The people of antiquity said that animals are taught through their organs. But I would add to this by saying that human beings teach their organs,44
Goethe
Knowing that our inner organs have something to do with the four elements and the four temperaments is not new. People have been connecting the lungs as an earth organ with melancholy, the liver as a water organ with phlegma (Greek: ‘mucous’), the kidneys as an air organ with sanguinity (flightiness, airiness) and the heart with warmth, that is the hot temperament, choler. In ancient systems of medicine people also tried to find an outer analogy in nature for the inner organs of human beings. For instance in Chinese medicine the four organs above are associated with the four seasons: the liver to spring, the heart to summer, the lungs to autumn, and the kidneys to winter. For treatment and prophylaxis this gives rise to certain rules of health, particularly obvious in the relationship of the liver, our life organ, to spring:
We call the three months of spring the period of the beginning of life and of life’s development. The energy of heaven and earth is there, ready, so that everything blossoms and flourishes.
After a night’s sleep one ought to rise early, wander round the courtyard, loosen ones hair, and only move in a leisurely manner. That is how to lead a healthy life. At this time of day one ought to do justice to the body’s urge to live; one ought to be adding to it rather than taking from it, rewarding it rather than punishing it. All of that is in agreement with the energy of spring, and that is the method to apply to safeguard one’s own life. Those who do not take into account these laws of spring will be punished by impairment of the liver, and will be afflicted the following summer by a cold illness.45
Misconduct in this regard might be seen, nowadays, as something that would weaken the immune system. Perhaps this explains such a thing as summer flu?
The four elements are visible carriers of spiritual effects that are also to be seen in the human being as a bridge for cosmic forces not directly visible: The earthly-mineral element as the bearer of physical forces that in the course of time degenerate; the watery element with its forces of buoyancy as the bearer of all life processes—for without water nothing grows and flourishes on the earth; the airy element that constantly seeks to expand into infinity, as the medium for breathing and language, that is, for the ensouling of the organism; and finally warmth, the ‘queen of the elements’, which, although it is the most unphysical of the elements yet nevertheless rules and transforms all of them, and can be regarded as the earthly basis for embodiment of the individual spiritual element, our ego. Warmth should be seen as half earthly and half cosmic, which is why we speak of heart’s warmth, nest warmth or soul warmth. Every form of devotion, love and sacrifice has something to do with warmth, just as wood has to ‘sacrifice’ itself so that warmth can be created. The saying has come down to us from Aristotle: ‘A human being is born out of warmth, and if he loses his warmth he loses his humanity.’ Coldness spells death to all warm-blooded creatures.
The inner relationship of man to nature through the four elements is one of the reasons why for thousands of years medicine has endeavoured to use these four elements to heal physically: with medicinal clay or a geological change of location, with water treatments as for instance in kneipp hydrotherapy, with air, whether using oxygen, carbon dioxide, ozone or even ‘a change of air’, and with various kinds of heat treatments, for instance also by eliciting fever in a patient, which—whether naturally occurring or artificially induced (hyperthermia) — is the arch-enemy of cancer, because it deeply benefits the immune system. In this way we can arrive at a new and above all deeper understanding of what was once called ‘geographic’ or ‘geological’ or ‘meteorological’ medicine. In earlier times people were very aware of the climatic or also specifically geological influences of various soils on body and soul. We find for instance in Paracelsus the knowledge that certain illnesses of the blood occur when the soil has too much iron in it.
The study of the geology of a region is actually one and the same thing as the study of the lungs of the region concerned.46
‘Earth’ is a solid mineral foundation, which, though it sustains life, cannot itself produce anything, for the potential for life originates from outside, from the cosmos. Growing and flourishing are not possible without the influence of water, sun and stars.
On the mineral earth human beings take on their earthly mineral body. With ‘earth’ we connect the idea of solidity, coolness, gravity, form that has become visible, but also being born and dying, work and sweat. The lungs, projecting into us as an upside-down tree, have an average blood temperature of only 35.8° Celsius. This very cartilaginous organ, which, for better or worse, unites us with our physical surroundings, is one through which, by taking in oxygen (life) and giving out carbon dioxide (death), we take hold of our bodies with our first breath and end our earthly existence with our last. So the physical lungs are what first enable us to have life at all; and as we saw, breathing is only a secondary activity of this organ, which on earth brings life into us from outside.
