07 RS-Traditional Childhood Illnesses and Vaccines
07 RS-Traditional Childhood Illnesses and Vaccines
07 RS-Traditional Childhood Illnesses and Vaccines
The following quotations include virtually all of the references to these topics I was able to find in English
translation. Rudolf Steiner generally portrayed the traditional childhood diseases as signs, aids, trials, and
accompaniments of the natural process of child development and maturing immune systems. He helps us to
understand their deeper meaning and management within human development. Probably because vaccines for
suppressing these diseases were far less common, varied, and widespread in Steiner’s day, he says comparatively
little about them – with one particularly significant warning for the future in the final quotation. Although I
checked several German indexes of Steiner’s work to try to make sure I found everything, I no doubt have missed
at least one or two references or private conversations. Please let me know of any you know about.
[email protected]
130 – “In the first [seven-year] life-period, therefore, there is a perpetual struggle between what comes from
us out of the previous incarnation and what comes from hereditary development [“the model”]; the two
elements fight with each other. The illnesses of childhood are the expression of this fight. Just think how
intimately the whole inner being of soul and spirit is bound up with the physical organization during early
childhood. When the second teeth appear you can see how they push up against the first, how they still have
tussles with each other, and in this same way the whole second man has tussles with the first. But within the
second man there is the super-earthly being; in the first a foreign, earthly model. These two work into each
other, and if you observe this inter-working truly, you can see how, if the inner man who as a being of soul
and spirit was present in pre-earthly existence, has too much the upper hand for a time, working into the
physical very strongly and having, willy nilly, to adjust itself by dint of effort to the model, that it damages the
model by striking up against it everywhere, saying: I want to get this particular form out of you – then the
fight expresses itself as scarlet fever. If the inner man is tender, so that there is a continual shrinking back, a
wish to mold the in-taken substances more in accordance with their own nature, and resistance is put up to
the model, the struggle comes out as measles. What is, in reality, a mutual struggle expresses itself in the
illnesses of childhood.”
131-132 – “. . . The fact is that one being is weaker, directs himself more in accordance with the forces of
heredity, builds up the second man with a greater resemblance to the model. This naturally comes out in the
appearance, but the same thing has been going on when the being has adjusted itself more in accordance
with the model. On the other hand, there are human beings who after the change of teeth become very unlike
what they were before. In such cases what comes from the pre-earthly life of soul and spirit is strong and
they adhere less to the model.”
132 – “Everything that has to be taken in [during the first seven years] must, in the first place, be taken in by
the child and elaborated inwardly in such a way that the ego and astral body enter into intimate contact with
the foodstuffs. Later on this need not be the case any longer. . . . During those years he must work up in his
ego and astral body everything he takes in . . . in such a way that it can be molded in accordance with the
model. This process must be helped; and the world has arranged for it, inasmuch as milk is able to bear a
very great resemblance indeed to an etheric structure. Milk is a substance which really still has an etheric
body and because this substance, when it is taken by the child, still works up into the etheric, the astral body
is able at once to take hold of the milk and then there can arise the close inner contact between what is thus
taken in and the astral body and ego organization. . . .
“In the whole way in which the child drinks milk you can actually see how his astral body and his ego are
taking hold of the milk – you can see it with our very eyes. . . . Picture to yourselves how the being of spirit
and soul comes down and makes its way to the physical foodstuff, ignoring the model to begin with, and then
picture what is going on between the being of spirit and soul and the foodstuff – a process that is now
directed in accordance with the forms contained in the model. If you form a true picture of an excessively
strong working of the spirit and soul, the picture crystallizes into that of scarlet fever. A picture of a too
feeble working of the spirit and soul, which wavers, in fact of the model, becomes the picture of measles. If
you picture these things in meditation you carry over ordinary meditation into medical meditation. . . .
“You cannot notice this process in a grown-up person. The digestive tract takes over the food stuffs – it is a
process transacted inwardly, whereas in the child, astral body and ego take over the foodstuffs.”
109-110 – “If we wish to find out what the soul of a child is like between birth and the seventh year, we have
to observe the child’s development from the seventh year onward. For then, in the child’s soul, we are able to
observe the very same forces which previously were active in its physical organization. And we shall find
that their hidden organic activity of molding and shaping the child’s brain as well as its remaining
organization is of a very special significance. For, through birth or conception, the child carries down into its
physical organization what it has brought with it from the worlds of soul and spirit.
“When the child is thus fully engaged in building up its physical organs, it must be left free to do so and
consequently, the doors leading to the outer world remain closed. It is essential that we refrain from
interfering in our clumsy ways with these inner activities of the child, for it is doing what it has to do, with
the effect that it is not accessible to external will forces.
“. . . we must never forget that what will work in the realm of the child’s soul after the seventh year is
directly involved in the organ-building processes before that age. This means that up to the seventh year any
impressions coming from the outer world will directly affects its physical constitution – the lungs, stomach,
liver and all kinds of other organs. . . . will have a decisive effect upon its future constitution of health or
illness.”
