Anthroposophic Therapies Online

by Steven Johnson, DO and Adam Blanning, MD

As anthroposophic medicine nears its centennial in 2020, there are broad efforts to share its fruits. The international medical movement offers more and more resources about healing for body, soul, and spirit, and PAAM, the physicians’ association in the US, is growing its outreach. This is of utmost importance when many forces are working to restrict the scope of our practice.

From the Medical Section comes Anthromedics.org, offering introductory articles and an expanding collection of multi-disciplinary approaches to multiple illnesses. An impressive example is a series of short articles on approaches for anxiety in palliative care from medical, nursing, body therapy, eurythmy therapy, art therapy, counselling, and pastoral care perspectives.

Another recent website, Vademecum.org, presents many anthroposophic external treatments used in nursing therapy with practical directions. This is becoming a deeply valued resource. As anthroposophic medicine becomes a world-wide movement, anthromedics and vademecum from the outset are being built so that in time all materials will be in German, English, and Spanish.

A third helpful resource, professor David Martin’s WarmUpToFever.org, offers compelling medical studies and a whole series of interviews on the importance of fever and how we actually compromise our overall health with routine fever suppression.

At PAAM we are renovating anthromed.org; a new site will be online in about two months. This online library receives visits from over 20 countries world-wide, with as many as 4,000 visitors a month. It will be completely redone with beautiful graphics and an excellent search function. A complement to the more academic platform of anthromedics; it is a home for interesting essays, out of print materials (including books) that often speak to deeper insights, clinical experiences, and issues around anthroposophical medicine. We hope that friends and colleagues working with healing across the world will share articles and materials to enlighten patients, friends and clinicians everywhere. Please share it as a resource.

PAAM has also launched a Friends and Patients organization (visit https://paam.wildapricot.org/PAAM-Friends to join at no cost). We plan a quarterly newsletter on interesting medical topics, plus videos and links to other educational and research sources. We are also considering a public conference on public and home-health issues, hopefully involving colleagues working in healing education, agriculture, therapies, and economics. Eventually, we want to impact public health care policy so as to empower people to take charge of their own health.

Homeopathy and anthroposophical medicine have been under severe FDA scrutiny. Attacks to restrict these medicines are appearing across the globe, which means we need ways to communicate effectively and gather friends. A second goal of our patient and friends organization is to build grassroots awareness about these issues. We hope it can create a network of people and organizations that support the free access of patients and clinicians to the medicines and therapies they choose. Please consider participating and supporting this important endeavor.

Anthroposophic medicine needs more than just preservation, it also needs innovation. This is especially true as we reach our one-hundred-year anniversary in 2020— more updates in coming issues on those coming celebrations. Thank you for your good thoughts and support as we take up these efforts.

Steven Johnson, DO and Adam Blanning, MD are the current presidents respectively of the Physicians Association for Anthroposophic Medicine (PAAM paam.wildapricot.org) and of the Association for Anthroposophic Medicine and Therapies in America (AAMTA www.aamta.org).

“Rudolf Steiner’s model of a spiritualized medicine could hold the key for the next growth phase in Western medicine, if it is to survive, flourish, and become consistently and deeply therapeutic instead of merely palliative.” —Richard Leviton, author of Imagination of "Pentecost: Rudolf Steiner & Contemporary Spirituality" in the introduction to "The Healing Process" GA 319, available at SteinerBooks.org