If the lungs are healthy in their physical constitution then they hold an organic and individual balance in us between being too fluid and watery on the one hand and too solidly material on the other. If the inner ‘earth’ within us dissolves too much, a person will become too airy, flighty, and in an extreme case consumptive. If the same element becomes too hardened then the mineral forces dominate, incarcerating a person’s inner life so that he may either stagnate or become excessively ‘armoured’.
If lung activity tends too strongly towards dissolution, (among other things ‘remembering’ its mucus-building fluid and glandular character) then bronchitis or lung inflammation occur, marked at critical moments by extremely high temperatures and attendant hallucinations. This can be extremely dangerous for very old people, which is why a lung infection in children must be regarded differently than in later years. If the lungs actually disintegrate into their physical substance as with tuberculosis, there is a tendency to leave the earth altogether, to ‘vanish’ from it,* which is why it has gone down in history as the ‘illness of the Romantics’. In the 1950s there was an investigation into the connection between the psyche and tuberculosis which established that an occurrence of the illness was not the expression of the fight between the organism and germs but between the organ and itself, with an important part played in development of the illness by certain psychological predispositions and conflicts.47
We can also consider here the inflammatory and ‘dissolute’ tendency associated with the smoking of hashish, along with reddened eyes and runny nose. This practice easily withdraws a person from the earth and can lead to illusions or even hallucinations, at the same time to an enormous appetite for food as a counterweight, as it were, to too strong a tendency to release oneself from the earth. Physical nourishment—our daily food — is the most earthly of the things we need for maintaining our bodies. To enjoy eating with a healthy appetite is constantly saying ‘yes’ to the earth. There are many folk-sayings that speak of the connection of the liver (a water organ) with thirst, but few are aware that, as an earth organ, the lungs regulate our hunger. This in turn explains loss of appetite especially in children after lengthy pulmonary illnesses and lung weaknesses. In the case of anorexia nervosa in puberty, too, as a developmental and maturational disorder, the lungs also require medical treatment. Although this developmental disorder tends towards fleeing the earth, its psychological picture is the opposite, that is, compulsive and controlling. As we already saw, rhythmic activity in the breathing is subject to the mercurial principle, while earthly-physical form and development is subject to the lungs and thus also to the iron process and its principle of bodily engagement.
The lungs’ pathological tendency to dissolve, therefore leads in the life of the psyche to flightiness and delusional tendencies as we can read about in Thomas Mann’s novel, The Magic Mountain, set in a lung sanatorium.
The lungs as earth organ send their earthly energy into our organs of movement that have mostly to do with gravity: the legs. We can also experience this strikingly in the animal kingdom when a tadpole, maturing to a frog, develops lungs at the same time as legs. That the lungs and the energy of the legs, or movement in general, have something to do with one another, can be studied on the one hand in the exhausting perspiration of lung patients after the slightest exertion—and it is for good reason that they need a long rest-cure and should never overexert themselves — and on the other hand in case histories of conditions that confirm the inner connection of these two earth organs. For instance the psychoanalyst, Horst-Eberhardt Richter, tells us of a traumatic experience during the Second World War when both his lungs and legs simultaneously failed him:
When, a few weeks later, I entered our half-ruined rented house in Berlin, I found a Hungarian couple in two of the rooms on the third floor, half of which had been spared after a bomb was dropped on our old house. Didn’t I know, they asked me, that my parents had perished back in June 1945? How did it happen? It happened in the village where they had gone to escape the bombs. The Russians … A day after this shock my temperature went up. Inflammation of the lungs. Hospital. I lay there for several weeks. The fever had already long subsided and my lungs were all right again. But I could not or would not get well. I could not stand on my legs. It was the legs once again. I remember the way the specialists and two sisters looked at me critically, and put me through a walking test. I walked very stiffly and was ashamed of myself. I was aware of course that it was not the fault of my legs.48
But where are people sent to be cured when they have pulmonary conditions of one kind or another? Away from low-lying ground and limestone soil and to a geological area connected with the strongest formative force: the silica or granite of the high mountains, where the most intense light forces are also to be found, where the ‘spiritual aspect’ of the air predominates. Or otherwise to where sand (silica) or salt predominate: the sea. It is striking to find how children who, with their close connection to everything watery and flourishing, can’t get rid of their bronchitis on a limestone soil, get better ever so quickly when taken to the mountains or to the sea. The inner connection of the lungs to the forces of the earth also suggests why asthmatics improve especially in caves in the ground.