112 – “What the child learns during the first two-and-a-half year period is of utmost importance for its whole
life. It does so, through an inward-bound activity, out of what it has brought with it from its prenatal
existence. Only consider how during the this first short period the child learns to speak and to walk, the two
human faculties closely connected with an individual’s maintaining a proper self-confidence, both from a
personal and a social point of view. These two importance faculties are achieved while the etheric body is
still engaged in shaping the brain and while it is still raying out into the remaining organism. If these etheric
forces ray out too strongly into the remaining organism so that they disturb the infant’s still delicate
processes of metabolism, of breathing and blood circulation, if they surge too powerfully within the baby’s
organism, scarlet fever and kindred children’s illnesses may occur already at this young age. Fundamentally
speaking, through all that is at work within a child at that stage, the child remains inaccessible to any
conscious and will-directed approaches or demands coming from outside. It wants to be left to work on its
own organism.”
Diphtheria
From Illness and Therapy: Spiritual-Scientific Aspects of Healing (Forest Row: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2013; GA
313), pp. 64-68.
May 1910
112-114 – An actual case: “A certain person contracts measles in later life, and we seek for the karmic
connection in this case. We find that this case of measles appeared as the karmic effect of occurrences in a
preceding life – occurrences that may be thus described: In a preceding life the individuality in question
disliked concerning himself with the external world but occupied himself a great deal with himself, though
not in the ordinary egotistical sense. He investigated much, meditated much, though not with regard to the
facts of the external world, but confined himself to the inner soul life. We meet many people today who
believe that through self-concentration and through brooding within themselves, they will arrive at the
solution of world riddles. The person in question thought he could order his life through inner meditation
how to act in one instance or another, without accepting any teaching from others. The weakness of the soul
resulting from this led to the formation of forces during existence between death and rebirth which exposed
the organism comparatively late in life to an attack of measles. . .
“This soul condition will prove itself to be such that the personality in question, during the life in which the
attack of measles took place, was again and again subject to self-deception. Thus in the self-deception we
must see the psychic karmic result of this earlier life, and in the attack of measles the physical karmic result.
“Let us now assume that this personality before developing measles had succeeded in gaining such soul
forces that he was no longer exposed to all kinds of self-deception, having completely corrected this failing.
In this case the acquired soul force would render the attack of measles quite unnecessary, since the
tendencies brought forth in this organism during its formation had been effaced through the stronger soul
forces acquired by self-education. . . . what I have said about a case of measles can lead to an explanation why
measles is one of the illnesses of childhood. For the failings I have mentioned are present in a great many
lives and especially in certain periods did they prevail in many lives. When such a personality enters
existence he will be anxious to make the corresponding correction as soon as possible. In the period between
birth and the general appearance of children’s complaints which effect an organic self-education, there can
as a rule be no question of any education of the soul.
“From this we can see that in a certain respect we can really speak of a disease being transformed back into
a spiritual process.”
136 – “. . . a children’s disease that is a bit unpleasant . . . is called whooping cough. It is not really all that bad
for the child at the time when it happens, for he will normally get well again. The bad thing is that something
remains if people don’t do the right things – meaning doctors or whoever is responsible at the time – when a
child has whooping cough. . . . Whooping cough means that breathing-in will always be as it should be – you
may have a child with really severe whooping cough, it will breathe in properly. . . . But when the air wants
to come out as the child breathes out it gets stuck, it will not come out the way it should, and then a bout of
coughing develops. And with the air not getting out properly, fresh air cannot get in, and this causes the
whooping cough. . . .
“But what lies behind it, when a child gets whooping cough? You see, what lies behind it is that the inner
mucous membrane of the breathing system, of these tubes that go down to the lung and then out again,
grows terribly sensitive. . . . When we have breathed out our air, we have a vacuum in our lungs, and the air
will rush in all by itself. . . . {the child’s breathing tubes] have grown sensitive. They are just as sensitive as
any other place where you may have got a scratch. The inside of the breathing tubes has grown a bit
scratchy, and they are sensitive. . . . wanting to scratch the child forgets to push out the air, and the air stays
put in there. You then get these bouts of whooping cough. The body wants to push out the air by force, whilst
in life it is the part of us which I called the astral body the other day that pushes out the air. Looking at a child
with whooping cough, you can see exactly where the physical body is and where the astral body is. When the
child is not coughing the astral body pushes out the air; the body does not have any problems at all. When
the child has whooping cough, you have a sensitive spot there. The astral body wants to scratch away; then
the physical body has to come in and push the air out forcibly, in spasms. This may even cause spasms, and
then another disease may develop in consequence.”
