PAAM Medical Letter, Vol. 3, Issue 5, December 16, 2016

Dear Colleagues, 
Welcome to another issue of the PAAM Medical Letter. As always, we thank you for your support of PAAM and its mission to advance the understanding and practice of anthroposophic medicine. Winter is upon us and it seems fitting to begin this issue with meditations from the Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner. As Steiner implies in his preface, these mantric words are words of truth and power that can awaken the soul, transform it and allow it to participate with profound sympathy with the course of the year and all the meaning [the enlivening forces] bring to the changing world." Steiner also uses these words in a particular German style so the words unfold correctly in a way the gradually awakening soul can feel! This English version is an attempt to closely follow the German original while still keeping a semblance of English syntax.

Please note: This Letter is for your thoughtful consideration and personal research and is not to be taken as something dogmatic to believe in nor promote as something official from PAAM or the international anthroposophic medical movement.

Winter Solstice Verse 37, December 15-21

To bear Spirit-Light in the world's winter night

Aspires blissfully my heart's striving desire

That luminous seeds of souls

In Grounds of Worlds be rooted,

And the Word of God in the senses' darkness

Resounds, transfiguring all existence.

The polar complementary verse, coming from a corresponding yet opposite timeline is:

Verse 17, July 21-27

To shelter the Spirit-Gift within,

Commands me sternly my presentiment,

That ripening gifts of God

In grounds of soul fructifying

Brings fruits to selfhood.

Note about the dates: These are the original dates for the book published in 1913. Today, the dates of the winter solstice would correspond to the week of December 18-24.

ATTACHMENTS   

Attachment 1 (order form) and Attachment 2 concern Peter Heusser’s recent book published in English in July 2016, Anthroposophy and Science: An Introduction. PAAM member, Branko Furst, MD, has shared his unpublished book review manuscript. PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE! It will hopefully be in print soon and we do not want to jeopardize its eventual publication by having the manuscript circulating on the internet or other types of media. Thank you for your understanding. Peter Heusser is Professor, and Gerhard Kienle, Chair, for Theory of Medicine, Integrative and Anthroposophical Medicine, Institute of Integrative Medicine at Witten/Herdecke University in Germany. Peter’s purpose in writing the book is to present a scientific explanation of the view of the human being provided by anthroposophic medicine (AM) and to offer an example of how to provide a conceptual basis for a modern and truly integrative medicine. We all know that anthroposophy provides clear, yet fluid characterizations for “life”, “soul” and “spirit”; terms that are often confused and used in various ways in the various medical systems and modalities found in integrative medicine. Peter also shows in considerable detail how the results of modern sciences from physics and chemistry, through disciplines in biology, and to psychology, philosophy of mind and neurobiology, can be rationally reinterpreted to be consistent with a holistic view of reality and of human beings found in AM. Branko Furst has provided us with a helpful book review. You may see the same book review in the PAAM General Newsletter. I am also writing a book review and may include it in some future issue of the PAAM Medical Letter.   

Attachment 3 is a recently published article, Fever from an Anthroposophic Perspective, by David Martin, MD from the FilderKlink, Germany. In this paper David reviews 12 out of 13 positive statements made about fever and warmth in AM. This is a helpful overview of the importance and benefits of fever in health, with supporting evidence from the medical literature. Unfortunately, there are still gaps in the evidence. What is helpful in this paper is how it is organized. The 13 summary statements on AM’s views on fever are numbered with references for them. He then goes in detail into each of the 12 statements providing further explanation about the statement and a brief description of the evidence, if any. He only deals with 12 of the 13 statements, because one of them is: The leading motif in anthroposophic medicine is that warmth, and more intensively fever, are direct manifestations of the ‘self” working on the body, making the body more an instrument and expression of the “ego”, the “I” (in German “das ich”). Understandably, he states that “this topic goes far beyond the scope of this article.”

Attachment 4 and Attachment 5  Whole body hyperthermia (WBH) for treatment of major depressive disorder. While WBH has been used mainly in Europe as an adjunct in cancer treatment, this is the first RCT of its use in major depression disorder (MDD). This well-designed study demonstrates that even a single WBH treatment can significantly improve depressive symptoms, compared to a sham treatment. With both attachments you have the primary published article and also the helpful supplement. The hyperthermia machine is from Germany and is expensive. However, the concept and evidence of an increased temperature being helpful for mood is important to know. However, keep in mind that there is a difference between internally-immunologically- produced fever and external application of warmth to raise the body’s core temperature. As Steiner has pointed out in Fundamentals of Therapy and in the Agriculture Course, and in agreement with the great Paracelsus, anything external is a poison to the human organism and must first be transformed and made one’s own. This applies even to external warmth, not just to digestion of food. Nevertheless, if the patient is successful in transforming external warmth into internal warmth and fever, this clearly has a beneficial, promising effect in cancer and depression treatment.

Attachment 6 is from PAAM Member, Philip Incao, MD. He has updated his pdf handout on how vaccinations work. Philip has so many helpful key concepts in this little gem that it is hard to pick one. One key idea seems to be that repetitive and only humoral stimulation of the immune system by vaccinations, prevents not the disease from occurring by the infectious agent, but the ability of our cellular immune system to manifest, respond and overcome the illness. Consequently, we don’t get broad immunologic stimulation to increase its strength and surveillance and provide true health. Paradoxically, AM states that to be truly healthy, you need illnesses to overcome! This is especially true for acute, inflammatory, febrile illnesses with some type of discharge like pus, mucus, diarrhea, or skin rash. I have also included, in Attachment 7, Philip’s response to my question about lingering microbes.

CONTRIBUTIONS

In this issue we have had contributions from two PAAM members, Branko Furst and Philip Incao. Thank you!

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

None!

Until the next time and for the growth of PAAM,
Ricardo Bartelme, M.D.