Conversely, though, the lungs can also help the soul when it grows too earthly and compulsive, by freeing themselves organically through inflammation or a haemorrhage from psychological enchainment, obsession or from stagnation. We find an example here in the letters of Franz Kafka, who suffered from tuberculosis and manoeuvred himself into more and more divisive and compulsive situations, that threatened to deprive him of all freedom and movement and estrange him from earthly tasks. His longing to leave the earth became greater and greater.
My doubts surround every word of mine […] Everything is fantasy — my family, the office, friends, the street, all is just imagined, whether near or far, (even) my wife […] The most immediate truth is that you are only pressing your head against the wall of a windowless and doorless cell […]
But how could he get away from this situation, and who helped him to do so? His lungs produced a haemorrhage, a ‘breakthrough,’ and by doing so helped him form a resolve:
The fact was that my brain could no longer bear its worries and pains. It said: ‘I give up; but if there is anyone here who cares whether the whole thing continues then let him take some of my burden from me, and things may carry on for a while.’ The lungs volunteered, they certainly didn’t have much to lose. These negotiations between the brain and the lungs, that took place without my knowledge, may have been agonizing.
The battle for survival by his own lungs became ever more acute:
What shall two lungs do […]? If they breathe fast they more or less suffocate from inner poisons; if they breathe slowly they suffocate from unbreathable air, from outraged things. But if they seek their own tempo, this quest alone finishes them off. This proves that it is impossible to live.49
So through its illness, a certain organ, in this case the lungs, can help take on and resolve a specific psychological problem. The same is true of other organs as well.
In this regard I once experienced an issue of compulsive-obsessive behaviour in someone with severe anorexia, followed by a lung inflammation. She temporarily lost her psychological symptoms when the lung infection occurred, and the entrenched pattern of self-control visibly ‘liquefied’. In clinical practice one repeatedly finds in cases of psychological or also physical trauma that the soul seeks to free itself from its constriction and confinement through ‘dissolving’ conditions, that is, bronchitis or pneumonia.
But we must also take a look at the other aspect of pulmonary illnesses, that is, in hardening, incrustation and congestions, as we know in the case of asthma. Besides the symptomatic ‘holding’ of the outbreath we also often find in such conditions a fastidious urge to be clean and the understandable fear of an ‘unclean’ environment, as well as a fixation on medicines that widen the bronchial tubes. Increasing solidification of the already viscous mucus becomes a torment. Often we can discover a psychological ‘corset’ that was first established through excessive fixation on a parent in earliest childhood. Marcel Proust, who suffered badly from asthma and never broke away from a close connection with his mother, would be an interesting object of study here, also in respect of his key theme, the ‘search for time lost’.
In an asthmatic, the hardened, self-enclosing head-forces risk invading the lungs too. In cases of tuberculosis of the lungs, often associated with episodes of hallucination at the peak of the illness, these structuring head-forces depart from the lungs. We find a typical example in the notes of the writer George Sand, who spent some time in Mallorca with the musician Chopin when he had tuberculosis.50
She reports that Chopin often ‘got obsessed’ with one passage in a composition, and did not relinquish it until he had lung problems.
