IX
Why Do
We Become Sick?
Influenza; Hayfever; Mental Illness
Question: For many years I have suffered from hayfever.
Now I have heard that it must be treated early in the year. If
injections are administered as early as January or
February before a person begins to suffer, they are supposed to
be more effective. Should I go along with this remedy?
Dr.
Steiner: What you have said is correct, but there is
one small catch. You see, the remedy that is in use here is
meant to be applied prophylactically; that is, it is meant to
work ahead of time. In fact, it should be used weeks before the
symptoms of hayfever arise. The problem, however, is that
patients come in only when they are already afflicted with the
malady. Just today we received an interesting letter about
another hayfever remedy. The inventor of this other remedy
writes that his medication brings only a little relief to
individual hayfever attacks. He believes that our remedy can
permanently cure hayfever, especially if it is taken twice at
wide intervals. Naturally, we would much prefer patients to be
treated in January or February rather than in May or June.
Understandably, however, people generally see a doctor
only after an illness has been contracted.
Yet,
our hayfever remedy works in such a way that if given to the
patient even during the external appearance of the illness,
which is only the final result of an inner affliction, it
protects him from a renewed attack. It is particularly
effective if applied again a year later. After that, the
application need not always be repeated. Even though the
illness affects only one organ, this remedy treats its basis in
the whole bodily organization. To explain this, I would like to
go into more detail concerning the causes of internal illnesses
and how they arise in the first place.
Of
course, it is quite simple to comprehend why one becomes
indisposed if one breaks a leg or sustains a concussion
due to a fall. In these cases the injury is external and the
cause easily understood; the cause is externally visible. In
the case of internal illnesses, however, one usually does not
really consider where they come from and how they
suddenly assert themselves. This pertains to another
question raised earlier of why one may become infected when in
contact with certain people. An external cause also seems to be
present here.
Ordinary science offers a simple explanation for this. Bacilli
are transmitted from an ill person who has influenza, for
example, and then these are inhaled and bring about the disease
in another. It is like someone injuring a man by hitting
him with a mattock. In this case the injury is caused by a
patient bombarding another person with a multitude of bacilli.
Matters are not at all that simple, however; they are much more
complicated. You will understand this when you realize that in
everyday life a man constantly becomes a bit indisposed and
then must cure himself. The point is that all of us are really
a bit sick when thirsty or hungry, and we cure ourselves by
drinking and eating. Hunger is the beginning of an
illness, and if it is allowed to continue we can die from it.
After all, we can die of starvation and even sooner of thirst.
So you see that even in our everyday lives we bear something
like the beginning of a disease. Every act of drinking or
eating is in truth an act of healing.
We
must make clear to ourselves now what in fact happens
when we become hungry or thirsty. You see, our body is inwardly
always active. Through the intake of food, the body receives
nutrients. External substances are absorbed through the mouth
and the intestinal passages into some part of the body. Now,
you must understand that the human organization immediately
rebels against these nutritional substances; it does not
tolerate them in their original forms and destroys them. Food
substances must actually be disintegrated. In fact, they
are annihilated, and this begins in the mouth. The reason for
this is that there is continuous, never-ceasing activity in our
body. This activity must be observed in the same way as fingers
or hands are. Ordinary science simply records how a piece of
bread is eaten, dissolved in the mouth, and then distributed in
the body, but we must also take into consideration that the
human body is continually active. Even if nothing is put into
it, if nothing goes into the body for five hours, say, still
its activity does not cease. You may even be like an empty
sack, but things have not quieted within. You remain in
constant inward activity, and things are still bustling
around. Only when this internal activity can become occupied
with something is it content. That is especially the case after
a meal when it can dissolve and disintegrate the food
substances; then it is content.
This
internal activity that we possess is quite different from man
in general, for the human being can become lazy. The internal
activity is never lazy, it never ceases. If I don't eat
anything, it is as if I had an empty flour sack in which there
is activity even if I avoid all tangible substance. This
activity — for reasons that I shall tell you later on
— is identified in spiritual science as the astral
body. It is never lazy, and if it can stay active destroying
and dissolving the food substances, it is filled with inward
comfort; it then has a feeling of inner well-being. But
if I take in no food substances, then the astral body is not
satisfied, and this dissatisfaction is expressed as hunger.
