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.This interplay is most complicated in the human being.When this is understood, we come to realize the necessity to restore the balance between the two by the use of the forces at man's disposal.One can assist these forces by the effect of antimony.I believe antimony is almost entirely neglected today by ordinary medicine, but it acts in a way that was known in earlier times.This is no longer quite intelligible to people today.The very strong effects of antimony are essentially transferred directly into the inner aspect of the human being.There they produce a kind of balancing point.It is extraordinarily interesting to observe the opposite effects in the human being of phosphorus, arsenic, and antimony.What in the outer world comes to a certain state of rest in a substance manifests its true nature when it unfolds its activity in the human being.Only then can one see what is still living in it.Regarding it from outside, one sees only what has condensed out of a process of becoming.Looking at arsenic outwardly, one really sees the end of a process in the outer world whose beginning is seen within the human being.Therefore one never really knows something as substance when it is observed in the outer world without knowing at the same time what it does within the human organism.There is a chemistry, but there is also an “anti-chemistry.” Chemistry itself is like looking at a being that has a front and a back merely from one side, from behind.If a being has two sides, we must look at the front too: only by considering both aspects together do we gain an impression of the entire being.If we have only deduced what lives in a substance by looking at it from behind, then we must approach it also from in front, from the point of view of its effect in the human organism.One must study “anti-chemistry” as well as chemistry.Only when these two work together will a knowledge emerge of what underlies all substances.Lecture IIIDornach, April 13, 1921We find the proper domain for studying diseases in those illnesses that reveal most clearly the improper influence of the so-called astral body.Such illnesses, in which the influences of the astral body are most evident, can be observed within the thoracic cavity.This domain, which is the most important for the study of illness, is at the same time the most difficult one for healing, for the knowledge of healing.It is this aspect of human nature which is ultimately responsible for the deficiencies in the art of medicine that were especially emphasized by Dr.Scheidegger in his lecture given during the first medical course last year.He explained how recent medical developments have led to advances in the domain of pathology but to a kind of nihilism in therapeutics.His significant presentation brought into clear focus the need for a careful study of what we must stress today.Illnesses in the region of the human blood and circulation are, in one respect, very different from those of the head organs and nerve-sense aspects of man, and different again from illnesses of metabolism, though they are intimately connected with both.The fact is that the head organization has to be treated in a special way, because it is permeable — as we have seen — to the etheric, astral, and ego-being.In the chest the organs are not permeable to the etheric but only to the astral and ego-being.In the chest organs the etheric and physical bodies work intimately together, cooperating as a unity.There is no longer a sum of physical processes in the human chest organism, but rather a cooperation of the etheric and the physical.A process of becoming plant-like is taking place here, and this must be taken into account particularly in the chest.However, this process of becoming plant-like is well-concealed and much modified by everything else connected with it in the human organism.Nevertheless, we must consider a plant process when dealing with the chest organs, which then interacts with everything coming from the astral and ego of the human being.This must be carefully noted.I said yesterday that the astral is the original bearer of all that which causes illness in the human being.Therefore, in the human chest region there is a persistant inclination for the tendencies that produce illness to have an influence, because the tendencies to illness and health constantly alternate in the human chest organs.Indeed, the normal condition in the human being is like that of a pendulum swinging back and forth: the strong forces of the healthy human being paralyze the forces of illness that are continually present, and the reverse is also true, that overflowing health, which would lead to excessive proliferation in the etheric, is constantly opposed by the restricting power of the astral, which causes illness when it exceeds its limit and grips the body too strongly.This state of affairs in the human chest organs is of particular importance because it is the result of a rhythm.This result of a rhythm is influenced on the one hand by everything taking place in the head and on the other hand by everything taking place in the metabolism
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