THE SOIL, PLANTS AND THE BIOLOGICAL TREATMENT OF DISEASE


In spite of long cultivation now already a few decades, hardly any symptoms of soil exhaustion are observed, and that, since during the rotation of crops a very strong bitter plant has been planted: namely, chicory. The roasted root in infusion results as is known in a very healthy bitter drink, which unfortunately has been almost completely superseded by coffee.


The interesting part is that the reindeer can only live on reindeer-lichens and Iceland moss and needs no other food. These lichens contain everything which a highly organized animal such as the reindeer needs for sustenance. In our zoological gardens, it is well known that the reindeer repels for a long time any other food. How does this picture change, when we direct our vision slowly from the Arctic to the South! As soon as plants appear in association, one individual plant does not any longer suffice for the nourishment of a more highly organized animal. The animal: the cattle, the sheep, urgently desire other plants.

If we force an animal, for instance a rabbit, to eat only one and the same herb, its appetite quickly disappears, it loses weight, the animal dies, even if for nourishment a fresh, healthy, vitamin-rich plant should be chosen. What does the animal lack? Is it perhaps an accompanying plant? In our biological station at the present time we make experiments in order to decide whether for instance the most important accompanying plant suffices for complete nourishment. But this experiment is not absolutely necessary. The study of Iceland moss already takes us further.

If we give ourselves the doubtful pleasure of making a trial us; it is so bitter that we can hardly believe it possible that a reindeer chooses from youth to death such a bitter lichen as the principal means of nourishment. And yet it is so. Hence it is a further fact that for a complete life sustaining plant nourishment a strong bitter plant is essential. He who is a hunter will have observed that when the hares are running out of the forest, they always start their supper with bitter plants, for instance with yarrow (millefolium). Also in Brehms Tierleben such a reference is found. Bitter plants therefore definitely play a very important role. Let us just study plant formations and find whether they always contain bitter plants.

In the sunny hill formations we find next to yarrow, wood sage (teucrium scorodonium), on refuse and rubble formation we find wormwood (artemisia absinthinum), white horehound (marrubium vulgaris), speedwell (veronica officinalis), annual mercury (mercurialis annual), in lower forests and spring field formations we find angelica (archangelica offin.), brook-lime (veronica beccabunga), cowbane (cicuta virosa), smartweed (polygonum hydropiper), hemp- agrimony (eupatorium cannabium). In beech forests, birds-eye (geranium robertianum), dogs mercury (mercurialis perennis), in pine and birch forests rich in vegetable mould, juniper (juniperus), wild-thyme (thymus serphyllum), Iceland moss (cetraria islandica), and many others.

In this study we find in each association a bitter plant, in the same way as with equal regularity in the plant communities we find plants containing tannic acid, saponin plants and etheric oil plants. It strikes thereby that the constantly appearing alkaloid and glucoside plants are present in large quantities on refuse, rubble and cemeteries, the tannic acid plants especially in large quantities in pine and birch forests free from oaks and rich in vegetable mould.

We shall observe that whatever the soil may choose for its most suitable formation, bitter and sweet plants will alternate. Similarly, acid forming with alkaline forming soil, and bacteria attracting with insect and bacteria eliminating plants. Skin irritating and blister raising with those which do not do so. This is not an accident, but it has up to the present not been considered as a system for the classification of our plants. We thereby bear in mind the characteristic action of certain plants.

Some act as a cholagogue, others as a diuretic, peristaltic or sudorific. Still others as an aphrodisiac, others not or as sedatives. Just as the working bees in the beehive are excluded from sexual life and still belong to the bee colony, so are there plants which are one-celled organisms and yet do not remain alone complete. There are, for instance, plants which maintain themselves most of the time “vegetatively” unsexed through roots, and move on like the couch grass. Their root excretions serve to increase sexuality of the seed producing parts of blooming plants in the manner of other short grasses.

For instance, the common daisy saturates itself so strongly with sexual hormones absorbed from the root excretions of grass, that it produces abortion when administered medicinally to a pregnant woman. If I take away form their natural surroundings such of the sexually active plants, as for instance the daisy, and transplant these in my garden soil without the support of accompanying plants, the medicinal abortive action ceases after a short time. Also is known the cessation of the action in the valuable aphrodisiac (stimulants) such as Aralia trifolia (dwarf ginseng), which in cultivation speedily becomes inferior and almost invaluable.

Its stimulating accompanying plants are lacking and it must suffer in action; likewise the queen bee cannot maintain her high sexual productivity without the working bees. Just as it is impossible to break up a swarm of bees into single units, each complete in themselves, fullworthy livings individuals, so is it impossible to break up a combination of complementary and associated plants and still perpetuate the virility of the individual plant.

It will now seem no longer fantastic to the reader when I state that in such an organism of a plant association the roles are more or less exactly divided as in the beehive. The action of individual plants on man and animal, and the study of the constituent substances make it possible to recognize retroactively, which physiological functions the individual plants exercise in this self-contained organism of its association.

Thereby we reach our goal, by a scientific proof of the organotropic action of a healing plant; hence we approach the great question and problem of the earth: why is one plant a healing plant and another not? The biological totality concept should be one of the most important points in the reply to this question. Also it should be considered that one part of the function of such an organism may be taken up by insects and that these are also inseparable from the associations of the individual plants, being connected in the same way as the plants with themselves.

How important it is to remember also the insects, was recently confirmed by me through the cultivation of the root of Mandragora offic. (mandrake) In order to form fruit, the flowers had to be sprinkled by hand, because I had only succeeded in obtaining the seeds from Corsica, without the accompanying insects. It follows that the physiological role of insects may also be established in the same way through the action and study of plants constituents.

I recollect the action of the cantharides particularly of their sexual product, cantharidin. In many cases a plant and an animal might result in a biological totality, for instance, the mulberry tree and the silk worm, the mistletoe and the mistle-thrush. Such examples are sufficiently known. An organic totality constructs itself next to the other, shuffles together and towers up into always greater unities to communities with animal and man and finally to nature a totality. The variations therefore are apparently inexhaustible.

Apart from the stationary plant there still exist migrating plants, which travel from the North to the South, from the East to the West, without being diverted in their journey by the appearance of characteristic alternations of soil such as lime, clay or sandy soil. Also amongst them valuable healing plants are found. They do not change by the fact that the plant communities exist and are maintained by themselves and finally represent in their symbiosis something self-contained, namely, an “earth-spread organism”.

What has man done when he learnt to recognize the good tasting plants? He removed them from their association and cultivated them. He renounced the bitter tasting as well as the accompanying plants and their physiological soil balancing powers.

He combated the faulty and inferior growth by natural manure and later on by artificial manure, thus deterioration in quality and the attacking of food plants, e.g. by rust and cancer or by larger insects such as vine louse, night butterfly, grass hopper, etc., became and is up to the present time the great problem which can only be solved along the pathway of research into the subject of accompanying plants.

The accompanying plants, the bitter plants and so on, vegetate as more or less non-recognized healing plants. What signification these bitter plants may also have for the health maintenance of the soil, will be shown by two examples. In the surrounding of Magdeburg, it is well-known that the sugar beet is only cultivated in four years rotation of crops.

In spite of long cultivation now already a few decades, hardly any symptoms of soil exhaustion are observed, and that, since during the rotation of crops a very strong bitter plant has been planted: namely, chicory. The roasted root in infusion results as is known in a very healthy bitter drink, which unfortunately has been almost completely superseded by coffee. In other countries the bitter lupine has been planted as an intermediate fruit, and thereby were obtained largely increased yields in the cultivation of edibles.

G. Madaus