The founder of the biochemical healing method is the German physician Wilhelm Heinrich Schüßler (1821- 1898). In the first years of his medical career he devoted himself entirely to homeopathy, but was always looking for a “simplified therapy”. In 1873 he published an article in the “Allgemeine Homöopathische Zeitung” with the title “An abbreviated homeopathic therapy”.
Here he expressed that the general remedies had become dispensable for him. He works with twelve organic substances, so-called physiological functional remedies of the organism. In later publications, homeopathy is no longer mentioned and he explains this as follows: “My healing method is not homeopathic, because it is not based on the principle of similarity but on the physiological-chemical processes in the human organism.
“Physiology (from the Greek word Physis= nature) is the science of the chemical-physical processes in the living organism. Schüßler called his method of treatment biochemistry (from the Greek word Bios = life), because he had recognized that the construction and the viability of the human organism are essentially dependent on the presence of certain mineral salts, exactly these functional means – these are inorganic materials such as common salt, iron phosphate, calcium phosphate, calcium fluoride and others. A deficiency leads to the inability to function first in the area of the cell, the cell group and finally the individual organs.
Functional incapacity in this sense means illness in general. The pathologist Professor Virchow defined this as “disease of the cell”. Schüßler was strongly influenced by him and they agreed that the basic cause of all life processes, as well as the cause for changes of organs and tissues is to be looked for in the excitability of the cell and that therefore the emergence and the nature of a disease is to be led back essentially to the activity of the cell.
Biochemical therapy
The realization that the normal activity of the cell is dependent on a normal content of inorganic salts, was for Schüßler the logical step to further expand his biochemical therapy. The deviation from the normal content, in particular the lack of these nutrient salts, he called the cause of the diseases. In case of illness, the deficit of inorganic substances should be compensated by medicinal supply.
Here, one should not think of a procedure such as “replacing what is missing with what is absent”, but rather of the triggering of a stimulus or the transmission of an information that repairs the cells to reabsorb the inorganic salts necessary for them in increased amounts from food. Today, Schüßler’s ideas can be easily understood, because the knowledge about the role of minerals and trace elements and the importance of a healthy diet have become common knowledge. The basics of such a biological or biochemical therapy can be found in the basic principles already described by Hippocrates and Paracelsus. In 1852, the Dutch physiologist Molleschott ensured a spread and awareness of Schüßler’s teaching with his publication “Circle of Life”.
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