138-140 – “. . . Whilst the child had whooping cough the parents bought a cat or a dog. This has made the
child sensitive to the air the dog or cat had been breathing out. He would not have grown sensitive to this if
he had not happened to have this sensitive spot at the time. . . . The child then recovers from his whooping
cough, but sometimes a strange thing remains behind. If the child has not been used to having a cat around
before, and a cat has come to live in the house whilst the child had whooping cough – this will not happen
when he has just recovered, but later on the condition will develop which people call asthma, a breathing
difficulty that repeats itself over and over again.
“. . . So a man develops asthma, for instance, and to begin with no one knows where it comes from. If you
observe carefully you find that he gets a further asthma attack if there is a cat near him or in the room. If the
cat is removed the asthma stops. . . . {Another example is given of a similar sensitivity to buckwheat.]
“You will now also understand that human health and sickness is altogether connected with the whole
environment. . . . There are, of course, many kinds of asthma. . . . .
140-142 – “Well, whooping cough can be cured as follows. Let us assume a child has a sensitive windpipe or
tubes, coal dust may have irritated them in some way. This may immediately cause whooping cough to
develop. . . . .
“Now imagine you get this fissure, this crack, in there in the windpipe or tubes; the astral body then comes
a little bit free there. And the condition can be healed like this, if one does it very carefully. . . . We first of all
put [the child] to bed and let him get into a sweat – you can observe the whole thing step by step – he’ll get
really hot. The astral body easily joins with heat; it does not easily join with cold. If you let the child run
around out of doors or even just indoors, the astral body can’t get at the physical body because the warmth it
needs is not there. But if you wrap up the child really warm – people often do this instinctively; they’ll often
tie a woolen sock or stocking around the throat to keep the warmth in – the astral body will start to be
attracted to the warmth. So if you have had the child in bed for a time like this and the astral body has been
drawn there all the time, it will again and again have been attracted to this part here [drawing on the board;
presumably the throat]. You should then take a piece of cloth and put a bit of warm water on it that contains
a few drops of lemon juice and put the cloth around the part. This will draw the irritated part together, so
that it will again be open to the astral body, and you can cure the whooping cough very nicely. . . .
“. . . You must also take care in following this procedure that the child does not take fright. For when the
child takes fright, the astral body will always come out a little, and this will undo the whole thing.
“If we truly cure the child, the whooping cough will run its course and he’ll not have asthma later on. If we
do it wrongly, the ‘fissures’ in the windpipe or tubes will heal up, and the child will seem to have recovered,
but the astral body will not have gone in completely, always remaining a little bit outside. Now if a person is
very weak, if the child is a weakling, he’ll get asthma right away, because the breathing-out process is never
quite right. The astral body is not completely involved . . . in the breathing-out process. But if the child is a bit
stronger, he’ll use the other part of the astral body, with the result that the rest of the astral body will only
show its weakness at a later time in life, when another illness comes, for instance if the child later gets
influenza or something of that kind. And he’ll then develop asthma.”
253 – “air, or particularly the oxygen in the air, is constantly absorbed through the surface of [Man’s] skin,
and along with the ordinary breathing process of his lungs one can also speak of his skin’s breathing. . . .
“. . . If Man has his lungs and skin for breathing, then he also needs an opposite, and that opposite is located in
the liver. . . . we must learn to view it as the opposite of the skin-lung activity; the liver and the skin-lung
activity balance each other. One could say that the liver’s constant purpose is to bring into order internally
what Man acquires through breathing in his relation with the outer world. That is what the liver is for.
....
254 – “Now imagine that the liver malfunctions. When this happens, all the activity of the lungs and skin is
also thrown out of balance, and then a specific problem arises. . . . Through quite delicate blood vessels, the
blood circulation reaches everywhere into the skin, into the lungs, and also into the liver. . . . If the liver’s
function is impaired, the blood cannot flow properly in and out of the liver. If, because of a liver problem, the
blood flows into it too strongly and the liver becomes overactive, too much bile is produced and the person
becomes jaundiced. . . .
“What happens, however, when the liver’s activity is too weak? The blood’s activity on the surface of the
skin is not compensated for. The blood, which flows everywhere, wishes to be compensated, and the blood in
the liver investigates, as it were, whether or not the liver is behaving properly. If the liver isn’t behaving
properly, the blood rushes to the surface of the body to replenish itself there. What happens? Smallpox is the
result. This is the connection between smallpox and a blood circulation which, due to a defective liver, has
something wrong with it.
255 – “. . . The circulation of the blood rightly makes a point of contact . . . with the breathing, and whether
this occurs in the lungs or the skin really does not matter, because it balances itself out. If the air that enters
through the breathing process does not make contact with the blood in the correct way, however, smallpox
results. What is smallpox? Smallpox is really the result of the development of too much respiratory activity
on the body’s surface or in the lungs. A person becomes too active over his surface area, and this activity
causes inflammation everywhere.
