassium salt, calcium salt, tannic acid. Latex-type protein in Arnica. Phosphorus, Quadrigeminal preparation for diseases of spinal marrow—tabes dorsalis, locomotor ataxia. Neural disease in digestive tract—Chamomilla injections. Tendency to myopia, hyperopia. Treatment. Glaucoma—start with Belledonna before third year of life.

IV HYGIENE AS A SOCIAL ISSUE

LECTURE 13PUBLIC LECTURE, DORNACH, 7 APRIL 1920

V ASPECTS OF PSYCHIATRY

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERSDORNACH, 26 MARCH 1920

Study of psychiatry today. Influence of spiritual science. Problems with transition from relatively well to relatively sick. Fundamental—consider whole social environment. Various conditions in robust country people and weak city people. Transitions from pathological to normal. Psychiatric medicine in need of reform. Raving madness, feeblemindedness, difficult boundary between mentally normal and abnormal.

VI ADDRESS (FOLLOWED BY DISCUSSION) AT A MEETING WITH MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS

ADDRESS DORNACH, 21 APRIL 1924

Realities have lost value. Higher levels of human existence not known in modern medicine. Astral body and I organization predominantly active in human head. Physical body and ether body inducing more destructive processes in head, more constructive processes in system of metabolism and limbs. Liver comes to resemble head more when astral body and I withdraw. Reverse in the head. Too many vegetative processes in the head with diseases in system of metabolism and limbs. Identification of medicinal agents and cosmic activities. Lead, antimony. Telluric and cosmic processes. Soul at one on awakening. Levels of existence when walking and thinking. Liver disease and treatment. Loving study of morbid processes. Religious mood for healing processes. Insight processes for diagnosis and treatment. Treatment of excessively stimulated kidneys with silica. Statistics or full insight into single case. Stimulating astral body with arsenic to treat syphilis. Good medicines outside anthroposophy. Asthma treated with meditation. Courage to heal. Put aside thoughts of death. Medicaments as far as possible from plant world.

DISCUSSIONS WITH MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS (FRAGMENTARY NOTES) IDORNACH, 22 APRIL 1924

DISCUSSIONS WITH MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS (FRAGMENTARY NOTES) IIDORNACH, 23 APRIL 1924

Viscum as a specific. Carcinoma. Pre-publication passages from Extending Practical Medicine. Fundamental Principles based on the Science of the Spirit. Example: From diagnosis to treatment. Case 4—paralysis, atrophic sites in ether body, astral body not penetrating. Astral body intervening too powerfully in physical body. Rheumarthritis—astral body intervenes directly in physical body in the joints—spasm or inflammation. Teeth getting worse. Cause of frequent dreams—weakness in ether body. Urinalysis. Weakness relating to smells. Prefers sweet dishes—weakness in astral body. Occult finding—allantois not fully developed. State of allantois may be discovered from that of astral body. Allantois—physical correlate of astral body. Chorion—physical correlate of I organization. Often deep-seated damage there for generations. Influence I organization to harmonize astral body and ether body. Effects of pyrites ointment—astral body more lively. Action of golden agaric ointment. Solidago, Stellaria. Tea of willow bark, Stannum—highly effective for difficult child. Problems of history-taking. Case 5—Weakness of I organization means digestion of fats inadequate. Weakness of astral organization means carbohydrates not adequately digested. Ether organization too weak means protein not properly digested. Treatment with silica reduces sensitivity of astral body and I organization. Artificial sensitivity produced with mustard plaster—subtle stimulus. Guiding astral activity to ether body with copper and Carbo animalis. Pancreas preparation for ether weakness in digestive organs. Silver injections strengthen ether body in cases of pyrexia. Damage caused by metabolic deposits due to I organization. Insidious destructive damage due to astral body. Development of carcinoma corresponds to development of a sense organ, e.g. eye. Processes from outside the human being act like foreign bodies. Etheric deposits develop. Levels of existence relate in different ways. Very different in the ear. Breast cancer due to mechanical insults. Viscum injections for tendency to develop cancer. Heredity. Meditate on things it is possible to establish through spiritual science in disease processes according to the symptoms. Meditate on spiritual-scientific causes in relation to symptoms. Eurythmy—in the human organism things that are conscious are derived from the unconscious. Movements of limbs held back after birth (wrapping legs tightly) later helps speech development.

