The Healing Power of Planetary Metals in Anthroposophic and Homeopathic Medicine

This book discusses the use of seven metals manufactured and formulated in a variety of ways, often in combination with other metals or plants. They are therapeutically used within the anthroposophical-medical framework.

For the most part, the German Dr. med. H.M. Schramm (1943–) accomplishes this task via an approach known as ‘artistic science’. This involves using the arts, in this instance storytelling, to communicate broader, deeper insights into remedy and disease. He weaves connections between humankind, metal and the planetary spheres, allowing one to become aware of ‘dangers to which all people are exposed in the course of their lives -biographical crises and disease tendencies’. The author does this with fairy tales and, in the process, enhances one's understanding of lead, tin, iron, gold, copper, mercury and silver.

For example, Schramm shows how the copper process (Cuprum met.) lives in the ‘Snow White’ story, how the silver process lives in ‘The Six Swans’ and how iron carries out its activity in ‘Iron Hans (John)’. This path is as much an understanding of process (aliveness) as it is Materia Medica materiality and points to what the author calls a ‘spiritual pharmacology’ suggesting ‘that the anthroposophic and homeopathic remedies still harbour many undisclosed insights about the human being and about the relationships of the human being to the world’.

For instance, the iron process offers three fundamental aspects active in the ‘Iron Hans’ fairy tale and in the human biography: self-assertion, self-mastery and self-realisation. Each possesses dominant roles in man's threefold anatomical nature, the nerve-sense pole, the rhythmic pole and the metabolic pole, respectively.

‘When a disturbance of the metabolic iron process manifest itself in liver and gallbladder dysfunction, the chief preparations indicated include Ferrum metallicum, Ferrum sulfuratum and Siderit in low potencies. On the other hand, if the disturbed iron process is connected with deficient “kidney radiation”, thus creating generalized weakness and hypotonica, then Solutio ferri is frequently helpful. If the weakness is the result of a recent flu, for example, then Ferrum sidereum D6 [Siderit] is frequently prescribed’.—ibid, pp. 76–77.

Schramm discusses philosophical aspects for each remedy and fairy tale and in this case, of the king's son who is continually presented, as we all are, with obstacles to overcome. He succeeds in each, revealing to the reader the healthy ‘iron nature’. ‘As a kitchen boy he is able to stand up to the king [self-assertion]; as the gardener's boy he is able to control his passion [self-mastery]; and as a knight he is able to defeat the enemy in battle [self-realization]. In fact, one may say that the tale imaginatively depicts three iron processes: those of the upper, the lower and the centre poles of the human organization’.—ibid, p. 65.

Though, in this context, it is impossible to enter more instructively into the anthroposophical-philosophical framework, so perhaps these brief quotes provide a glimpse into that other framework and that method called ‘artistic science’.

Fortunately, Schramm condenses his approach in a 20-page chart-form appendix: Therapeutic Applications of the Seven Planetary Metals. These charts condense remedy actions (processes) into three columns describing excess, deficient and balanced remedial states. And fortunately, sprinkled throughout, basic aspects of the anthroposophical-pharmacological approach including mundane aspects such as selection of potency are discussed.

This approach is not necessarily for the beginner, but it is one which presents any number of rewards for the patient, artistic practitioner.