Concerning the matter of smoking tobacco, the smoke itself is due to a process of incineration, and has the opposite effect to hashish. In the middle sphere of a human being, regarded as the feeling sphere, it has a sealing, consolidating effect apparent especially in the formation of lung carcinomas. This effect, however, can invade the leg arteries in particular as a physical tendency to sclerosis, (so-called smoker’s leg), cool blood temperature to about 0.5°C, and assuage hunger, which we can again interpret as a counter-effect.
The healthy centre of the soul, between the extremes of what is compulsive and what is illusionary, between excessive adherence to the earth and excessive release from it, is something we especially need to cultivate, and gives our soul a healthy framework. Here I mean the logic of thought, as we find especially in mathematics and geometry but also in quite ordinary thought structures. What we can call the ‘healthy head nature’ in our soul is responsible for supersensible forces at work in our lungs, which can deviate in one or another direction if the lungs not only get physically but also functionally ill. Thus the lungs are the ‘earth’ in us and, as a geological-meteorological organ, are connected with the solidity of each type of soil, and with what we can do only on the earth, namely move under the force of gravity and work with our bodies. These two criteria, the specific geology of where we live and a healthy extent of bodily movement, are of key importance for prophylactics and for maintaining health in a weakened lung organization. There is a note on this by Rudolf Steiner from the year 1920:
The lungs are like a mirror image of earth conditions — in granite areas they will get well — in limestone soil they will be tested — in sedimentary soils they will tend to fall ill. Lung illnesses are exacerbated by excessive bodily work.51
A classic example of premature physical strain and concomitant severe lung impairment is that of Anton Chekov, who died early from tuberculosis. From the remarks above we can see the importance of a rest-cure and the recommendation to people suffering from lung damage not to overstrain themselves, or to change location when they are chronically ill.
So the value of internal or external treatments with silica, granite and salt compounds is clear, as well as, in anthroposophic medicine, a remedy containing an ash preparation of certain medicinal plants. For ash is the earthly residue, the pure mineral part that alone remains after cremation. Since olden times plants with a marked relationship to the earth—for instance the bitter plants, Icelandic moss and wormwood — have been successfully used in herbal remedies.
If someone is as green as a tree frog, as thin as a poplar, loses weight and humour everyday, and scarcely casts a shadow, try taking a spoonful of wormwood every two hours, for it is not only an excellent remedy for lack of appetite, but also for purifying the lungs.52
In their relation to the earth, in some patients with severe lung symptoms the lungs sometimes even produce musty odours, and because the lungs are the organ of grief we often find a tearful tenor of voice manifesting especially at moments of agitation.
We mentioned earlier that there is a functional relationship between the lungs and the intestines, or, seen symptomatically, between a cough and diarrhoea. It is known in practice that sometimes when a cough is beginning to get better, diarrhoea can occur, or in cases where the cough is severe, an enema can help improve it. This knowledge leads in many cases to conducting an intestinal purge. We also know from medical practice the problem that symptoms occur suddenly in the intestines if we suppress the lung illness, or vice versa.
The lungs separate during embryonic development from the primal intestines and move upwards. So we can discover a functional contrast between the lungs and the intestines but also a similarity. There is also a resemblance in the fact that they both excrete superfluous, toxic matter, either in the form of air, or solid matter. They are opposites in the fact that what is healthy for the lungs becomes an illness where the intestines are concerned, and the other way round. That is, the intestines produce large amounts of mucus and do not especially like air, whereas the lungs enjoy filling themselves with air and may only produce a small amount of mucus, but tend towards illness if they do so excessively.
In Chinese medicine, besides the relationship of the lungs to the large intestine, and to the hardest thing on earth, ‘metal’, there are also interesting concordances with the spiritual-scientific view of the lungs as ‘the earth’ in us. In Asia the lungs are regarded as ‘the minister’ who, in the harmony of the circle of organic functions, is in charge of order in the physical ‘realm’, and constitutes the earthly ‘surface’ for properly assimilating energetic influences from without, such as light and air. According to the Chinese view, the lungs take care of the organic energy needed to construct our bodily house. They rule the ‘defensive energy’ of the skin as one of the most important organs of immunity in its creation of sweat — we think here immediately perhaps of the exhausting night sweats of lung patients — and by warming the entire skin surface. According to the Asiatic view, not only moistening but cooling of the whole bodily system originates with the lungs. From this perspective is it not surprising that one can, for hours, breathe in cold air at minus 40° Celsius without getting a lung inflammation? But if, by contrast, the abdomen, especially the leg and kidney region or the feet, get cold and wet, then in no time the ‘upper regions’ will show bodily symptoms of a cold.
