When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 6 - Waldorf Research Institute

anthroposophy guides us to medicinal agents in the natural world; on the
other, it helps us to gain genuine insight into the nature of illness.
We do not really understand illness today. It is necessary to see disease
as a living process. Human beings are always in danger of falling ill. It is
the disposition to illness that is so difficult to observe today; people do
not learn to observe the developments that lead to illness. If we compare
the knowledge we have today with that of 200 years ago, we see that
magnificent work has been done in observing the fully developed illness
and its consequences—as seen in the dead body. Teacher and physician must
work together to ob serve disease in its early evolution.
The fact that the human being has a threefold nature holds the potential
for all kinds of diseases; for example, the head organization will make a
person ill if it extends its powers to the whole human being. Someone whose
metabolic system is too dominant will be prone to diseases because of this.
Human beings maintain health only insofar as they keep opposites in
balance. Let us consider a case of pneumonia, for instance. At a certain
stage, the lung is filled with fluid, with blood and mucus, so that it has
the same consistency as the liver. It is filled with fluid in a process called
hepatization. With pneumonia, something that is good in the liver appears
in the lung; the blood-filled principle is streaming into the lung. The
respiratory organization cannot cope with something that is normal to the
liver. The liver promotes the chemical processes of digestion. It is a focal
point in the circulation of juices. The lung, on the other hand, needs to
breathe air. Invasion by the fluid principle causes pneumonia with a process
normal to the liver penetrating into respiration. A process normal to the
liver is, therefore, pathological in the lung.
Pathology arises as soon as metabolism penetrates into the rhythmic
organization. When someone develops hardening of the arteries, a
principle that is good in the head (we can only have conscious awareness if
life is subdued, and the head is one-third dead) penetrates into the blood
circulation, and diseases of old age develop. Even in a young child, the
nervous system, with its many powers of death, is still alive; As time goes
on, it gets progres sively more dead and extends its powers to more and more
of the organism. The head principle is almost dead. It extends to the rest
of the human organi zation, ultimately leading to the death of the whole.
Hardening phenomena merely show that the upper aspect is spreading to
the lower organization of the human being, to the arteries, etc.
The human being is continually involved in fighting disease. Health is
bought by fighting disease. This is the area where physician and educator
meet. Physicians are brilliant in observing the consequences that arise from ill
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