256 – “What can be done under these circumstances? Well, people already do the only thing that can be done
in such cases. They vaccinate with cowpox vaccine. What does cowpox vaccine really accomplish? The
vaccine inwardly permeates the body, because the blood circulates everywhere. Whereas the blood is
otherwise compensated for on the body’s surface, it now has to cope with the vaccine. The overactivity on
the surface is thus prevented. Smallpox inoculation does indeed have a certain significance. The blood, which
is not properly engaged by the liver, is now busy with the vaccine. Generally, there is good reason for all
methods of inoculation. You have perhaps heard that a large part of our healing is based on injections,
because an activity occurring in the wrong place can thereby be directed to another part of the human body.
“Inoculation against rabies is especially interesting. Though rabies comes from something altogether
different, it is basically the same response as I described in connection with smallpox. Imagine that a person
is bitten by a rabid dog or wolf. Such an animal has actual poison in its saliva. This poison new enters the
victim through the bite, and the person becomes involved in detoxifying the poison. He may be too weak to
do it, and he might succumb to the poison, but something else is really the cause of death. You know that a
man first develops rabies before he succumbs to the poison. What is the reason for this?
“Let us assume that I am bitten by a rabid dog. Now I must direct all my inner activities to his spot, and I
must let them flow here to use up the poison. This surge of activity is sense by my spinal cord as though I had
received a shock. . . . my spinal cord suffers a shock through which I become ill.
“What must now be done to offset this shock? (257) You know that when a person freezes in horror he can
be brought to his senses by being slapped a few times. The spinal cord also needs to be slapped, but one must
first get to the spine. . . .
257 - “Now, oddly enough, all substances have a way of going to specific parts of the body. The dried spinal
cord of [a rabid] rabbit, which retains the rabies poison for a short time – about 15 minutes – before
becoming ineffective, is quickly injected into the human being. It enters the human spinal cord, which
thereby suffers a counter-shock. It is just as if you shake a person who is paralyzed with fear and he snaps
out of it. In the case of rabies, Man’s spinal cord recovers from the shock by means of an inoculation with the
rabid rabbit’s dehydrated spinal cord.”
“You see, therefore, that when an activity develops in the human being in the wrong place and he becomes
ill, he can be cured if almost the same process is developed in a different place.”
Smallpox
From Course for Young Doctors (Spring Valley, NY: Mercury Press, 1994: GA 316), pp. 97-98, 101.
January 8, 1924
97 – “Let us take a certain case. I will construct quite an idealistic one – the true theory of smallpox. Real
smallpox calls up a very strong Inspiration, with Intuition as well. And the knowledge that that comes to you
here, when you are real therapists in this domain, works much more strongly upon you – when it is real
knowledge – than does a vaccination; in a different sense it works much more strongly and in studying the
therapy of smallpox as a physician you will bring about a kind of healing in yourself in advance,
prophylactically, and will therefore be able, when you understand the connection, to go among smallpox
patients without fear, and full of love. But all these things have their other side too. As I have said, if the
knowledge of a medicament is a true imaginative or inspired knowledge – then the healing forces are there;
it need not even by one’s own imagination, it may be that of someone else. In itself it has healing forces. (98)
Even to have the idea of a medicament has an effect, and it works. But it works only so long as you are
without fear. Fear is the opposite pole to love. . . .
98 – “. . . What is above all things for medicine is courage, the courage to heal.”
100 – “Think of the illness of smallpox which reveals itself in physical symptoms. But suppose you were able
to do the following: Picture in yourselves a person suffering from smallpox who in his astral body and ego
organization had the power today to draw out the whole illness and to experience it only in the astral body
and in the ego, so that in that moment his physical and etheric bodies would be well. Suppose such a thing
were hypothetically possible. What I have said cannot actually happen, but if you want to have this
imagination you must do the same thing as I have described as a hypothetical case, without your physical
body and etheric body having smallpox. In the astral body and ego organization, free from the physical and
etheric bodies, you must experience the illness of smallpox. In other words, you must experience, spiritually,
a spiritual correlate of physical illness. The illness of smallpox is the physical image of the condition in which
ego organization and astral body are when they have such an Imagination. . . . “
101 – “. . . If one has a heavenly Imagination such as that of which I spoke, one knows what smallpox is,
because it is only the physical projection of what is experienced spiritually. And so it is, really, with all
knowledge of illness.”
From Physiology and Healing: Treatment, Therapy and Hygiene (Forest Row: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2013; GA
314), pp. 237-239.
Polio
Spiritual Relations in the Human Organism (Spring Valley: Mercury Press, 1984; GA 218), pp. 15 -19.
[The example is given of the eye, where there is an approximate 1:4 rhythm between the processes of the
optic nerve and its extension in the retina (representing the nerve-sense system/head in the eye) and the
tempo of the pulse of the network of blood vessels (arteries and veins), especially in the choroid membrane
(representing the metabolic-limb organism in the eye).]