Invitation and programmes of courses in Dornach in 1920 and in Stuttgart in 1922

Notes

Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Colour Plates

EDITOR'S PREFACE

Before the beginning of the twentieth century, Rudolf Steiner devoted himself in his intensive studies of philosophy and Goethean science to a critical assessment, open to the future, of the basic methodological questions in natural science and medicine. When the new century began—Steiner had joined the theosophical movement and was beginning to bring his own approach to it—new subjects for research (Paracelsus, homoeopathy) came up and so did first contacts with physicians interested in theosophy who wanted to devote themselves to a medicine broadened through the science of the spirit. Rudolf Steiner made many suggestions and gave his support to the initiatives of individual people, also opening up areas for research. The breakthrough to establish anthroposophic medicine was not made until the spring of 1920 though, when he gave his first course of lectures for physicians (Introducing Anthroposophical Medicine, CW 312). During the next five years, until his death on 30 March 1925, it proved possible, in connection with intensive lecturing activity, to begin or realize some of the things which Rudolf Steiner wanted to achieve for a medicine broadened through spiritual science—to build bridges between empirical science, which he always supported—and a newly initiated science of the spirit; to combine the insights arising from this with clinical work and medical practice; to develop and produce new medicines, and to establish innovative research and training.

The lectures Rudolf Steiner gave and statements he made on medical subjects in this volume are certainly heterogeneous, covering the period from 1920 to 1924, apart from the major courses (the first and second medical courses, Understanding Healing, Education for Special Needs and Broken Vessels). They range from a question-and-answer session and the concluding lecture in a course of public lectures on the subject of anthroposophy and specific sciences, to lectures given in someone else's place at the first anthroposophical tertiary education course and discussions with small groups of medical practitioners. (For further details on things said on other occasions, see below.) In view of this heterogeneity it seems particularly important, if Rudolf Steiner's words are to be properly understood, to note the given context in every case.

As has been said, this volume contains the spoken words of Rudolf Steiner on medical subjects in all kinds of different ways (lectures, discussions, questions and answers), addressed to very different audiences (public, physicians, students):

Part I, Autumn 1920: Physiological and therapeutic studies based on spiritual science

From 26 September to 16 October 1920 the first of the ‘anthroposophical university-level courses’ was the first event to take place in the main auditorium of the Goetheanum in Dornach, with the building not yet quite finished. The aim of the organizers (Verein Goetheanismus and Bund für anthroposophische Hochschularbeit) was to have various speakers present the spiritual-scientific work in many different spheres of life to the public (see programme at the end of this book). A series of lectures by Ludwig Noll, MD, Kassel, was planned for the second week, the title being ‘Physiological and therapeutic studies based on spiritual science’. At the last minute Dr Noll was unexpectedly unable to come to Dornach. Rudolf Steiner then spoke on the theme in four lectures in his place.

Part II, Autumn 1922: Anthroposophical foundations for the practice of medicine

These lectures were given to an audience of physicians and medical students as part of a ‘medical week’ at the Institute of Clinical medicine established in Stuttgart on 15 August 1921. The aim of this conference was to make medicine broadened on the basis of anthroposophy known in the general medical world and in the public domain. On the last day of the medical week Rudolf Steiner spoke to the physicians and medical students of eurythmy therapy. As the programme shows, practical demonstrations of it were made daily from 5 to 7 p.m.

Part III, Winter 1923-24: Therapy

During the 1923-24 Christmas Conference, at which the General Anthroposophical Society was established, three discussions were held with anthroposophical physicians in the ‘Glass House’ (at 8.30 a.m. on 31 December 1923 and 1 January 1924, and at 10 a.m. on 2 January 1924). Rudolf Steiner gave his views on individual issues raised by the physicians. Apart from Drs Friedrich Husemann, Ludwig Noll, Otto Palmer and Felix Peipers from Stuttgart, the meetings were also attended by physicians from the Arlesheim clinic—Ita Wegman, Hilma Walter, Margaret Bockholt, Julia Bort and Eberhard Schickler. Eugen Kolisko from the Stuttgart Waldorf School was present, as were eight anthroposophical physicians from a number of other European cities.

Part IV, Spring 1920:The lecture on ‘Hygiene as a Social Issue’ was the concluding talk Rudolf Steiner gave at a fortnight's public event on ‘Anthroposophy and Different Fields of Science’ where a number of anthroposophical speakers had spoken on sciences, education, the arts, social and other issues. This conference may be considered to have been the precursor of the first anthroposophical university-level course in the autumn of 1920 (see above). The time when the lecture was given was between the 18th and 19th lectures in the first medical course (Introducing Anthroposophical Medicine). The written questions addressed to Rudolf Steiner after the lecture were probably put by people attending the medical course. This lecture is also published in Fachwissenschaften und Anthroposophie (not publ. in English) which documents the conference as a whole.

Spring 1920:At the beginning of the above conference Dr Friedrich Husemann gave a talk on ‘Nervousness, Philosophy of Life and Anthroposophy’ which was followed by discussion. The questions and answers on psychiatry were Rudolf Steiner's concluding words in the discussion. See also the above-mentioned Fachwissenschaften volume, which included this question-and-answer session.

Spring 1924:The discussions with medical practitioners on 21, 22 and 23 April 1924 took place at medical meetings during the Easter course for young doctors. Apart from older physicians who had been practising for some time, the meeting was also attended by younger physicians and medical students.

The chronological table of medical lectures and discussions (below) may help to gain a clearer picture of Rudolf Steiner's lecturing activities in this field.

Date

Venue

Occasion

21 March-9 April 1920

Dornach

First medical course

(Introducing Anthroposophical Medicine)

GA 312

26 March 1920 7 April 1920

Dornach

Q&A on Psychiatry Hygiene as a social issue (both GA 314,

Physiology and Healing)

7-9 October 1920

Dornach

Lectures on ‘Physiological and therapeutic themes based on spiritual science’ (GA 314)

11-18 April 1921

Dornach

Second medical course, GA 313

(Illness and Therapy)

12-18 April 1921

Dornach

Eurythmy therapy lectures for physicians and eurythmists, GA 315

(Eurythmy Therapy)

26-28 October 1922 28 October 1922

Stuttgart

Anthroposophical Basis for the Practice of Medicine (GA 3l4) Lecture on eurythmy therapy (GA 314)

31 December 1923/1 January/2 January 1924 28 August 1923-29 August 1924

Dornach (various cities)

Discussions with anthroposophical physicians on Therapy (GA 314)

The Healing Process

(GA 319)

2-9 January 1924

Dornach

GA 316

(Understanding Healing)

21-25 April 1924 21-23 April 1924

Dornach

Easter course, part of above (GA 316) Discussions with medical practitioners (GA 314)

25 June-7 July 1924

Dornach

GA 317

(Education for Special Needs)

8-18 September 1924

Dornach

GA 318

(Broken Vessels)

Summary of Medical Courses in English Translation (latest editions shown):

GA/CW 312

Introducing Anthroposophical Medicine

(SteinerBooks 2010)

313

Illness and Therapy

(Rudolf Steiner Press 2013)

314

Physiology and Healing

(Rudolf Steiner Press 2013)

315

Eurythmy Therapy

(Rudolf Steiner Press 2009)

316

Understanding Healing

(Rudolf Steiner Press 2013)

317

Education for Special Needs

(Rudolf Steiner Press 1998)

318

Broken Vessels

(SteinerBooks 2003)

319

The Healing Process

(SteinerBooks 2000)

INTRODUCTION

Medical science is of course concerned with the human body in all its complexities and wonders—but what skills or capacities do we need to fathom these? Steiner repeatedly suggests in this volume, and elsewhere, that scientists and physicians fail to understand the body precisely because they see it only as a physical organism. It is not just that the psyche is ignored or dismissed. Very often, in fact, this is not the case: the realities of both body and soul are acknowledged, and inclusion of complementary therapies in national health programmes has gone some way to addressing our sense that ‘we are not just bodies’, as has the whole realm of psychotherapy. Nevertheless, this acknowledgement of the reciprocal effect of body and psyche remains largely abstract, or vague at least. Meanwhile, Steiner's medical lectures are probably unique in, firstly, seeing the human body as inconceivable without the higher levels of soul and spirit which inform, and in diverse ways in different organs and systems, act within it; and secondly, in deriving from these highly varied interactions, medicines and measures that very specifically address different diseases and disorders by re-establishing the organ-specific degree of healthy engagement between spirit, soul and body.

Steiner's accounts of these extraordinarily complex interactions give one a sense of dynamic reality that continually changes in the ebb and flow of withdrawal and engagement between physical, etheric, astral and spiritual levels. He sees the human body as, literally, the embodiment of all these reciprocal realities. The capacities physicians need therefore— alongside thorough insight into physical processes—include well-grounded imagination and intuition, an artistic appreciation of the full spectrum of diverse and, if you like, almost musical interactions between different levels at work in us. How does the spirit (our core being) work in the body? Not just as some static constant or general principle. Nor are disease and health just distinct and easily distinguished sides of the human coin, one ‘normal’ the other ‘abnormal’, but both are intrinsic to an essential mutuality and flux. To take just one example: the ‘I’ and astral body (the human spirit and soul) are, in Steiner's account, most deeply engaged in us in metabolic and motor processes, whereas in the neurosensory system focused (but not confined to) the head—in our thinking therefore—these two levels are furthest withdrawn from physical involvement. As a surprising reversal, then, of our usual perception of the head as ‘more spiritual’ and our metabolic processes as ‘more physical’, we find our highest spiritual principle ‘vacating the premises’ of the head in healthy conditions, creating a free space for thoughts to be ‘mirrored’, whereas this same highest principle really ‘gets down to work’ in our metabolism and movements and is most fully engaged there. Very simply—and Steiner goes into far more complex, sometimes bewildering detail, which requires all our alert attention to follow—disorders of the metabolism can arise where, for whatever reason (including a range of traumas), the I and astral body withdraw, allowing lower principles to burgeon unchecked. Here therapy will involve interventions, medicinal, physical or psychological, or all at once, that induce the higher principles to engage again as they should. Such measures cannot really be carried out without yet another vital element emphasized by Steiner: the physician's loving attention as intrinsic to the healing process. Thus we find that ‘physical’ disorders cannot only be treated physically nor can ‘mental’ disorders be treated only psychologically. The latter are also invariably rooted in specific organs.

The range of Steiner's observations in these lectures is staggering. It is as if we are asked to look up from the small focus of the microscope and the narrow field of view of a particular medical specialism and encompass in inner vision a far broader panorama of human nature, though without for a moment relinquishing attention to the tiniest detail. This stance is, indeed, part of what Steiner calls the ‘courage to heal’: the capacity to observe the whole cosmos of the human being, all the varied and interacting laws at work in us, in order then to intervene with detailed understanding, with loving compassion and respect for each human biography. A daunting challenge, but surely the true task of medicine.

Andrew Maendl, MD, and Matthew Barton, September 2013

I PHYSIOLOGY AND THERAPY BASED ON THE SCIENCE OF THE SPIRIT

LECTURE 1

DORNACH, 7 OCTOBER 1920

THE speaker has not yet arrived.1 I hope he’ll be here soon, but for now, I don’t wish to have you sitting there waiting. It is self-evident that this series of lectures carries particular weight as part of the course. The intention is to take a practical subject and show how our spiritual science with anthroposophical orientation truly can play an effective role in everyday life. Now as everyone knows from personal experience, medicine, medical treatment, is a most important sphere of life, and for this reason if no other we must not fail to take anthroposophy into the field of medicine right from the beginning of our anthroposophical endeavours.

In this course we endeavoured to have the individual subject areas covered by people who are qualified specialists also in everyday terms. It is necessary to do so when we, representing spiritual science, present the different subjects to the world, for otherwise they are not taken the way they are meant to be taken. I will therefore try and say a few things about physiology and how it relates to medical treatment until the speaker arrives, doing so from the spiritual-scientific point of view. That was more or less the proposed subject matter. And I want to show you how much spiritual science is needed in the study of medicine and then also in medical practice, in the whole art of medicine.

As you know, at our universities the study of medicine is usually preceded by a study of the sciences. The actual study of medicine comes after this. Having got to know the phenomena more of biology and physiology, one then gives consideration to the pathological phenomena, until one finally comes to the subject of therapeutics. Many members of this audience will no doubt know that therapy really gets a poor deal in the process. It is indeed true that with the study of medicine given this scientific approach people concentrate on the natural processes relating to human beings. When the future physicians then come to the subject of pathological processes they do so with a mind concentrated on natural processes and are hardly able to see pathological processes in the right light. Now there is an opinion which I think has come up more or less of necessity in more recent times. We tend to gain a particular view of processes in nature, their inner connection and the underlying causes. In a healthy individual we must therefore under these conditions quite evidently look for certain natural processes in a necessary causal relationship. In a sick person, or let us say in a sick organism, what can we look for but basically also natural processes subject to causal necessity?

Yet we are compelled to say that compared to a healthy organism the natural processes in their very obviously causal development of a disease are abnormal, in a way dropping out of the system of causal relationships that exist in a healthy organism. In short, as soon as we enter into the field of medicine doubt and scepticism arise concerning our actual approach to the study of nature when it comes to considering natural events from the modern point of view. Many medical people therefore develop a real scepticism, downright nihilism, as I have said here on other occasions, when it comes to treatment. I have known famous professors at the faculty of medicine in Vienna—at a time when that faculty of medicine was at the height of its glory—who at heart really were nihilists when it came to treatment.2 They said that one can really only let a disease take its course—and they took the particular disease where such a view does certainly apply, pneumonia, as an example. One can guide the course it is taking with external measures that will ameliorate or promote it, until the crisis comes and the whole then dies down again. Essentially we cannot speak of a cure in the true sense of the word, though people have done so for centuries if not millennia.

If such a view were to be consistently taken further, medicine would gradually develop into pure pathology. For in the study of diseases, albeit from the point of view of a natural science based on materialistic thinking, an extraordinary degree of perfection has been achieved in this age of therapeutic nihilism. At this point I’d also warn you against the potential misconception that in Dornach and in spiritual science with anthroposophical orientation we fail to recognize and tend to underestimate the full significance of modern science. That is not at all the case. Someone who has taken even just a brief look at the methods of investigation in pathology in the second half of the nineteenth century and how they have developed can only do so in amazement and admiration for the brilliant, tremendous progress made. Yet beyond this he must also make a very different admission. He has to say to himself: Yes, materialism has arrived. But it cannot meet certain needs in the human heart and mind; nor can it cast an adequate light on vast areas of human insight.

Materialism has however had its own kind of mission, I’d say. It has made us develop our ability to experiment and observe in an extraordinarily careful and thorough way. We are entirely indebted to this materialism for our modern pathology, even if it does have that materialistic bias. People will always complain if one is not biased in our present age. As editor of the journal Magazin für Literatur,3 I was labelled a materialist when I had written an article after Buechner's4 death that did not condemn him but did indeed express appreciation of his merits. This is what matters when we live with and practise the science of the spirit, that we are able to enter into everything, everywhere finding the thought form, the form of sentience, on which approaches and philosophies that may be complete opposites may draw, and we are also able to appreciate the merits of something which has its root in such a thing as materialism. At the present time—and this is simply the need of our time—we must, however, overcome materialism.

There is something else to which I’d like to draw your attention. You will have heard in the lectures given here that we seek to establish a phenomenology in science. You will also have heard, with full justification, that there is need to look for a chemistry free from hypothesis.5 I am keen to discover if someone might not find that with regard to one thing or another which indeed has to be presented with reference to medicine and the practice of medicine, the discussions do not also cover elements that will seem to him to be hypothetical. But we must first clearly establish the concept ‘hypothesis’, especially when moving from the study of the inorganic to the organic.

What is a hypothesis? Well, let us take a perfectly ordinary thing from everyday life. When I have walked along a road and seen someone along this road and walked on and then did not see him any more I am unlikely to assume at first that this person has disappeared into the ground, something most unlikely to happen. No, I’ll look around and perhaps see a house. I can limit my ideas and say to myself: Well, he's gone into that house. I don’t see him now, but he's in there. It would be a justifiable hypothesis if I were to take the thoughts, as it were, that come to me as my senses perceive this, and then something occurs that needs further explanation, so that I have to presuppose something, take it as a hypothesis. This will arise from my train of thought but cannot be seen or observed directly, so that it is not a direct phenomenon for me. I would not be setting up a vague hypothesis in making such an assumption, just as I’d not be setting up a vague hypothesis when on using a thermometer I first perceive an increase in temperature, and then see this temperature disappear—due to freezing or something of the kind—and speak of the loss of latent heat.

If investigation is to be fruitful it is now and then necessary, therefore, to take the sequence of sensory concepts further. An unjustifiable hypothesis is one where we arrive at ideas where if we take them further, and consider them with insight, it becomes evident that the things on which it is based simply cannot ever be perceived. We must then provide the ideas we arrive at—ideas on atomism, molecularism—with ingredients that can never be perceived, otherwise we would be able to perceive them. For we could never, for instance, cherish the illusion—if there were some kind of process by which it would be possible to see even the smallest particles of bodies—that we could then still explain light as arising from motion. In that case we would actually be taking light into those smallest particles.

I would ask you to make occasion at this point to develop a clear idea of justifiably continuing in thought within an experience on the one hand and of establishing unjustifiable hypotheses on the other.

To come back once more to that earlier thought, we have to say: We see someone before us whom we consider to be ‘normal’. And we see someone else who has fallen ill. We must of necessity acknowledge a process taking its natural course in either case. Yet how does the one process relate to the other? The fact that we keep physiology, pathology and medical treatment separate, as has become the custom in recent times, prevents us from gaining the relevant ideas as we move from one to the other. Apart from this, modern medical people really cannot include the spiritual in their considerations when working with physiology or also pathology, for the spiritual is really something unknown in the modern approach to science. And so it is not included in any of their considerations.

It is possible to contrast the two natural processes, one physiological, the other pathological, definitely and clearly, initially in abstract form, choosing certain final forms in pathology, I’d say, and the study of such final forms may perhaps allow us to arrive at fruitful ideas. You need not think of there being an absolute necessity, of it being demanded, when you are at the beginning of a science. This correctness, something we call inner necessity, can only develop in the course of our studies. And we may therefore start at any point, I’d say, if we want to study a particular thing in nature.

Let us take a truly extreme case within the sick human organism. One most extreme case which presents many problems in modern medicine is the development of cancer. With this we see—as may also be seen under the microscope—something organic, or at least looking organic, developing in such a way in the ordinary organism that it will gradually destroy life in the rest of that organism. At first all we can say is that within the body of the human organism we see something arise where we see how, rising from unknown depths, something enters into the usual natural course which interferes with the development of that natural course.

We may also turn to the other extreme of a pathological organism. We can perceive something arising, something where, in a sense, normal activity in the human organism proliferates, becoming ‘unnormal’. We then consider the human organism to be abnormal. I don’t particularly wish to operate with the terms ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’, but they will serve our purpose for the moment. In due course of time it would then be evident, if this line of thought were to be taken further—which I hope it won’t—that in transition the normal would also simply go over into the ‘abnormal’, as it is called. Just for the moment it will be reasonable to use the terms ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’. With reference to the ‘normal’ human organization we note that in the psyche, too, a specific form of will intent develops, a specific form of feeling and a specific form of thinking. In social life we have gradually let a kind of ‘normal’ image crystallize out of the ideas we gain from dealing with other people, an image which makes us consider a person as ‘normal’ who to a certain degree develops his will, feeling and thinking out of his own nature.

Concentrating that thought just a little, we will inevitably say to ourselves that if the organism functions too strongly, functioning like a body containing latent heat from which we remove that latent heat and which would then release too much free heat into the surrounding world so that we’d no longer know what to do with this heat—now if the human organism were to function in such a way, sending out too much in this direction, it would of necessity, if it were to present itself to us in reality, have to show the results which we’ve arrived at in our thinking, though the emotional element always comes into this through the element of feeling. In our thoughts such a human organism would seem to us to be affected by the abnormality we call mania. We see something appear in this human organism which results from powers of organization flooding it, powers that go very much in the direction of sensory qualities. Carcinoma-type developments are something where natural force appears in the organism, segregating itself, as it were, where this organizing power becomes embedded in the organism. On the other hand, the pathological phenomena of mania or the like are something which the organism is not able to hold on to, as it were, something which comes out of the organism. If I were to draw a diagram of this, I would do it by saying: If this is the normal development of the human organism, I’d draw in the occurrence of a carcinomatous growth like this [Fig. 1, below, red], putting something by way of powers of growth in some place or other, powers that now cling to the organism inwardly, so that it must there provide something which otherwise it would provide for the whole organism.

Fig. 1

For a diagram of mania I would have to show something welling forth from the organism (blue), something pushing towards the sphere of mind and soul.

I have been referring to extreme situations, and you may consider them also in less acute forms. Imagine the problem does not go as far as developing into a carcinoma, but rather a carcinomatous change prevented from going all the way. In that case some organ or other—for these things do not happen in a vacuum, of course, nor in spaces between organs—is taken hold of, but the power which otherwise tends to go inwards and in there emancipate, growing quite independent, unites with the power normal to the organ. The organ is then affected by a disease which we may refer to in many different ways, as has come to be the custom in medicine.

Let us assume a tendency towards mania is stopped halfway. The abnormality of the individual's organization does not cause the element of mind and soul to be put outside completely, as is the case with full-blown mania, where it is completely beside itself, as it were, and the thought element emotionally goes its own way. The element which tends towards the other extreme goes only halfway, and we then have the different forms of ‘mental illness’ as it is called—as it is called, I say—which may take all kinds of different forms, from illusions, which are organic in origin, all the way to states of hysteria and so on where an organic origin is hardly demonstrable, though they do have their basis in the organism. As you can see, the aim has been to consider the phenomena that take us from the normal to the pathological in two different directions. We must consider these phenomena before we can form an opinion about them.

Let me now show you from another angle how it is possible to grasp, at least to a degree, what is behind it all, doing so not yet entirely out of the science of the spirit, the methods of which I have referred to as insight in images, inspiration and intuition, but by using a certain instinct, as we might call it, though unless there is a desire to progress to the spiritual-scientific way doing it from instinct will only take us halfway.

There is an extraordinarily interesting phenomenon in the evolution of German culture. Leaving aside one's personal view of Schelling6 as a philosopher, he is an interesting phenomenon in the history of civilization. Perhaps everything he has developed as a philosophy may be wrong and askew, but there was a certain instinct alive in him for natural processes even in areas where people working in ordinary science are not at ease in following events in nature, relying more on a very crude empiricism. Schelling has indeed also tried to think in terms of medicine as occasion arose, and actually devoted quite some time especially to issues relating to healing processes. Little thought has been given in the more recent study of the history of philosophy to how Schelling actually came to leave more abstract and local philosophical deliberations aside and enter, quite instinctively, into a realistic study of nature and even the organic sphere. He actually published a journal7 in which medical issues were extensively considered.