Hunger is not something at rest within us; it is an activity, a
soul-spiritual activity that cannot be stilled. We can truly
say that this inner activity is in love with the food
substances, and if it does not receive them it is just as
dissatisfied as any jilted lover. This dissatisfaction is the
hunger, and it is by all means something spiritual.
So the
activity that is executed internally consists of
disintegrating food substances. What is useful is
transmitted into the blood vessels, and the rest is
eliminated through urine or feces. This is the healthy, normal
and regular activity of the human being in which the astral
body works properly to dissolve the food substances. It absorbs
into the body what is useful and discharges what is not.
We
must assume, gentlemen, that this activity of man is no
ordinary activity; rather, it contains something
immensely wise. Now, dissolved and transformed food
substances are constantly being transmitted through blood
vessels to the inner organs, and the nourishment that
goes into the lungs is completely different from what goes to
the spleen. The astral body is much smarter than the human
being. Man can only stuff the provisions into his mouth, but
the astral body can distinguish them. It is like sorting two
substances, throwing one in one direction to be used there and
the other in another direction. This is what the astral body
accomplishes. It selects certain substances to dispatch to the
lungs, spleen, larynx and other organs. A wise distribution is
at work within. The astral body is immensely wise, much
wiser than we. The most educated person today would not know
how to send the proper substances into the lungs, larynx or
spleen; he would not even know what to say about it. But
internally man can do this through his astral body.
The
astral body, however, can become stupid — not as stupid
as the human being can become, but stupid in comparison
to its own cleverness. Let us assume that it thus becomes
stupid. Man is born with a certain predisposition and is
inwardly endowed with certain forces. The activity that the
astral body develops for food substances occurs even if
somebody sits down all day, immobile like an Oriental idol. His
astral body still remains active, but that is not enough. We
must also do something externally, and if we have no work to do
we must go for a stroll; the astral body demands that we at
least walk around. This differs with each individual. One
person needs more physical activity, another less.
Let us
suppose now that someone has certain predispositions from
birth that make him into a sedentary person. It pleases his
stupid head — or we could say his stupid ego — to
sit around a lot. Now, if he is predisposed to sit around, but
the astral body is predisposed to walk about, then his astral
body will become stupid. This will also happen if somebody
overexerts himself walking. In both cases the astral body will
become stupid and will no longer accomplish things
correctly. It will no longer properly sort out the food
substances and transmit them to the appropriate organs; it will
do all this clumsily instead. The astral body becomes too
disorganized to send the right substances to the heart or
larynx. Substances improperly transmitted to the heart, for
example, will remain somewhere else in the body. They are
not put in the organ where they belong but, since they are
basically useful, neither are they eliminated with the feces.
Instead, they are deposited somewhere else in the body. But a
man cannot tolerate having something deposited in his
body that is not part of its proper activity; he cannot stand
that.
So
what happens with these improper deposits due to the
malfunctioning astral body? What happens to us on account of
that? Well, suppose we have in our body certain deposits that
should have been directed to the larynx. Because
someone's astral body does not function properly,
“larynx refuse” is secreted everywhere in his body.
The first thing that happens is that his larynx becomes
weak. The organ does not receive sufficient sustenance, and
thus the person suffers from a weakened larynx. But apart from
that, his body contains larynx refuse, which is dispersed
everywhere. As I have already told you, the human body is
ninety percent water, and the refuse dissolves in this whole
fluid organization. The pure, animated fluid that a man
requires within him is now polluted. This is what happens so
often within ourselves. Deposits meant for certain parts of the
body dissolve in our fluid organization, contaminating it.
Say
that the refuse of the larynx is dissolved in us and comes into
contact with the stomach. It cannot cause damage there, because
the stomach has what it needs and was not deprived of anything.