17 – “Countless causes of illness in people are based on the following: For every organism a certain measure
of equilibrium exists between this ratio of four and one. . . . Of course, it is never exactly one to four; there are
all sorts of possible ratios; in this way people are individualized. For every human individuality, however, a
definite ratio exists. If it is disturbed – let us say that a person normally had a ratio of one to four and
conditions arose whereby the ratio were no longer one to four but one to four-and-a-seventh – then the
dissolving force [from the blood/metabolic-limb system] would work too strongly; . . . you have this type of
illness in such a case.
“Just as easily the other rhythm can work too quickly. Then cramp-like conditions arise. When the astral
forces vibrate too quickly through the etheric and physical organism, when the astral forces quiver through
too quickly and do not approach slowly enough, cramp-like phenomena arise [including paralysis?].
“Take, for example, ordinary children’s cramps. These ordinary cramps are simply based on the fact that
with the child the astral organism and ego must immerse themselves in the right way into the physical and
etheric organism. The right ratio must first be established. Now imagine that that astral organism and the
ego, which vibrate at first into the metabolic-limb man, are vibrating too quickly; the other part of the human
being cannot grasp this right away. . . . Every current of the astral takes hold correctly of a droplet of the
living water through which the etheric streams. They adapt to each other if the right tempo is within. If it
vibrates too quickly . . ., then the astral bursts through the etheric and thereby also through the living water,
and cramp-like conditions arise, occurring especially in children’s cramps, because there the correct rhythm
must assert itself first in this instreaming [astral] . . . .
“This has a very far-reaching significance. It means, for example, that a terrible form of illness, which
engenders a lot of questions today, finds at least its explanation here, namely that the correct rhythmic
encounters are disturbed in a particular way. An example of such an illness is the terrible illness of polio,
which can be explained in this way, though its remedy is not found at the same time, because conditions lying
further back have brought about the lack of harmony.”
“. . . Inwardly, regarding what underlies the slow rhythm, the human being is exposed very strongly to
Ahrimanic forces; regarding everything that corresponds to the fast rhythm he is exposed very strongly to
Luciferic forces. You could also say, therefore, if you were to look once at ‘The Group’ [Steiner’s sculpture] ,
that here everything Ahrimanic has the tendency toward the slow rhythm, which hardens the forms and
makes them pointed and rigid. In everything Luciferic, the fast rhythm predominates, which rounds
everything off, because it runs its course faster. In this rounding, things are not made rigid but wave-like. You
can see in these sculptural forms that one has to do with encounters in the ratio of three or four to one.”
63 – “In [our Biological Institute in] Stuttgart we have succeeded in obtaining dilutions of one in a million,
one in a billion – that is, with twelve zeros.” [even one in a trillion, he adds later]
64-67 – “Now when we are clear that very minute quantities of substance have an effect, we shall have no
hesitation in recognizing that in such times as the present, when so many men take incorrect nourishment
and then rot as corpses in the ground, this works differently. Of course, for the earth as a whole, the effect is
very diluted, but still it is different from what happened when men lived healthily. And here again, the food
which grows out of the earth is a factor.”
“. . . The health of men is completely dependent on the growth of plants and therefore we must know what
really is involved.
“I have been greatly occupied with this point in connection with Infantile Paralysis, and it has turned out
that one must really concern oneself with the whole man. . . . There will probably have to be found a
treatment made up of soda baths, iron arsenite (Fe As2 O3), and of yet another substance which will be
obtained from the cerebellum, from the back part of the brain of animals. It will have to be a very
complicated remedy. You see, the disease of Infantile Paralysis arises from very complicated and obscure
causes and so requires a complicated remedy. These things have become of urgent importance today, and it
is well that you should understand the whole question of the growth of plants.
“The plant grows out of the ground. . . . The root grows out of the seed. Let us first take a tree; we can then
pass to the ordinary plants. . . . (drawing on the blackboard; see illustration below] This stem which grows
there [vertical brown area with vertical arrow], is really only formed because it lets sap mount from the
earth, and this sap in mounting carries up with it all kinds of salts and particles of earth; and so the stem
becomes hard. . . .
“What happens, in reality? The earthy, the solid, becomes fluid! And we have an earthy-fluid substance
mounting there. Then the fluid evaporates and the solid remains behind: that is the wood.
“You see, this sap which mounts up in the tree – let us call it wood-sap – is not created there but is already
contained everywhere in the earth, so that the earth in this respect is really a great living Being. . . . that [sap]
which mounts in the tree is in the whole earth and through it the earth lives. In the tree it loses its life-giving
quality; it becomes merely a chemical; it has only chemical qualities.
“So when you look at a tree, you must say to yourself: the earthy-fluidic in the tree – that has become
chemical; underneath in the earth it was still alive. So the wood-sap has partly died, as it mounted up in the
tree. Were this all, never would a plant come into existence, but only stumps, dying at the top, in which
chemical processes are at work. But the stem, formed from this sap, rises into the air, and the air always
contains moisture. It comes into the moist air, . . . into the fluidic-airy, and life springs up in it anew so that
around it green leaves appear and finally flowers. . . . Again, there is life. . . . In the stem, life is always dying; in
the leaf it is always being resurrected. . . . And what does this do? It travels all round and brings forth the
leaves everywhere; so that you can see the spirals in which leaves are arranged. The living sap really circles
round. [see drawing] It arises from the fluid-airy element into which the plant comes when it has grown out
of the earthy-fluidic element.
