From a collection of lectures titled "Spiritual Perspectives: On Epidemics" by Rudolf Steiner.
Preface: Viruses were not discovered until around 1890, and in Steiner’s day there was as yet little talk of viruses among the wider population. In the texts quoted here the word ‘bacterium’ refers not only to bacteria but also to all micro-organisms that cause diseases, including viruses.
"It is easy to understand why the modern trend in medicine is to see illnesses as having been causes by external circumstances, especially bacteria (viruses). Indeed this has gone so far that one individual with a sense of humor has declared, not without justification: Nowadays illnesses come from bacteria just as in days gone by it was said that they came from God or the devil. In the thirteenth century people said that illnesses came from God, and in the fifteenth century they said they came from the devil. Later still they thought that the humours were the cause, and nowadays they are the result of bacteria (viruses). Thus have people’s views supplanted one another over the ages.
The fear to which people succumb nowadays closely resembles the medieval fear of ghosts: this is our present fear of bacteria (viruses). These two states of fear are objectively the same. Ideas during the middle-ages were in keep with their time just as our ideas nowadays befit our time. People in medieval times had some belief in the spiritual world and so of course they had a fear of spiritual beings. In modern times we no longer believe in the spiritual world, so our fear is directed towards physical beings, be they ever so small.
Whatever the age in which one lives, one must be especially sceptical in respect of the authority prevalent in that age. Without spiritual insight one can make serious mistakes in this regard. This is especially the case in one particular field of human culture, namely in the field of materialistic medicine. Here we can see clearly how there is increasing dependence upon whatever those in authority consider to be the standard, so that far more dreadful things can result nowadays than were brought about by the much maligned authorities of the middle-ages. We are in the midst of this already, and it will become ever more pronounced. When people mock the medieval belief in ghosts one can but ask: ‘Are things any different today? Is there any less fear of ghosts nowadays? Are not people afraid of many more ghosts now than they were then?’
Things are far worse now than anyone can imagine. Think what must be going on in the human soul when we are told: ‘There, in the palm of your hand, you have 60,000 bacteria (viruses)!’ Scientists in America have calculated the number of bacteria present in a single mustache. Surely such a thing ought to persuade us to say: Those medieval ghosts were at least respectable ghosts; but today’s bacterial (viral) ghosts are altogether too diminutive, too unsuitable to be regarded with such fear, especially as this fear is now only in its early stages, for it will lead to a dependence on authority in the field of health which will be truly dire.
Today we shall be dealing with the fact that bacteria (viruses) can only become dangerous when they are nurtured and cherished...Bacteria (viruses) are most intensively nurtured when human beings take nothing but materialistic thoughts with them upon entering into the state of sleep. The best way to nurture bacteria (viruses) is to enter into sleep with nothing but materialistic ideas in mind. From out of the spiritual world the 'I' and the astral body then work down into the organs of the physical body which are neither the blood nor the nervous system. Going to sleep in a materialistic frame of mind is the very best way to nurture bacteria (viruses).
Actually there is at least one other means that is as effective: to live within a seat of epidemic or endemic diseases and to absorb only the case histories by which one is surrounded while being entirely filled with a sense of dread concerning these illnesses. This is just as effective. If we can bring nothing up out of ourselves except fear of the illnesses which surround us at the seat of an epidemic, and if we go to sleep at night filled with nothing but thoughts of this fear, then we create unconscious replicas, imaginations, which are drenched in fear. And this is an excellent method for nurturing bacteria (viruses). But if we can reduce this fear even by a small amount in our everyday work, if, for example, in caring for the patients, we can forget that there might be a danger of becoming infected ourselves, then without a doubt we also reduce the nurturing care we lavish on the bacteria (viruses)."
The placebo effect strikes again? Those who watch the corona-virus case numbers on TV and obsess over cleanliness are more likely to contract the corona-virus than those who primarily focus on strengthening their soul.