But the bodily fluids flow everywhere in the human organism and
penetrate into the area of the larynx, which is already
weakened. It receives this polluted fluid, this water in which
the larynx refuse is dissolved, and specifically from this the
organ becomes diseased. The larynx refuse does not affect the
other organs, but it does cause the larynx to become
afflicted.
Let us
now consider a simple phenomenon. A sensitive person finds it
pleasant to listen to another person speak beautifully. But if
someone crows like a rooster or grunts like a pig, he will not
find this so pleasant to hear, even if he understands what is
being said. It is not at all pleasant to listen to a person
crowing or grunting. Listening to someone who is hoarse is a
particularly uncomfortable and constricting experience.
Why do we experience such sensations while listening to
another? It is based on the fact that in reality we always
inaudibly repeat whatever the other is saying. Listening
consists not only in hearing but also in speaking faintly. We
not only hear what another says but also imitate it with our
speech organs. We always imitate everything that someone
else does.
Now
imagine that you are near a person who is sick with flu, and
though you may not be listening to him and inwardly
imitating his speech, you feel sorry for him. This makes you
quite susceptible and sensitive to him. The flu patient's fluid
organization contains many dissolved substances, which
contaminate the pure, living fluid I told you about and make it
instead unhealthy for him. I even describe the nature of such a
contaminated fluid organization.
Imagine that you have a piece of ground where you plant various
things. Not everything thrives in every kind of earth, but
suppose you want to plant onions and garlic in this
particular spot. Should the earth be unsuitable, the
onions would be small and the garlic buds still smaller, so you
should also add to this soil something that contains sulphur
and phosphorus. Then you would have the healthiest onions and
garlic buds, and they would smell strong, too!
Now,
when a man has influenza refuse within his body, the same
substances are dissolved in his fluid organization that had to
be added to the ground in order to produce the finest onion and
garlic plants, and before long, the sick person begins to
smell like these plants. Now, I associate with this, though I
may not even be aware that I am sitting in this odour of onion
or garlic, because it need not be strong. The odour exuded by a
person who is sick with the flu causes the patient's head to
feel dull, because a certain organ in the head, the
“sensorium,” is not properly supplied with the
substance it needs. As a result of having flu refuse within us,
an organ in the mid-section of the head is not properly
supplied. This odour is always like that of onions or
garlic and can be detected by one with a sensitive nose. Just
as we tune in on and imitate a shrill and rasping voice, so do
we join in with what an ill person evaporates. As a
consequence, our own astral body, our own activity, becomes
disorganized. This disorder causes a chemical basis that in
turn makes us contract the flu. It is like making soil suitable
for onions and garlic. At first, then, the illness has nothing
to do with bacteria but simply with the relation of one
person to another.
If you
want to plant predominantly onions and garlic in a garden, and
you add to the earth substances containing phosphorus and
sulphur, you can now wait and say, “Well, I've done my
duty. I want to harvest onions and garlic, and so with some
kind of organic fertilizer I have added sulphur and phosphorus
to the garden.” But it would be foolish to think that
this is all it would take to grow the onions. You would first
have to plant the bulbs! Likewise, it would be foolish to
maintain that in man's interior, bacteria are already
growing in the environment that is being prepared.
They
first have to be introduced into it. Just as the onion bulb
thrives in soil rich in phosphorus and sulphur, so do the
bacilli thrive within a sulphuric environment in the body.
Bacilli are not even necessary for one person to catch the flu
from another. Instead, by imitating with my fluid
organization what is happening in the patient's fluid
organism, I myself produce a favourable environment for
the bacilli; I myself acquire them. The sick person need not
bombard me with them at all.
When
we look at the whole matter, we must reply in quite a specific
way to the question, “What is it that causes us to be
stricken with a certain disease?” We become sick when
something injures us, and even in the case of internal
illnesses something is actually injuring us. The impure fluid,
in which substances are dissolved that should have been
digested, injures us; it injures us internally.