“The stem, the woody stem, is dead and only that which sprouts forth around the plant is alive. . . . The
wood with its sap cannot keep the tree alive; what comes with the leaves must come from outside and that
again contains life. . . When the sap rises in the spring, the tree is created anew; . . . The earth produces the
sap from the earthy-fluidic; the fluidic-airy produces the living sap.
“But that is not all. While this is happening, between the bark, still full of living sap, and the woody stem,
there is formed a new layer. . . . what is formed is quite solid: it is called cambium. It is formed between the
bark which still belongs to the leaves, and the wood. [see detail illustration lower-left of drawing] . . . the
cambium [is formed in] the warm air, in the warm damp, or the airy-warmth. The plant develops warmth
while it takes up life from outside. This warmth goes inward and develops the cambium inside. . . . before the
[The text at the bottom of the above blackboard drawing summarizes the three plant processes and reads:
Wood-sap: Earth; Chemical
Living-sap: Surroundings of the earth: The Living
Cambium: Stars: Spirit]
cambium forms, there is first of all developed a thicker substance: the plant gum. Plants form this plant gum
in their inner warmth, and this, under certain conditions, is a powerful means of healing. Thus the sap
carried the plant upward, the leaves give the plant life, then the leaves by their warmth produce the gum
which reacts on the warmth. . . . the cambium brings the plant into connection with the stars, with what is
above, and in such a way that within this cambium the form of the next plant develops. This passes over to
the seeds and in this way the next plant is born, so that the stars indirectly through the cambium create the
next plant! . . . the seed must first be worked on by the cambium, that is: by the whole heavens.
“. . . this carried the power to the seed to develop through the forces of the earth into a new plant.”
68 – “So it is with trees, and so, too, with the ordinary plants. When the rootlet is in the earth, the sprout
shoots upward. But it does not separate off the solid matter, does not make wood; it remains like a cabbage
stalk. The leaves come out directly on the circumference, in spirals, the cambium is formed directly in the
interior, and the cambium takes everything back to the earth with it. So that in the annual plants the whole
process occurs much more quickly. . . . In the cambium one has a sketch, a sculptural activity. The stars model
in it from the whole universe the complete plant form. So you see, we come from Life into the Spirit. . . . The
earth first gives up her life to the plant, the plant dies, the air environment along with its light once more
gives it life, and the World Spirit implants the new plant form. This is preserved in the seed and grows again
in the same way. . . . “
[Steiner then reported experiments of growing plants watered with highly diluted metals or metallic compounds
vs. control plants. With copper dilution the plant leaves developed wrinkles on the edges; with lead dilution the
leaves became hard at the top, then withered.]
69-72 – “Now you can see of what importance it is when quite tiny amounts of any substance are mixed in
the earth. . . . the earth is everywhere permeated with wood sap, and the tiny quantities penetrate
everywhere into the ground. And having investigated how these tiny quantities work, . . . we say: That which
disappeared into the earth, we eat it again in our food. It is so strong that it lives in the plant form. And what
happens then? Imagine I had thus a plant form from a lead-containing soil . . . A plant grows out of it: one may
say, a lead-plant. Well, this lead plant when we eat it, has a quite different effect from a lead-less plant.
Actually, when we eat a lead plant, our cerebellum, which lies at the back of the head, becomes drier than
usual. It becomes drier.
“Now you have the connection between the earth and the cerebellum. There are plants which simply
through the constitution of the earth, through what men put into the earth and what then spreads
everywhere, can dry up the cerebellum. As soon as our cerebellum is not in full working order, we become
clumsy . . . awkward and cannot properly control our feet and arms; and when the effect is much stronger, we
become paralyzed.
“Thus, you see, is the connection between the soil and paralysis. A man eats a plant. If it has something
dying at the edge of the leaves, . . . his cerebellum will be dried up somewhat. In ordinary life this is not
noticed, but the man cannot any longer rightly direct his movements. If the effect is much stronger, paralysis
sets in. When this drying up of the cerebellum happens in the head, so that man cannot control his muscles,
at first this affects all those muscles which are dependent on a little gland in the head, the so-called pineal
gland. If that happens, a man gets influenza. If the evil goes further, influenza changes to a complete
paralysis. So that in every paralysis there is something that is inwardly connected with the soil. . . .
