Physiology and Healing: Treatment, Therapy, and Hygiene (CW 314) (The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner)

Lectures & discussions, Dornach, Stuttgart, 19201924 (CW 314)

Following his first major lecture course for medical practitioners, Steiner elaborated and deepened his extension of conventional healing through a spiritual-scientific perspective. In this collection of addresses, discussions, question-and-answer sessions, and lectureswhich paralleled his major medical coursesSteiner comments on contemporary medical emphasis on experimental, materially based research and its lack of attention to therapy. Steiners intention is not to detract from developments in medical science but to build on them with spiritual science. The medical practitioner has an important taskdiseases must be cured, and it is wrong not to intervene and simply to allow karma to take its course.

Speaking both to the general public and to small groups of medical professionals, Steiner offers new insights into our understanding of human organs, as well as the efficacy of healing substances such as arsenic, sulfur, arnica, and essential plant oils. He studies a broad range of specific medical conditions, offering advice on cancer, hysteria, rheumatism, gout, skin eruptions, typhoid, diabetes, hemophilia, syphilis, gonorrhea, asthma, glaucoma, leukemia, smallpox, insomnia, and childhood diseases such as measles. His commentaries on subjects such as psychiatry, sexual maturity, memory, poisoning, and detoxification present challenging perspectives for both patients and medical practitioners. Steiners surprisingly non-dogmatic advice on vaccination, for example, gives a refreshingly balanced and, perhaps unexpected, point of view.

READ A REVIEW OF THIS BOOK BY BOBBY MATHERNE

This volume is a translation from German of Physiologisch- Therapeutisches auf Grundlage der Geisteswissenschaft (GA 314). Portions of this lecture course were previously published as Four Lectures to Doctors (4 lectures) and Health Care as a Social Issue (1 lecture).