A paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the International Homoeopathic League, Geneva, August, 1931.
THE latest conclusions, that in plants animal hormones are also to be found, e.g. in the drug Polygonatum offic. an extract of the pancreas, similar to insulin, or in the tuber of rhubarb plant, the ingredients of the human liver, i.e. Cholesterine, have led to a new method of consideration, with regard to the relations between animals and plants, which may be especially applied to the scientific explanation of the homoeopathic main principle. These relations between animals and plants may be explained phylogenetically.
Considering the development of plants and animals on the earth, from the primordial cell, we find that plant and animal classes have developed equally in a periodical change. The dependence on each other, as is known, is already conditioned by the plants inhaling carbonic acid breathed out by human beings and animals, and working it into starch, or sugar, respectively, and in exchange, exhaling oxygen, which is urgently required by human beings and animals for the purpose of life, i.e. that no plant is able to live without the presence of animals. But this dependence exists not only with regard to the respiration, but also with regard to the growth, the building up, and the vital forces.
The plants live from the excrements of the animals, or from their decayed bodies, and the animals live from the plants. Yet we know that the hormones of the animals in their decayed state are less at the disposal of the plants for the working up and the working on than in animal excrements, i.e. in the urine. We know that, for instance, women when pregnant develop already on the first day after conception, pregnancy hormones in the urine. These may be applied according to the Zondek method for the test of pregnancy.
This method is carried out in such a way, that, for instance, 1/10 ccm. up to 1 ccm. of the urine of women is injected into young female mice. These show then, in the case of pregnant persons, a particularly speedy development of the ovaries. The result of this is that the secreted hormone develops its hormonal effect also in another class of animals.
The recently deceased Berlin physician, Dr. Zickel, was able to prove that a hormone displays also a specific effect in the plant. He manured some particularly valueless plants with animal hormones, and proved a characteristic change of the sap of these plants. With the enormous quantities of human and animal excrements, as Ernst Fuhrmann describes so well in his books Agave and Der Bienenmensche, it is clear that the working up of the excrements is for the plant, not only a question of satisfying the demand for oxygen, but the hormones, and encyma found in the excrements are necessary for life, for the building up, and for the growth, and have been become a deciding factor for the development of the plant.
One can affirm that genetically animal period influences hormonally, and also with regard to the building up, the development of a plant period, and that the higher developed plant class contributes again to the further development of the animal class. So it has become a characteristic differentiation of the plants, which makes itself known, in that some plants seek the human dwelling places, while others avoid them, that means that plants which seek human beings, are dependent on their excrements, viz. Aconitum, Conium, Bursa pastoris, etc.
It is interesting that the influence of the human and animal excrements results in the further working up a bipolarisation in the plant. This allows itself to be proved particularly easily with regard to mushrooms. We see, for instance, on the cakes of the cow-dung in the meadows, two kind of mushrooms grow, on the one side a mushroom which condenses, or takes over the aromatically relishable parts, that is the champignon, and on the other side a mushroom, which builds up and condenses the poisonous parts of the excrements, that is Agaricus phalloides. The tiniest pieces of this mushroom produce, when eaten by human beings, the appearance of intestinal poisoning, as appears when a motion remains too long in the body.
From this and certain other similar comparisons, it follows that the poisonousness of a plant is at the same time a proof of the existence of that animal class, on the excrements of which this plant builds up, and the hormones, or the encyma of which it condenses to poison. On the excrements of the reptiles we see the developing of poisonous plants which are only poisonous for reptiles. In the bird era, we observe the appearing of plants, for instance, umbelliferous plants, the seeds of which are poisonous specifically for birds. These seeds are, however, less poisonous for animal classes, which have developed before, or later than this era.
Even five carraway seeds are sufficient to kill a sparrow. Thus, the cabbage lettuce builds up on the excrements of rabbits, and hares, because for these, the so-called “heart leaves” of the cabbage lettuce are very poisonous, whereas, as is known, these leaves are not poisonous for human beings. We know that goats are absolutely insensitive, for instances, to opium, or morphinum; cows and horses, however, are again, very sensitive to these. The papaveracous plants, therefore, have only developed during the period of development of bovines, horses, and human beings. The poisons of the plants are, therefore, genetical condensations of the hormones, or intestinal excrements of certain classes of animals.
What signification has the physiological connection between animal and plant, for the healing value for each other, and for the healing power for human beings? This question is especially interesting for us. It signifies, according to Fuhrmann, removal of constitutional anomalies in the instance of supplying of the lacking or the diminishing of the surplus. When a human being completes ontogenetically in the womb, the development from the embryo within nine months up todays perfection, this is a shortened course of the development of mankind on the earth from the primordial cell up.
Should a disturbance, or even only a restraint enter, thus the fish-nature, or the reptile nature is only incompletely, or too completely developed in the foetus. The infant is then born with a so-called tendency which we designate from the physical standpoint as constitution, from the psychical standpoint as a characteristic tendency. The constitutional, or characteristic anomalies are signs of lacking, or reversed, preponderance of periods in the ontogenesis. They may in all probability be influenced by the application of plants with hormonal condensations of the various animal classes.
Whether, indeed, it is possible to analyse the plant in this instance, is a question, the answer to which remains to be found in the future. The best method that we have at our disposal at the present time is the pathogenesis of the plants, that means the proof of the efficacy of the plants on healthy persons as practised in homoeopathy.
For the explanation of the particular symptoms occurring with this, is yet a further account required.
The modification of the healing power as found in the plants is conditioned by various circumstances, viz. the growth in the sun causes the plant to produce a sap, e.g. with Cina, Colchicum, Dulcamara, etc., which administered to healthy people produces sometimes a feeling of “improvement of the complaints by warmth.” In case of heliopathic plants, e.g. Daphne mezereum, or Agaricus, we are able to state from tests with the sap of these plants that “the complaints are improved by coldness.”
In case of climbing, or twining plants which have no support of their own, e.g. Bryonia, one finds sometimes with tests on healthy people the symptom “aggravation by movement,” for the plant dies, if it is deprived forcibly of its support, on the other hand one finds with this plant the symptom “improvement by resting.” Reserved, one finds with plants which creep by underground rhizomes, or overground shoots, e.g. Rhus toxic., the symptom “improvement by movement.”
When the plant grows on soil containing salt, it thus develops particularly strong healing powers, e.g. it develops with Artemisia marit., on soil containing soda the efficacious Santonin. When Artemisia is cultivated on soil containing no salt, it develops no Santonin. The plants which endure bruising, or a break, or a contusion by a good gallic formation, for instance, the broad plantain, Symphytum offic., Helianthus or Arnica, have a very good regeneration hormone which may be used with success also with internal therapy in cases of broken bones, and contusions, but also externally for badly healing wounds, and abscesses on the skin. Plants growing in swamps strongly containing humic acid, have a particular power to work up the uric acid, e.g. Ledum palustris, Kalmia latifolia.
Everywhere the healing power of the plants may be explained by the growth, and the nature of the ground, the building up on animal excrements, etc. The root has, generally speaking, strong resemblance to the stomach, and intestinal canal. It may be designated as an inverted intestine of the plant, it develops ferments which assist in digesting the earth as we find it similarly in the human intestine. I will bring to notice the tubers of the roots of legumes filled with bacteria radicicola, or the symbiose of the mushrooms on the tips of the roots which are designated as Mykorrhiza. If one wishes to test, for instance, the ferments of a root, one makes a root creep over a polished marble plate.