“Wood-sap develops in man as the ordinary colorless mucous. Wood-sap in plants is, in man, mucous. The
life-sap of the plant which circulates from the leaves, corresponds to the human blood. And the cambium of
the plant corresponds to the milk and the chyle in the human being. . . . Here you have again something in
human beings which is most strongly influenced by the stars, namely, milk. Decaying leaves create no proper
cambium because they no longer have the power to work back into the proper warmth. They let the warmth
escape outward from the dying edges instead of sending it inward. We eat these plants with an improperly
developed cambium: they do not develop a proper milk; the women do not produce proper milk; the
children get milk on which the stars cannot work strongly, and therefore they cannot develop properly.
“Hence this Infantile Paralysis appears specially among children – but adults can also suffer from it,
because men are all their lives influenced by the stars.
“. . . when one eats unsound cambium as a child, one gets an unsound brain. In this way diseases are caused
by what is in the earth. This is what can be said about the causes of such apparently inexplicable diseases:
the causes are in the soil.”
245-247 – “In plants, there is a constant interaction between the Earth’s forces and the forces of the supra-
earthly cosmos. What is the effect of these nonearthly forces, which are always present in our environment?
. . . plant existence as such holds the balance between the tendency toward mineralization or salt deposition
in plant tissue and the tendency toward inflammation or becoming animal-like.
“This process is always present in outer nature, but it is also present in an internalized and centralized
form in the human organism. . . .
“In the human organism, everything that is concentrated in cardiac activity needs to be kept separate from
what is organized and concentrated in the lungs’ internal metabolism. These two activities must be kept
separate. They can be allowed to affect each other only through an etheric or astral diaphragm inserted
between them. . . . I am using this word [“diaphragm”] only to suggest an image. . . . Such a diaphragm does
indeed exist, and it is the external rhythm of respiration itself. At this point, you begin to see how harmony is
achieved between the upper and lower regions of the human being. What we call rhythmical activity in the
human being, the rhythmical trembling that is expressed outwardly and physically as respiratory rhythm,
extends into the activity of the etheric and astral bodies and separates the earthly forces of the upper part of
the human being, which are concentrated in the lungs, and the heavenly forces of the lower part, which work
from below upward through the activity expressed in the heart, just as they work from the periphery of the
cosmos toward the center of the Earth.
“Imagine that this rhythm is not working properly. . . . What happens then is analogous to what happens
when the Earth’s activity becomes too strong in plants, when earthly salt-forming activity affects the plants
too strongly and they become overly mineralized. What happens then is that an ‘etheric plant,’ which is built
into the lungs and grows up out of them just as physical plants grow up out of the Earth, becomes the cause
of pulmonary hardening or the like. . . . the mineralizing tendency . . . can also become too strong in the
human organism.”
251-253 – “Illnesses that appear in the form of epidemics must also be considered in terms of their primary
causes. The rhythm between head and chest, which has its crudest expression in the rhythm of respiration, is
easily damaged in individuals who also tend to allow certain atmospheric or supra-earthly phenomena to
influence them strongly. Others, whose respiratory system is healthily organized from the start, will tend to
resist such influences. It is always possible for other disruptive causes to intervene, of course . . . . Suppose
that during a particular winter night the Sun’s activity – note that I said the Sun’s activity, not the effects of
light – is strongly influenced by the outer planets – Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Sun activity that can assert
itself independently because Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are at a distance would have a different effect from
this particular winter constellation.
“During a winter like this, we can notice that the atmospheric phenomena are different. In susceptible
individuals, this has an unusually strong influence on the rhythmical activity taking place between the chest
and the head, whose crudest expression is the rhythm of respiration. We can say that this constellation
significantly strengthens the tendency to regularize this rhythm in people who were born in healthy
circumstances and are internally robust, although outwardly, of course, they may be quite frail. In these
people, respiratory rhythm is very strongly regulated, as is the general rhythm between the head and the
chest. An internally reinforced rhythm such as this is not easily affected by outside influences, and severely
damaging factors are required in order to influence it. An influence such as the one I described, however, has
an exceptionally strong effect on people in whom this rhythm is irregular in some way, because an already
damaged rhythm tends to permit further damage. All predisposed individuals who lie on parts of the globe
that are particularly affected by this heavenly constellation are candidates for so-called influenza. These
influences absolutely must be present to lay the groundwork for an illness like influenza.
“In a different case, something more complicated is present. . . . human rhythmical activity as a whole is
such that these rhythms [respiration and sleeping-waking rhythms], taken together, form a unity in the
entire human rhythmic system. The lower rhythm may assert itself too strongly, relatively speaking, because
the upper rhythm, the head-chest rhythm, is weakened. When the upper rhythm is too weak and deviates
from its proper position, it is susceptible to being made even more irregular by the lower rhythm. In this case
the lower rhythm, which emanates from the activity of the spleen and from other organ activity that we will
speak about later, works upward too strongly, creating the predisposition to hypertrophy of the upper
digestive process withal its concomitant symptoms. . . . a domain is created that especially favors the growth
of certain lower organisms. The total picture that then appears is one of symptoms of inflammation and
paralysis creeping into the upper organization while the beginnings of organ malformations or new organic
growths also appear there. In short, we have the symptomatology of diphtheria. I might call this a
breakthrough, from below upward, in the opposition direction from the breach that occurs in typhoid fever
from above downward. . . .
