Page 29 - Winter2008

is telling you. Chelidonium major tells us, “I am son’s patient, who for many years chose a defi-
the reunification of the stimulation of healthy bile cient diet, resulting in a lack of neuro-hormone
flow.” So you extract the plant, make a prepara- production in the substantia nigra, now needing
tion, reunite that with the human being and end reunification with a certain kind of octopus right
up with healthy bile flow. Healthy bile flow plus down into its black inky juice. That substance
conscious choices about food and how you live, can be supplied with homeopathic sepia, made
that’s a different kind of healing, true healing from black ink from a similar species, the squid.
that involves reunification and an education of Lifestyle choices are also involved because
the human being so that his or her life is better. there are certain environmental poisons, such
That’s what we’re looking for. as agricultural chemicals and trans fats, which
So the job of a doctor is to read the book specifically target the substantia nigra.
of nature and to understand what it is that the So, we really have a very different concept
human being is expressing, where that similar about what we mean by medicine and what heal-
phenomenon is expressed in nature, and then ing is, which is a kind of reunification combined
reunify them to create a healing. with education about the choices that led you to
Here’s another example. What’s the hallmark develop the disease in the first place.
of Parkinson’s disease? There’s tremor, shuffling
gait and so forth, but these are characteristic A LESSON FROM HEROIN ADDICTS
of a number of diseases. But there’s one thing Let’s switch gears now and talk about a very
about Parkinson’s disease that’s very distinct, interesting medicine called naltrexone. Naltrex-
very unusual and almost spooky. The essence of one was created in the late 1970s as a drug to
Parkinson’s manifests in the face with staring, treat heroin overdose. This was around the time
with a wide-eyed, blank face. Where do you see when there was a lot of heroin use in this country.
that in nature? You see it in the octopus, which When you overdose on heroin it depresses your
seems to be all head. The whole thing appears to respiratory centers and you go into respiratory ar-
be a head floating in the ocean with an unblinking rest and then die. So the pharmaceutical industry
eye staring out at you. It looks for all the world spent some time looking for an antidote to heroin
like the picture of a Parkinsonian face. The oc- overdose and they came up with naltrexone.
topus is the picture of Parkinson’s floating in the Having worked in emergency rooms for ten
ocean. years on and off, I have prescribed it myself. A
Here’s where it gets interesting. Inside the person overdoses with heroin, you give him 300
octopus you find a dark liquid called sepia. They mg naltrexone by IV, and it immediately reverses
used to use sepia as ink. In fact the US Constitu- the respiratory decline from the heroin. The pa-
tion was written with sepia ink. tient wakes up, walks out the door and goes and
So you have this picture of a blank staring uses heroin again. Great stuff!
face secreting a puff of black inky juice which Nevertheless, a number of doctors in the
is how it wards off predators so they don’t see it. early 1980s decided to see whether naltrexone
The site of the pathology in Parkinson’s is in the could help heroin addicts recover from their ad-
substantia nigra, which means “black substance.” diction. They treated a group of heroin addicts,
In the very deep part of the brain there’s a little many of whom had AIDS and other immune
gland called the substantia nigra which secretes problems, with 50 mg of oral naltrexone. Two
black inky juice. This juice contains dopamine things happened. One, the oral naltrexone bound We actually
and other neuro-hormones, which supposedly with the opiate receptors and competitively have
are deficient in the case of Parkinson’s. Like the blocked them. Heroin is like a key that goes into
bile salts, many of these neuro-hormones are the cell, which has a specifically designed lock receptors for
made of cholesterol. So in addition to requiring that fits only opiates. This is another example, as poppy opiate
unification with something in the outer world, the Rudolf Steiner said, of the opiates being made in chemicals that
Parkinson’s patient also needs to make changes a certain relationship to the human being. We ac-
in his or her diet. tually have receptors for poppy opiate chemicals live out there
Thus we now have a picture of the Parkin- that live out there in nature. in nature.

WINTER 2008 Wise Traditions 29