By: Peter Heusser

Translated by Harold Jurgens with permission from Mitteilungen aus der Behandlung maligner Tumoren mit Viscum album. 19(3), 140, 1987, Verein fur Krebsforschung, Arlesheim. Addendum 1990. ©1991 Mercury Press, JAM 8(2), Fall 1991

Introduction

Anthroposophically oriented medicine is sometimes reproached for being based on a world view and not science. 1,2,3 If one thinks about this view one notices two things.

Firstly, those who utter the reproach about a world view are apparently unaware that this also applies to them, because they also represent a world view, namely the modern scientific one. A science of medicine without a world conception is actually impossible. Every therapeutic method presup­poses specific knowledge, concepts and ideas about man and medicine; in short, it presupposes a definite view of man and nature. One can not really reproach someone for having a world conception. The only justifiable ques­tion is to what extent a world conception can be scientifically established. And this applies to every world conception. Therefore critics would have to say why they think their view is scientific while the anthroposophical view is not. However, one finds no such statements because the critics look neither at their own cognitional foundations nor at the anthroposophical ones. 4,5,6,7

This brings us to the second point; namely, anyone who wants to judge the scientific foundation of the anthroposophical world conception has to know it. However, the critics mentioned do not seem to know it. They ac­cuse anthroposophy of not being scientific, but paradoxically they do this without taking the anthroposophical cognitional foundations and the latter's connection with natural science into account. This is paradoxical be­cause the consideration of this foundation has to be expected precisely from those who believe that they have to defend science against anthroposophy. Under such conditions it is of course impossible for them to understand anthroposophically oriented medicine.

Public discussion about this medical line of thought is usually stirred up by mistletoe therapy for cancer and very often this is in connection with the Iscador therapy developed by the Society for Cancer Research in Arlesheim and Stuttgart. Therefore in this paper we will discuss the foundations of anthroposophically oriented medicine in a general way. We will go into anthroposophical spiritual science and its relation to natural science and then into the relation of the anthroposophical view of man to medicine, and finally into an example of the practical application of these foundations to mistletoe therapy for cancer, as far as this can be done within the framework of this paper. This should make it clear that anthroposophy does not try to oppose natural scientific medicine nor does it try to offer an "alternative" but that it tries to extend natural science in a particular way. Only in this context can mistletoe therapy become comprehensible.

Citation: Heusser, P. (1991). A Basis for the Understanding of Anthroposophical Medicine and Cancer Therapy (H. Jurgens, Trans.). Journal of Anthroposophic Medicine, 8(2), 5–38.