It is not difficult to characterise anthroposophical medicine: It is an integrated, holistic form of medicine, which draws from two sources: from scientific medical principles, with their methods and results and, from spiritual scientific insights. Both form part of an indivisible whole.

 

For the human being is not only what his body is, but has also a psyche and an individual personality. For the anthroposophical doctor, the presence of the physical and the soul elements form a unity with the individuality of the person. One influences the other and visa versa. This is what has to be taken into consideration in diagnosis and therapy. Anthroposophical medicine is not there to replace conventional medicine. On the contrary, it rests on the same scientific foundation, but then goes on to take a further step.

 

Effectively, this means that anthroposophical medicine draws on everything that modern scientific research holds in readiness for the „object human being”; medical technology, laboratory analysis, operations and intensive care. Insights resulting from spiritual science, which consider the human being as subject in his totality, augment this scientific basis. For every human being is quite unique, as is every treatment, even if there are, of course. close similarities between people.

 

Therefore anthroposophical medicine can never be generalised. It cannot become pure routine. Even if the different illnesses have specific characteristics that resemble one another time and again, in each individual case each illness takes on a specific face that is nevertheless quite singular, because it cannot be divorced from the individuality of the patient. Anthroposophical medicine thus observes closely the physical, but at the same time also those areas that are related to the soul and the personality of the patient, and which have paved the way for the different factors of the illness in question.

 

To be able to grasp this and apply it to therapy; to approach each patient anew, guided by scientific knowledge, medical experience, personal powers of judgement and intuition; this is an essential characteristic of anthroposophical medicine. For a medical approach that disregards the human being as an individual is not a medicine appropriate for the human being.