First steps

Today, anthroposophic medicine has a 100-year tradition. The integrative basis of this medical approach was developed by Dr med. Ita Wegman in collaboration with Dr Rudolf Steiner, founder of the science of the spirit. For both of them, it was essential for anthroposophical doctors to be constantly informed about the state of current medical research, so that they could then extend it with an anthroposophical approach.

Anthroposophy, a word composed of the Greek ἄνθρωπος (anthropos) and σοφία (sophia), refers to the best-known of the Delphic maxims, which was inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo in Delphi: "know thyself" (γνῶθι σεαυτόν). Man recognising himself as a human being is at the centre of anthroposophical research, and therefore of the medical approach that stems from it. In 1921, in Arlesheim near Basel (CH) and in Stuttgart (DE), the first modest clinical institutions were founded in which this approach was actually put to the test. Since then, schools of anthroposophic medicine have developed throughout the world.