Now we
can turn our attention to illnesses like hayfever. The
incidence of hayfever depends much more on the time of year
than on the pollen in the air. More than anything else, what
makes a man susceptible to catching hayfever is the fact that
his astral body is not properly excreting; it is not properly
executing its activity that is directed more to the
external surface. As a result, when spring approaches and
everything begins to thrive in water, a person makes his whole
fluid organization more sensitive and thus susceptible to this
illness by dissolving certain substances in it. By
dissolving various substances in this fluid organization,
the fluids in a man's body always become a little diluted. The
fluid organization in a man who has a tendency toward
hayfever is always somewhat too large. The fluids are
being pushed aside in all directions by what is dissolved in
them. That is how a person becomes sensitive to everything that
makes its appearance in spring, especially to pollen, those
particles from plants that are now particularly irritating.
If the
nose were not enclosed, hayfever could be induced by many other
irritants. Pollen does enter the nose, however, and it
cannot be well tolerated if one already has hayfever. Pollen
does not cause hayfever but it aggravates it.
Our
hayfever remedy is based on drawing the extended fluid
organization in the body together again so that it becomes a
bit cloudy and once again secretes what it had initially
dissolved. It is really quite simple and based on nothing more
than contracting the fluid organism to its normal size. It
first becomes a little cloudy, and you have to watch that what
is secreted from the fluidity is not later retained in the
body. That is why it is beneficial for a person to perspire
somewhat after having been inoculated with the remedy; it is
good if he can move about and do something that induces
perspiration right after the inoculation. The inoculation is
always somewhat problematic when given to a person who is
suffering from constipation, and the patient should first be
asked if he is constipated. Otherwise, if the fluid
organization is contracted, things accumulate too much
and are not eliminated right away. This, of course, is not
good. A person who is constipated should be given a laxative
along with the inoculation.
Healing entails not only applying a medication but also
adjusting life accordingly, so that the human body reacts in an
appropriate manner to what has been given it. This
naturally is of tremendous significance; otherwise, the
person can be made even sicker. If you inoculate somebody with
a remedy that is quite effective, even exceptionally good, but
you do not see to it that the patient's digestion functions
properly and that everything the remedy brings about is
eliminated, you naturally drive him further into the
illness.
With
truly effective remedies it is important that the doctor
know not only what medicine cures what disease but also what
questions to ask the patient. The greatest medical art lies in
asking the right questions and in being familiar with the
patient. This is extremely important. Yet it is strange, for
example, that we meet doctors who frequently have not even
asked the patient his age, though this is significant. While he
may use the same remedies, a doctor can treat a fifty-year old
in a manner completely different from the way he treats one who
is forty, for example. They should not be so schematic as to
say, “This medication is right for this
illness.” For instance, it makes a great difference
if you want to cure someone who is constantly afflicted with
diarrhoea or someone who has chronic constipation. Such
remedies could be tested, and here experiments with animals
would be much less objectionable than they are in other areas.
Regarding constipation or diarrhoea, you can easily learn
how some remedy reacts in the general physical organism that
men have in common with the animals by giving the same
medicine to both a dog and a cat. The dog regularly
suffers from constipation, and the cat from diarrhoea. You can
acquire a wonderful knowledge by observing the degree of
difference in the medication's effect in the dog or the cat.
Scientific knowledge really is not attained by university
training in how to do this or that with certain instruments.
True science results, rather, when common sense is aroused a
little; then people know how they must conduct their
experiments.
In
sum, it is of prime importance to realize that an illness has
its basis in the whole human organization. The individual
organ becomes afflicted because the activity of the astral body
directs substances to it that have been precipitated from
within. The development of certain inner diseases like
influenza, hayfever and even typhoid fever becomes
comprehensible when we understand how substances
improperly deposited in our bodies are dispersed in our fluid
organism.
We are
hot only a “material man” but also a “water
man,” and, as I have already explained to you, we are
also an “air man,” whose form changes every moment.
One moment the air is outside, and the next it is within.
Just
as the solid substances that we contain within our bodies as
refuse dissolve in the water, so does that water itself
constantly evaporate within us. Within the muscles of your
little finger, for example, are minute evaporations of water.
Water constantly evaporates throughout your whole body.
