Pooled Knowledge for Understanding Us Human Beings

Michaela Glöckler wrote the introduction for the Critical Edition of Rudolf Steiner’s book Extending Practical Medicine: Fundamental Principles Based on the Science of the Spirit. Here she describes ten special features of this work.

The anthroposophical spiritual science developed by Rudolf Steiner over a period of forty years hasn’t just inspired researchers, artists, and those committed to the betterment of society. Already during his lifetime, his work provoked fierce controversy and massive opposition. Christian Clement, editor of the Rudolf Steiner Critical Edition, describes this as follows:

“Steiner and anthroposophy can often be rather controversial, even polemical. The public debate around his work underwent periodic flare-ups, usually sparked by isolated statements from his private lectures, while his main writings were and are hardly received anywhere except within anthroposophical circles. In the view of the editor, this is a major reason why his concept of spiritual science has remained a highly controversial—but largely misunderstood and therefore enigmatic—intellectual creation for most contemporaries to this day. On the other hand, for those who make an effort to understand Steiner—in the way he understood himself—anthroposophy can be seen as a perfectly reasonable and comprehensible expression of a rich and far-reaching current in Western intellectual life, to which Plato and Paracelsus belong just as much as Böhme and Schelling.”

It seems important to me that those of us who feel responsible towards anthroposophy learn to assert ourselves appropriately in this field of tension within academic discourse. Thus, I accepted the request from the publisher and the leadership of the Medical Section to write the introduction to Extending Practical Medicine within the framework of the Steiner Critical Editions, in the hopes of making this work more accessible within the context of today’s conventional medicine.

While working with the book, I discovered some of its special features. The very way in which it came into being is unique among Steiner’s oeuvre. “I am going to write a medical book with Dr. Wegman,” he announced to a long-standing member of the Anthroposophical Society on Tuesday evening, October 2, 1923, during a social evening in Vienna. Dr. Wegman, who was standing nearby talking with other friends—and was here named as co-author—reported later that she first learned of Steiner’s decision at that very moment. She had, of course, been aware of his previous unsuccessful efforts to find an author for a vademecum of anthroposophic medicine among other practicing physicians.

On the morning of Monday, March 30, 1925, Rudolf Steiner died. Two days earlier, he had happily handed Wegman the corrected galley proofs of the manuscript he’d been working on during his final days. He’d requested two copies. After correcting the first galley proofs, he decided to write an introductory chapter and renumbered the previous 19 chapters into 20 chapters in the second galley proofs. In doing so, he read through the entire manuscript again and added further corrections—without, however, repeating a single substantial correction. He had exactly in front of him what he had already improved during the first reading. As the title had not yet been decided, Wegman commissioned her colleague and close associate Hilma Walter (1893–1976) not only to arrange for the work to be printed, but also to come up with a suitable title. Thus, in September 1925, Grundlegendes für eine Erweiterung der Heilkunst nach geisteswissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen [Extending Practical Medicine: Fundamental Principles Based on the Science of the Spirit] was published.

Special features of Extending Practical Medicine in the context of Rudolf Steiner’s work:

