(Translated by William J. Webb, D. Sc., London).
NOWADAYS much is said on biological treatment but little or nothing as mentioned on the concept of totality which, in my opinion, is the principal fundamental and most important scientific support of biological therapy. As a defender of many years standing of such a train of ideas in words in writings, may I be permitted to designate the great connections more or since Erwin Liek arrives in his last publications at conclusions which suggest that he has searched for a truly scientific basis of biological medicine but without success.
This reproach strikes us as an injustice and therefore cannot stand without controversy. Were this reproach justified, the required change over of the physicians in the sense of biological methods of healing would be something akin to an utopia; the voluntary adherence to wishes referring thereto may be compared to chasing a phantom.
At the great conference of physicians for physical-dietetic medicine at the Rudolf Hess Hospital in Dresden, Thienes of Worishofen, as the debater, quoted the following sentence: “If one looks into a microscope, the greater the magnification, the smaller is the visual filed”.
The results of microscopy have indeed been over-estimated. It is one-sided to designate as rational that which has only been observed by a single conclusive microscopical test. Behind such a limited and narrow-minded visual error, the true picture stands just as near. The reversed action, namely, the testing out of events of life on the earth from a very high watch-tower, leads to a much greater understanding not only of the phenomena of life in particular, but also of biological treatment.
I am in the habit of comparing the surface of the earth with an agar slide which is so large that instead of bacteria, the higher organisms such as plants and animals can grow thereon. In the same way as we can cultivate selected organism isolated on an agar slide, we also observe the cultivation by the agriculturist of individual plants or trees, possibly alone and free from weeds. In both methods, in the cultivation of bacteria or in the growing of plants or trees we then observe in the mother earth the appearance of more or less easily defined substances which we in the first instance denote as assimilation products such as toxins, secondly as products of soil exhaustion.
Both processes are the same. The expression of the agriculturist: “Fatigue of soil” is moreover far more exact because it defines more clearly the precise nature of this condition. Only one of these processes permits us to recognize without a microscope how nature helps herself, and that is the healing of the “fatigue of soil” brought about by plants. It is not difficult to follow, how nature again “cleanses” the soil of the products of exhaustion and that is, in my opinion, a valuable line of thought for our progress in the “life-measuring art of healing” in biological treatment.
If we just do not call the bacterial excretions products of exhaustion, but merely toxins, then plant or tree excretions are also to be denoted as soil toxins and the excretions of man and animal in their totality generally as human or animal toxins. The sign of toxaemia, if the formation of excretion may be designated as such, would mean in this case the cessation of the bacterial growth in their toxins and, ultimately, their death; or, finally, the decay of man and animal in the decomposed faeces.
Of these three biological processes the plant world is the least known. By the removal of the soil fatigue the chemical opinion is over-ruled which asserts that for the cultivation of plants the mineral substances of the soil is the only criterion. If this view had been the correct one, we could consider the clay or wheat fatigued soil simply as mineral deficient and restore same by addition of the lacking minerals. That is, however, impossible ! Therefore there are other substances which cause the soil fatigue and these are, as I have already stated repeatedly, the root excretions.
These resembles in biological definition the stomach and intestinal juices as well as the excreta, the faeces. Nature assists herself and thus cures the fatigue of soil through the appearance of pre-determined accompanying plants, which are found together for the sake of associations and which in the physiological sense of “totality” keep the soil healthy. The botanist designates the research filed which occupies itself with the problems of plant affinities and their consistent selection of soil as “Phytocology”, without taking position regarding the causative connections.
An example as to how plant association works itself out. The root excretions may be of an acid or alkaline character. In this sense they render the soil either acid or alkaline. After strong acid forming cultivations, e.g. after an oat crop, weeds appear, especially cruciferae such as hedge mustard and charlock (wild mustard) which neutralize the soil “biologically”, because they thrive marvellously in the acid soil and act alternatively on the Ph. of the soil. The agriculturist helps himself in the destruction of these “troublesome weeds” in that he scatters lime which decreases the Ph. to such an extent that these weeds cannot uphold themselves.
That is the usual “chemical purification” of the soil, which cannot be designated as an exemplary biological change. Large forest cultivations with only pine and beech trees are also a good recognizable example of soil exhaustion. Such one-sided cultivations lead to typical almost irreparable changes of the soil.
The result is the appearance of the ill-famed chlorinated earth with local stone formation, so called in Germany “Podsolierung”, that is the deposit of a cement-like layer impenetrable by water or roots for about 50 to 80 cm. depth., which renders any healthy strong development of trees impossible. This deposit, on the other hand, never appears in mixed forests, especially where oaks are present. The oak is not only symbolic, but here also in fact, the protector of health and freedom of the forest.
The objection could be made that the process of the soil exhaustion does not occur in rye fields, since rye thrives year after year. An exhaustion of the soil such as is the case with wheat and clay not presenting itself with rye. This is a mistake. If rye is grown too often, weeds appear in great quantities, amongst which the pansy (viola tricolor) predominates.
This “weed” has a very close connection to rye which is shown by the following experiment; If pansies are sown alone, the seed opens only scantily; if they are sown together with wheat, no seed opens; but sown together with rye, the seed opens almost 100 per cent. The most important accompanying plant of the rye and thereby its “soil purifier”, is the pansy. We have reported on this subject in the last Madaus Year Book of 1935. A further experiment on rye fed animals shows that the strong eczema appearing in rats and mice, after prolonged rye feeding, is cured through the feeding with viola tricolor.
If we follow the basic connections of the association plants, we stumble upon problems of the greatest importance. Observation will indicate above all, that weeds which appear together with or after the feeding plants, are very important healing plants. One discovers chamomile in wheat and clay fatigued soil, solanum nigrum (black nightshade) in fatigued tree fruitful soil, mountain spinach in potatoes and so on. Next thereto we find, of course, a score of other so-called weeds, the curative powers of which are almost unknown. It is always a question of a rather constant organization of plants, not of a haphazard “growing together”, but exactly of a “complementary association”.
The question arises: Is such a plant community an organization of itself, such as a bee colony, of which the individual organism only serve the whole? We shall reply to the question in the easiest way if we again look down upon the earth from our very high watch-tower, and observe how these associations end and change themselves there where all life ends, for instance in the arctic region.
The plants, as is well known, there become more and more scanty and finally, only Iceland moss and reindeer-lichen remain. Both kinds are true lichens which consist of two organisms, externally of a mushrooms, internally of a sea- weed. Mushroom and sea-weed live in inseparable symbiosis. Their products of metabolism, such as for instance fumaric acids, serve for mutual nourishment. These lichens possess no true roots but only pseudo-or clinging roots, visually without, or anyhow only with indifferent root excretions.