The emotions connected with the lungs are grief and sadness, as is, therefore, the melancholic temperament. These draw us most strongly earthward. Corresponding periods are those when the day or season are ‘declining’: the afternoon or autumn with its earthly smells.
As the lungs are the centre of a human being, lung patients ought to pay attention to their diet, and eat a lot of leafy vegetables. Onions with their sulphuric sharpness also belong here, and the diverse kinds of cabbage, that are primarily leaf. If the lungs tend to be inflamed then we recommend stimulating them by giving them the formative and shaping forces of cooked roots such as carrots, and especially beetroot, which also have a favourable influence on the immune system.
The liver, as our inner ‘general’, promotes and maintains our life forces. Life has to do with the cosmos, with sunlight and sun warmth and their earthly bearer is water. If the metabolic organism lacks inner warmth then it is a good thing either to put a hot water bottle on the liver area or to expose the abdomen to the sun. If an infant after birth, for instance, has too much bile in its blood (hyperbilirubinemia) due to a disturbance in the liver’s development, the child should be exposed to sunlight so that the bilirubin can normalize. Thus sun activity enhances the liver activity, and bile is the earthly substance that ‘burns up’ deposits both in the metabolism and in the soul.
Our thirst, including the intake of liquid during the day, is determined by the liver, with the help of an important protein substance (albumin) that it forms. This governs the exchange of water between the blood and the tissue, transforming ‘normal’ water taken in from outside into ‘living’ water belonging to the body. The liver is actually to be thought of as a sucking blood-sponge encapsulated in a tissue-like covering. Its dominant function in the body’s water balance also gives the soul ‘buoyancy’. So it is understandable that on the one hand the liver is dependent on clean, vital water and on the other hand should not be overtaxed in its detoxifying metabolic function, as everything that we ingest in the way of food has to be passed through the liver. Water containing limestone is an especial burden on the liver, for limestone has an organic connection with hardening and death processes. If, for instance, thinking is overstrained by abstract thoughts for a long time, then a cooling of the whole organism can follow, right down to the feet. During state exams I saw two of my fellow medical students developing hepatitis because of excessive intellectual strain and nightlong study.
Another one-sidedness that the liver cannot tolerate could be described as ‘gourmandizing’. When an unrestrained appetite asks too much of the liver, it tends slowly to degenerate, which occurs for instance in the condition ‘fatty liver’. This not only indicates the need for moderation but also conscious chewing that properly relishes food in the mouth, and good seasoning of foods. These stimulate the liver to healthy activity. The liver must not be overtaxed by a surfeit of things such as excessive fat, alcoholic drinks and chemical and substitute sugars such as aspartame.
Major medicinal plants for the liver include, especially, ones that contain lactiferous or sap-rich substances such as dandelion, bryony, celandine and milk thistle, or very sour ones like barberry. Chicory is especially helpful in the case of liver and gall complaints.
At an early stage of embryonic development, breathing and nutrition are still a unity. The embryo floats in the nourishing amniotic fluid which serves as both its source of nourishment and ‘respiration’. Later on, breathing air, the lungs grasp hold of the formative forces of our cosmic environment, while the liver is responsible for earthly nourishment, the chemistry of material synthesis, and the heart and the circulation take care of the diffusion of air and substance through the entire organism. The kidneys, as a soul organ, synthesize and individualize the substances ingested from without in order to build up the body, and configure the flow of air to become part of the soul, that is, interiority. Thus the kidneys become the organ of ‘subjectivity’. The greater the need for oxygen, and the deeper our breathing, the more thoroughly does the soul element engage in our body and combust assimilated substance, transforming it into energy. Interestingly enough, as far as the need for oxygen is concerned, the kidneys and the cerebro-spinal system are primary, and thus turn out to be part of our organs of consciousness.
