Health by the Stars

To the average person who reads the astrology column in the daily newspaper, the statement that those “fun predictions” have some serious relationship to their health would probably be startling, if not ludicrous. To serious practitioners of the medical arts, such a statement borders on heresy! Nevertheless, a serious study on the foundations of medical practice would demonstrate that medicine developed from astrology. Astrology begat medicine (as well as most of the other modern sciences, either directly or indirectly) and in turn, medicine begat nutrition. Each of these sciences is concerned with maintaining good health, which is the principal concern of this article.

Modern Medicine and Nutrition

For the most part, American medical practice may be described as allopathic medicine – a system that combats disease by administering chemical remedies (drugs) to counteract the symptoms of the disease. In general, these drugs are artificial chemicals that are not part of a healthy person’s diet, and although they alleviate the symptoms of the disease, they do not go to the heart of the problem. Instead, they block some natural body process or function. The few exceptions to this are the antibiotics and such natural substances as thyroxin (thyroid extract) and insulin, all of which have a natural origin.

Modern medical practice is actually in its infancy, for far less is known about the basic chemistry and functioning of the body than most people imagine. Billions of aspirin tablets are sold each year for the relief of minor pain, and yet no medical doctor can adequately explain in simple terms why aspirin relieves pain. Modern medicine simply does not yet know how aspirin works! Most of our modern drugs are used because, on the basis of empirical observation, they relieve the symptoms of disease without causing undesirable effects in most people.

Although aspirin in now synthesized in the laboratory, it was originally extracted from the bark of the willow tree. In fact, until the 1930s, most of the so-called drugs in the doctor’s satchel were extracted from natural plant substances. Quinine, from the South American cinchona tree, was used for the relief of fever and malarial symptoms. Digitalis, from the foxglove plant, relieved circulatory problems. Belladonna, a species of nightshade, was used to treat nausea and vomiting. Licorice and cascara were laxatives, and ipecac was the emetic used to induced vomiting. Molasses, from sugar cane, was mixed with naturally-occurring sulfur and taken as a general tonic. Crude horse serums were used in the treatment of such diseases as pneumonia. For centuries, alcohol distilled from natural grains and fruits, was the only anesthetic and disinfectant. It was not until the late 1800s that chloroform and then ether became available as general anesthetics in surgery, and nitrous oxide (laughing gas) in dental procedures. During World War II the discovery of the synthetic sulfa drugs saved the lives of thousands of wounded soldiers. And later, penicillin, which was originally from Penicillium notatum, simple mold, proved such a great boon to combatting infection.

Today, the South American Indians think us civilized people “crazy” in our inordinate hunger for chocolate, a substance that they use only as a drug. The rauwolfia plant, from which we extract an essential alkaloid, is used in the treatment of high blood pressure. And the list of natural medicines goes on and on. Even marijuana is beginning to find medicinal use in relieving fluid pressure within the eyeball caused by glaucoma, as well as in treating asthma.

Scientific Evidence of Astrology

THE TAKATA EXPERIMENTS. In 1938, Dr. Maki Takata at Toho University in Japan began a biochemical study of the ovarian cycle in the human female. The presence of chemical messengers, called “hormones,” in the body had only recently been recognized, and their monumental influence on personality and physical development was not yet understood.

To carry out his program of research, Takata needed to develop a method of removing the protein albumin from the blood, because this substance interfered with his work. Takata’s method, now called the Takata reaction, consists of adding certain compounds to a blood sample, causing the albumin to flocculate or precipitate out of the liquid portion of the blood so that it can then be removed by centrifuging.

Up until this time, scientists had believed it to be an ironclad law that if a series of identical chemical reactions was performed under the same set of conditions (heat, light, purity, humidity, etc.) each reaction would proceed at the same rate in any geographical location. Takata discovered that this law did not seem to apply to his albumin flocculation reaction. At certain times it went faster, at other times slower. He set out to discover why this was so, after carefully verifying that other scientists using his test around the world were observing a similar phenomenon.

Takata assumed that his variation in rate for the precipitation of albumin in the blood did not occur in males. But in January 1938, he observed this phenomenon in the blood of males as well! Takata was determined to discover the cause of this cyclical variation in the precipitation mechanism. After examining all plausible explanations, none of which corresponded to his findings, he was driven to examine the implausible causes. It turned out that the rate of the reaction varied with the time of day, the date of the year, the eleven-year sunspot cycle, eclipses and magnetic storm’s in the Earth’s ionosphere. Heresy! Clearly, celestial influences were exerting a powerful influence upon the protein in the blood. Takata knew that proteins are the only chemical substances capable of “life” as we know it on Earth, and here he had demonstrated in his test tubes that celestial influences were affecting the chemical behavior of this protein. Could they be affecting other proteins in the body as well?

Proteins belong to a group of substances known to chemists as colloids. In 1951, at the University of Florence in Italy, