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.When we know how to make the correct preparation from Cichorium intybus, we can lead it over into the functions of this organ as a certain form of carbon-process, in the same way as is done with regard to the silicic-acid process and the kidneys.With these simple examples — which are applicable either to slight or in certain circumstances to very severe cases of illness — I have tried to indicate how, by a spiritual-scientific observation of the human organism on the one hand, and on the other of the different natural creations and their respective interchanges with each other, there can be brought about, firstly, an understanding of the processes of illness, and secondly an understanding of what is required in order to reverse the direction of those processes.Healing becomes thereby a penetrating Art.This is what can be achieved for the art of Medicine, the art of Healing, by the kind of scientific research that is called Anthroposophy.There is nothing of the nature of fantasy about it.It is that which will bring research to the point of extreme exactitude with regard to the observation of the whole human being, both physically, psychically and spiritually.The condition of illness in man depends upon the respective activity of the physical, the psychic and the spiritual.And because man's constitution consists of nerves-and-senses system, rhythmic system, metabolic-and-limb system, we are enabled also to penetrate into the different processes and their degrees of activity.We learn to know how a sense-function is present in the kidneys as soon as we direct our attention to the essential nature of sense-functions; otherwise, we only seek to discover sense-functions under their cruder aspect as they appear in the senses themselves.Now however, we become able to comprehend illness as such.I have already said that in the metabolic-and-limb system, processes take place which are the opposite of those that take place in the system of nerves-and-senses.But it can happen that processes which primarily are also nerves and senses processes, and are, for instance, proper to the nerves of the head where they are `normal' — It can happen that these processes can in a certain sense become dislodged by the metabolic-and-limb system; that through an abnormality of the astral body and Ego-organisation in the metabolic-limb-system something can happen which would be `correct' or `normal' only if taking place in the system of nerves-and-senses.That is to say, what is right for one system can be in another system productive of metamorphosis or disease.So that a process which properly belongs, for instance, to the system of nerves-and-senses makes its appearance in another system, and is then a process of disease.An example of this is found in typhoid fever.Typhoid represents a process which belongs properly to the nervous system.While it should play its part there in the physical organisation, it plays its part as a matter of fact in the region of the metabolic system within the etheric organisation — within the ether body — works over into the physical body and appears there as typhoid.Here we see into the nature of the onset of illness.Or it can also happen that the dynamic force, or those forces which are active in a sense-organ (and must be active there in a certain degree in order that a sense-organ as such may arise) — become active somewhere where they should not.That which works in a sense-organ can be in some way or another transformed in its activity elsewhere.Let us take the activity of the ear.Instead of remaining in the system of nerves-and-senses, it obtrudes itself (and this under circumstances which can also be described) in another place — for example in the metabolic system where this is connected with the rhythmic system.Then there arises, in the wrong place, an abnormal tendency to produce a sense-organ; and this manifests itself as carcinoma — as a cancerous growth.It is only when we can look in this way into the human organism that we can perceive that carcinoma represents a certain tendency, displaced in respect of the systems, to the formation of a sense organ.When we speak of the fertilisation of Medicine through Anthroposophy, it is a question of learning how abnormal conditions in the human organism arise from the fact that what is normal to one system transplants itself into another.And only by perceiving the matter thus is one in a position really to understand the human organism in its healthy and diseased states, and so to make the bridge from pathology to therapy, from observation of the patient to healing the patient.When these things are represented as a connected whole, it will be seen how nothing that is said from this standpoint can in any way contradict modern medicine.As a first step in this direction I hope that very soon now the book [`,' by Dr.Rudolf Steiner and Dr.Ita Wegman.] will be published that has been written by me in collaboration with Dr.Wegman, the Director of the Clinical and Therapeutic Institute at Arlesheim [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]