Breathing, which, as we saw, is organized via the lungs by our kidneys and bladder organization, is dependent on a person’s soul constitution. If we become subject to inner or outer strain, i.e. stress, or if we are nervy or otherwise psychologically ‘breathless’, or if we begrudge ourselves sufficient peace to eat, or bolt our food down thoughtlessly without chewing properly, the inside motions of the organism become chaotic and impair the bladder and the kidney in particular, leading often to an accumulation of air in the upper stomach. The person begins to swallow air and their whole breathing becomes irregular.
So it is of the utmost importance for the life of the bladder and kidneys to maintain the right ‘breathing rhythm’, especially when eating. This is greatly neglected today with modern eating habits such as fast foods or use of microwaves.
We can enhance the organism’s healthy perfusion with breath by taking people to sub-mountainous regions where the air contains more oxygen; and they then unconsciously inhale and exhale more deeply. Irritations of the bladder and the kidneys, manifesting in a burning sensation (irritable bladder), more frequent urination through to volatile fluctuations in blood pressure, improve, when patients learn to breathe more deeply and consciously. A patient who suffered from unstable high blood pressure and difficulties in breathing once told me how helpful it had been to breathe regularly in and out when snorkelling. In this respect one can justifiably say that care of the breathing is care of the kidneys!
The Chinese bladder meridian runs from the inner corners of the eye and nose through the sinuses along the temple into the occipital area at the back of the head, and through the neck muscles, the back and the calves into the little toe. Patients who suffer from weather-induced headaches — especially low pressure or thunderstorms — have problems especially along the bladder meridian, with sensitive places or pain originating in the eyes and passing over the temples through to the region where the musculature reaches the occiput.
So we can also start with the bladder when seeking cures for disorders in the air organism such as sinus inflammations, or lymphatic growths. Such conditions are also associated with an increased need for oxygen and over-sensitivity to light, smells and noises. Similarly to the way in which the liver supplies the eyes with vitalized water, the kidneys supply the eye and the skin with light. This also involves the relationship between the kidneys and the adrenal gland, which co-determines vegetative processes by forming cortisone and adrenalin, two substances belonging to the body that can be used medicinally in cases of shock and severe forms of allergy. Patients with disorders of the kidneys and adrenal glands eventually develop a dull, dirty, grey-brown skin colour.
Medicinally, the air-filled horsetail, which is chiefly stalk and has a high silica content, is used in cases of kidney and bladder infections. Also burdock root as a tea, an ancient folk remedy, works not only on the kidney but externally, used as an oil extract, can also have a beneficial effect on the hair.
The kidneys are nitrogenous organs, so they benefit from plants in our diet that contain nitrogen, like pulses, though these can also make them somewhat dull and cause internal ‘wind’.
If the kidneys and the bladder are disturbed in their eliminating function—Chinese doctors speak of too strong a ‘contraction’ — melons and pumpkins can assist the passing of water and dispel breakdown products from the body. As the kidneys possess a special relationship to common salt, it is very important to limit its intake so as not to overtax them. On the other hand, cooking salt as a homeopathic medicine (natrum muriaticum) is an excellent remedy in the case of a number of kidney symptoms that manifest in an increased need for cool, fresh air, oversensitivity to the rays of the sun, heat, overheated rooms and a fear of uncertainty. In addition, the homeopathic picture for this medicine shows a tendency to moral stringency and an extreme cleanliness compulsion.
The heart is the centre of all movements, and it is well known that warmth arises only out of movement. In Chinese medicine the heart has an inner connection with summer.