“In all of these issues, the age of the person in question must also be considered. During childhood, the
entire interaction of the upper and lower parts of the human being as well as the rhythmical activity that
mediates between them is totally different than it is in later life. In childhood, for example, the upper region
of the human being must exert a much stronger influence on the lower region than is the case later on. In
reality, children ‘think’ much more than adults do. Strange as this may sound, it is nonetheless true. Instead
of becoming conscious, children’s thoughts simply go into the organism and appear in its growth and in the
forms it is developing. This application of thought activity to the body’s formative forces is especially
pronounced in the first years of life. Once the body no longer needs to use so much of the formative forces for
its own purposes, they are held back and become the force that forms the basis of memory. . . .
“Everything is based on metamorphosis. What we encounter on the mental or spiritual level is only the
respiritualization of an activity that worked on a bodily level when spirit was moving into matter. This
explains why children have strong forces of resistance to many abdominal symptoms. Heavenly factors,
supra-earthly factors, appear principally in the abdomen. Here again, imagine that a strong reflection occurs
in the human abdomen as the result of a particular supra-earthly constellation of the Sun to other planets.
What will the consequences be? There will be little effect on adults, in whom the rhythmical activity between
the upper and lower parts of the body has already settled down to some extent, but children will have to
forcefully resist the cosmic factor that wants to be reflected in the abdomen. And when a particular cosmic
constellation affects a child’s lower body very strongly, the upper body must resist exceptionally strongly.
This convulsive, overly strong application of forces in the upper part of children’s bodies causes epidemic
cerebrospinal meningitis. This process certainly provides insight into how outer, nonhuman nature sends
these influences into the human being. I might say that if you take this as a background for your
observations, you can paint a picture of the entire symptomatology of meningitis, right down to the stiffening
of the neck muscles. Because of the exertion taking place in the upper part of the child’s body, inflammatory
symptoms must appear in the upper organs, in the meninges of the spinal cord or brain, which then result in
the other symptoms.
“It is especially necessary to sharpen our eye for seeing the human being in the context not only of the
interactions taking place between different parts of the body but also of the interactions taking place
between internal human factors and natural factors external to the human being or even external to the
Earth.”
October 7, 1917
85 – “The time will come – and it may not be far off – when quite different tendencies will come up at a
congress like the one held in 1912 and people will say: It is pathological for people to even think in terms of
spirit and soul. ‘Sound’ people will speak of nothing but the body. It will be considered a sign of illness for
anyone to arrive at the idea of any such thing as a spirit or a soul. People who think like that will be
considered to be sick and – you can be quite sure of it – a medicine will be found for this. . . . The soul will be
made non-existent with the aid of a drug. Taking a ‘sound point of view,’ people will invent a vaccine to
influence the organism as early as possible, preferably as soon as it is born, so that this human body never
even gets the idea that there is a soul and spirit.
“. . . the heirs of modern materialism will look for the vaccine to make the body ‘healthy,’ that is, make its
constitution such that this body no longer talks of such rubbish as soul and spirit, but takes a ‘sound’ view of
the forces which live in engines and in chemistry and let planets and suns arise from nebulae in the cosmos.
Materialistic physicians will be asked to drive the souls out of humanity.”
October 27, 1917
199-200 – “. . . the spirits of darkness are now among us. . . .
“. . . I have told you that the spirits of darkness are going to inspire their human hosts, in whom they will be
dwelling, to find a vaccine that will drive all inclination toward spirituality out of people’s souls when they
are still very young, and this will happen in a roundabout way through the living body. Today, bodies are
vaccinated against one thing and another; in future, children will be vaccinated with a substance which it will
certainly be possible to produce, and this will make them immune, so that they do not develop foolish
inclinations connected with spiritual life – ‘foolish’ here, or course, in the eyes of materialists.
...
“. . . a way will finally be found to vaccinate bodies so that these bodies will not allow the inclination toward
spiritual ideas to develop and all their lives people will believe only in the physical world they perceive with
the senses. Out of impulses which the medical profession gained from presumption – oh, I beg your pardon,
from the consumption [tuberculosis] they themselves suffered – people are now vaccinated against
consumption, and in the same way they will be vaccinated against any inclination toward spirituality. This is
merely to give you a particularly striking example of many things which will come in the near and more
distant future in this field – the aim being to bring confusion into the impulses which want to stream down to
earth after the victory of the [Michaelic] spirits of light [in 1879].”
Conditions of the 9-Year Change: Headaches, Digestive Disorders, Sleep Disorders, Anemia, Chlorosis,
Warmth
From Illness and Therapy: Spiritual-Scientific Aspects of Healing (Forest Row: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2013; GA
313), pp. 51-60.