Furthermore, what is evaporating in the fluid organism
penetrates into what you inhale as oxygen, which is also a
vapor or gas. When water on the ground evaporates, it rises up
into the atmosphere, and when water constantly evaporates in
delicate processes within the fluid man, it penetrates into the
air that we inhale. We cannot tolerate solid substances being
dispersed in the fluids, and neither can we tolerate fluids
evaporating into the air organism.
Take
the case of a person whose lungs have become afflicted
because something has occurred like the process that I have
just described. This person can become afflicted with a lung
disease, which can be cured if it arose from the wrong
substances being deposited in the water man. But let us assume
that the lung's affliction is not pronounced enough to become
apparent. After all, the human organs are sensitive. The
condition does not reach the point where the lungs become so
strongly afflicted that they are inflamed, but they do become a
little indisposed. The person can tolerate this slight
indisposition, but substances now enter into his fluid organism
that really should penetrate the lungs. In this case, the
fluids within the lungs have the wrong kinds of substances
dissolved in them; and these substances evaporate,
especially if the lungs are not completely well.
Thus,
in the case of the quite obvious internal diseases, the water
man receives something inappropriate from the solid substances,
and in this case something inappropriate reaches the point of
evaporation and mingles with the oxygen that is inhaled.
The fact that water evaporates inappropriately and unites
with oxygen damages the nervous system in particular, because
the nerves require healthy oxygen, not oxygen that has
evaporations in it from the contaminated fluid of the water
man. Contaminated fluid evaporates into the lungs, and this
fluid may be responsible for their slight indisposition.
Something that should not evaporate does, and this is damaging
to the nervous system. The person does not become radically
ill, but he does become insane.
It can
be said that internal physical illnesses are based on something
in man that causes improper substances to be dispersed in
his fluid organism. But so-called mental illnesses are in
reality not mental at all, because the mind or spirit does not
become ill. Mental illnesses are based on body fluids
evaporating improperly into oxygen and thereby disturbing the
nervous system. This can happen when some organ is so slightly
impaired or indisposed that it cannot be detected
externally. You see, then, that man must continually
process substances correctly so that nothing inappropriate
disperses in his fluids and that his fluids in turn do not
improperly evaporate. But even in everyday life there is a
process that causes improper evaporation of water, and this
becomes noticeable when we are thirsty. We cure the thirst by
drinking; we free our water, so to speak, from what is
inappropriately evaporating within it and wash away what
is incorrect.
So we
can say that in hunger there is actually the tendency to
physical illness, and in thirst there is the
predisposition to mental illness. If a man does not
properly nourish himself, he forms the basis for organic
diseases, and if he does not quench his thirst rightly, he may
bring about some form of mental illness. In some circumstances,
the improper quenching of thirst is difficult to detect,
especially if it occurs in infancy. At this stage one cannot
clearly distinguish between assuaging thirst and hunger
since both are satisfied by milk. Therefore, if through the
mother's milk or that of a wet nurse something harmful comes
into the organism, this can much later cause the fluid organism
to evaporate incorrectly and thus lead to some mental
disorder. Or let us say a person is wrongly inoculated. An
ill-chosen inoculation with one or another cow lymph or
diseased human lymph can afflict the organs that work
upon the water, even though the water itself does not become
directly diseased. As a result of an inappropriate inoculation,
a person's evaporation processes may not function
correctly, and later he may be disposed to some kind of
mental illness.
You
will have noticed, gentlemen, that nowadays a great many people
become afflicted with dementia praecox, so-called
“youthful insanity,” which extends, however, quite
far beyond the years of youth. This illness, in which people
begin mentally to deteriorate in their youth, originates in
great part from the wrong kind of feeding during the earliest
years of childhood. It is not enough merely to examine
chemically the baby's milk; one must look into completely
different aspects. Because people have ceased to pay
attention to feeding in our age, this illness arises with such
vehemence.
You
will have realized from all this that it does not suffice
simply to train doctors to know that a certain remedy is good
for a certain illness. One must rather seek to make the
totality of life healthier, and for that one must first
discover all that is related to a healthy life. Anthroposophy
can provide this understanding. It aims at being effective in
the field of hygiene and seeks to comprehend correctly
questions of health.
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