The three months of summer are what we call the period of surfeited growth. The energies of the heavens and the earth unite, so that everything blossoms and brings fruit. After a night’s sleep one ought to wake up early. During the day one ought to be calm and composed, and allow development and flourishing life its free rein; one should let one’s own energy come into contact with one’s surroundings, and should behave as though one loves everything around one. All of this happens in accord with the atmosphere of summer, and is the way to safeguard one’s own development. But those who do not abide by the laws of summer are punished by an impairment of the heart. They are affected by cases of malaria in the autumn,* and therefore little energy remains for them to cope with autumn in a healthy manner, so that they can be overtaken by serious illnesses in the winter.53
We know that people with heart trouble often suffer greatly from the summer heat and that in the case of the heart being ‘overheated’ cool poultices in the heart area, under the arms and over the pulses — over which the heart meridian also runs — have a calming effect.
The heart has a connection with the outer movements that have to do with our conscious I and less with the unknown nature of soul life, as we saw it in regulation of the inner, soul movements in their relationship to the kidney and the bladder.
By means of ensouled, conscious movement one can send warmth into limbs that have become cold, as happens in the case of autogenic training. I well remember a patient who suffered all the time with cold hands and despite physical measures and medication gained no improvement. When I met her again many months later and gave her my hand I was astonished how warm her handshake had become. To my question as to the cause of the improvement she replied that for the first time in her life she had taken up something that had really made her happy and enthusiastic. Popular wisdom has long known that cold thoughts lead to cold hands.
The heart as the basic organ of our rhythm and circulation is situated between the mutually determining head pole of perception and the metabolic pole of movement. If our harmony is disrupted by sensory overload with a simultaneous inaction of the legs, as with driving a car or using the computer, then the heart and the circulation inevitably suffer. The opposite is true in one-sided engagement in sport. This is confirmed by cases of sudden death caused by heart failure among professional athletes. Modern heart physiology has recognized that the most balanced and best form of movement is walking or hiking and not over-energetic jogging. Also, after a heart attack, it is recommended nowadays — unlike previously — that one should get on one’s feet again soon and be active. We can now understand why sitting down for a long time, or much travelling or flying, make heart illnesses worse.
Doing soulful movements, as is done in the eurythmy therapy of anthroposophically extended medicine, is the best therapy and prophylaxis for heart complaints. These are movements ‘in which the muscles celebrate a festival’ to use Nietzsche’s expression.
As early as 1920, long before heart and circulation illnesses increased to become primary in illness statistics, Rudolf Steiner spoke about the fundamental significance of movement for the health of the heart. I will quote it at length here because of its topicality:
I would particularly like to draw your attention to the fact that you should really endeavour to attribute every kind of heart damage to a disturbance in human activity. You really should investigate how different the heart activity of a person is who, let us say, cultivates his fields as a farmer, with little respite from this activity, from people who for instance have to do a lot of driving, or even only have to travel by train a lot. It would be extremely interesting to investigate this thoroughly — and you will find that the tendency to heart disease is essentially due to the fact that a person, whilst being moved about by outer means, himself sits still, that is, sits in a train or a car and is being ferried about without his involvement. This passive giving of oneself to outer movement is what disrupts all the processes in the heart.
Now all the factors of these kinds in human life affect the way in which we grow warm or not. And here you see the relationship of heart activity with the impulse of warmth in the world, and its relation to human life. When someone creates enough warmth through their own activity this specific measure of warmth they develop in their life processes is at the same time what is required for the health of the human heart. In the case of heart patients we therefore always have to ensure that they engage in movement that properly and fully enlivens them.54
For modern medicine it is self-evident today that active movement alongside nutrition represents the best prophylaxis for circulation disturbances. Inner and outer permeation of the organism with warmth is an important matter in the case of circulatory disorders. Stimulating skin warmth by energetic rubbing or the external application of warming plants like camphor and rosemary (also drunk as a tea) has long been a well-tried remedy for heart and circulation disorders and the tendency to faintness.
The colour corresponding to the heart in Asiatic medicine is red, which makes us think of the colour of one of our best remedies in herbal medicine, the red fruit of the hawthorn.
As we already mentioned, the appropriate season for the heart is the summer, which is why in the case of ‘overheating’, such as chest tightness or racing heart, we won’t go wrong if we calm the heart with cool poultices — in contrast to the liver, which, except in a few exceptions, should usually be treated with warmth.
