Anthroposophical medicine: a research based extension to conventional medicine

Early last century, Rudolph Steiner, who unusually combined a scientific training with remarkable psychic gifts, came to the view that conventional science was only capable of researching material aspects of the human being and that a science of the immaterial was needed using different methods of research.

Initially, he developed a general world view using a combination of research into the literature and a Goet-hean phenomenological approach, which he enlarged by developing his own psychic research methods.

At the request of a group of homoeopathic doctors, he applied this approach to medicine, always insisting that his views and empirical findings should agree.

His principal biological concept was that man is a fourfold being made up of the material body, a life body, a body of sensation and feeling, and an individual ego which has a prenatal and post-death existence. These four aspects are expressed in different ways in the body resulting in a threefold system centred on, respectively, nervous system, heart and lungs, and digestive/metabolic system; lack of harmony between these systems results in illness.

Drawing partly on the Paracelsian tradition of alternative medicine he developed new ways of studying existing medicines and described some new ones, including Iscador. He also founded new forms of artistic and physical therapy, making up a truly holistic system.

Practised worldwide only by doctors, anthroposophic medicine has over 3000 practitioners worldwide, working in clinics, hospitals and in general practice.