1. The book is the only one that Steiner co-authored. The year and a half during which the manuscript was written was probably the busiest time of his life. Nevertheless, he always found time to pursue this project, both in Dornach and on his lecture tours, where his co-author Ita Wegman accompanied him whenever possible.
2. The book is one of Steiner’s least-known works. Only the Dutch physician and colleague of Wegman, Zeylmans van Emmichoven, wrote a review.
3. The text is written in a concise, formulaic style. It presents a rigorously structured methodological approach to anthroposophic medicine. This means that, when studying the twenty chapters, readers are encouraged to learn to think about what happens in the health–illness continuum of the human organism. Explanatory examples and supporting facts are kept to a minimum. Instead, Steiner presents a timeless, pure description of methods that, depending on when and where they’re received, require contextualization in the current state of medical science and conventional medicine.
4. The “classical characteristics” of the anthroposophical worldview are hardly mentioned: no laws of reincarnation and karma, nor references to life after death or before birth, nor the central position of the Mystery of Golgotha. However, reading the book gives the impression that the knowledge pooled together from this world is needed to understand human beings in their daily struggle between healing and harmful processes.
5. Steiner used the term “system” only in relation to this work. At the Christmas Conference, he called it “the medical system that humanity needs, which comes entirely from anthroposophy.” But when asked what new paradigm this brings to the history of medicine, the possible answer is: It is the anthroposophical view of humanity that unfolds in a unique way over the course of its twenty chapters. In the sense of Thomas S. Kuhn (1922–1996), this view can be understood as a necessary “basic assumption” that can contribute to the paradigm shift in medicine that many people long for.
6. The book is structured in such a way that the individual chapters shed light on each other, while each chapter can also be understood independently of its context. The whole is structured like an organism, in which the individual chapters appear as the cognitive organs of a whole organism.
7. The aim of the book is to point the way toward a new perspective for medicine. In the standard study of academic medicine, the focus is on learning or “knowing” a wealth of facts. The organizing principles of anthroposophical anthropology can be groundbreaking for this new perspective.
8. It is a rigorously structured meditative book for one specific field. Anthroposophical meditation takes thinking as its starting point. Nothing is recommended that has not first been clearly thought through in terms of its meaning and effect. When asked what meditation was, Steiner replied to the young doctors: “Transforming medical knowledge into contemplation.” It is about a deeper understanding or experience, starting from the “aspect of knowledge.”
9. The fundamentals of a Christian Mystery of medicine are described. The title of the first chapter already hints at this, referring to “true knowledge of the human being,” which corresponds to the language used in the ancient Mysteries. Every patient expects their doctor to understand the cause of their problem and take the necessary measures. In the deepest sense, this quest for knowledge is about “true knowledge of the human being,” about the ecce homo. Therefore, a Japanese Shinto priest can be inspired and enriched by the anthroposophical path of knowledge in his spiritual and scientific practice, as can a Buddhist monk, a Brahmin, a member of the Jewish or Muslim faith, or a materialistic scientist. Christian spirituality understood in this way is at the same time universal human spirituality—this is how it’s outlined in Extending Practical Medicine. This also includes the Christian character of the understanding of substance described in Chapter 1: In its mineral state, substance serves all processes of death; in the plant world, it serves the processes of life; in the animal world, it serves all soul expressions and the ability to move. In humans, though, it becomes “spirit-bearing.”¹
10. The book is a kind of summary of Steiner’s life’s work. Everything he wrote and did was and is in service of a comprehensive cultural therapy: the overcoming of egoism that pervades all areas of life. It seems fitting that Steiner’s last work is devoted to a comprehensive outlook on the human medicine of the future, in which the findings of empirical research can be combined with those of anthroposophical spiritual research on the “art of healing”—a fraternal and selfless service to the well-being of human beings, humanity, and the Earth.

Book Rudolf Steiner, Grundlegendes für eine Erweiterung der Heilkunst nach geisteswissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen GA27 [Extending Practical Medicine: Fundamental Principles Based on the Science of the Spirit CW27], edited and foreward by Christian Clement, Schriften—Kritische Ausgabe [Writings — Critical edition], SKA 15, Schriften zur Anthroposophischen Medizin [Writings on anthroposophical medicine] (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 2025).

Translation Joshua Kelberman
Illustration Fabian Roschka

1. In his book The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity, Steiner also clarifies this aspect with regard to the development of the Earth’s substantiality: “In the future, chemists and physicists will come who will not teach chemistry and physics as they are taught today . . . but who will teach: ‘Matter is structured in the sense that Christ has gradually arranged it!’—Christ will be found even in the laws of chemistry and physics. A spiritual chemistry, a spiritual physics is what will come in the future.” Rudolf Steiner, The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity: Some Results of Spiritual-Scientific Research into Human History and Development, CW 15 (Hudson, NY: SteinerBooks, 1992).