The emotion corresponding to the heart is joy, and along with this the heartiness we so greatly lack today in this ‘cool’ age.
The bodily fluid assigned to the heart functions is sweat, which, for Asiatics — who, by the way, hardly perspire at all — is regarded as a valuable bodily fluid that should be ‘retained’. When heart energy has become weak then people sweat in their sleep. In the Chinese view, the tastes corresponding to the heart, and good therefore also for circulation, are sharpness and bitterness. Both are very helpful when staying in the tropics or going on tiring journeys by plane or car; they ease the function of the heart via the digestion, since the small intestine is the sister organ of the heart.
At this point I would like to add as a postscript an important research finding of recent years concerning the human heart. In 2007, a working group led by Professor Sengupta in Rochester (Minnesota, USA) published important research findings in the periodical American College of Cardiology concerning the flow dynamic of the blood in the left ventricle of the heart. Using ultrasound they were able to demonstrate that the blood forms a vortex, which causes the heart to contract. This conclusively put to rest the old dogma that the heart is the originator and cause of circulation.
In addition it was repeatedly observed that when, in line with the common pump theory, we reinforce left-heart activity with medication, in the case of the heart insufficiency (which, if the heart were a pump, would be the sensible thing to do!) this leads to an increase in mortality rates. We know today that an improvement will occur if we reduce the heart’s resistance to the blood stream (which of course impels the heart). This has led to the modern treatment using beta blockers, ACE inhibitors, antiwater-retention measures etc., which help reduce resistance to the blood flow. In other words, the treatment approach now employed runs completely counter to the mechanistic model!
If we compare statements by Rudolf Steiner about heart activity with the recent physiological findings, we can marvel at the relevance and accuracy of the former!
I will quote firstly from a lecture to the workers in Dornach:
The blood wants to receive nourishment (again). The blood as it were draws to itself the food that the stomach and the intestines have imbibed. All this, this hunger for air, hunger for food, brings the blood into movement. It is the blood that moves first and the blood takes the heart with it. So it is not the heart that pumps the blood through the body but the blood that moves because of its hunger for air, hunger for food. And that is what moves the heart…55
What initially sounds so innocuous and naïve here, is confirmed by the wisdom of Chinese medicine, at least in so far as the small intestine is the polar organ to the heart, and is responsible for the assimilation of food. And today modern physiology fully affirms the participation of metabolism in blood flow. It has been found that the blood flows all the more quickly the more oxygen is combusted in the tissues, that is, the greater the metabolic activity!
Thus the cause of blood flow is always found in the same place where blood volume is engendered — that is, not centrally in the heart, but everywhere in the organism’s periphery.56
But in relation also to psychological occurrences such as loneliness, death of a dear one, depression over an unhappy love affair, etc, interesting results were recently discovered, such as the syndrome of a ‘broken heart’. Heart catheter investigations where heart attack was suspected found no constriction of the coronary vessels but a strangely rounded deformation of the left heart. In ultrasound images this appears like a clay vase or a Japanese squid called a ‘takotsubo’. Thus the condition is also called ‘takotsubo cardiomyopathy’ or ‘broken heart syndrome’, nine out of ten cases of which were found in female patients. The heart is swamped by stress hormones (adrenalin and noradrenalin) that rise by 35 per cent, as with a heart attack. A few months later the heart can regenerate itself again without any impairment. The chief causes of a broken heart are severe blows of destiny, the death of a loved one, an accident, an attack, severe threats, etc.57
The insufficiency of the right heart is a big enigma in orthodox medicine, and at the moment there is no rational treatment for it. The best results are achieved by naturopaths and anthroposophic physicians with a remedy that, thank God, has come to the fore again recently, and that both hinders a heart attack and also works to improve blood circulation. Rudolf Steiner spoke of this — strophanthin or strophantus, an African climber — as a remedy for the damaging effect of modern civilization on the heart.58
*Editor’s note: The German for consumption is ‘Schwindsucht’, the first syllable of which means ‘vanish’.
*In western medicine we would say severe infectious.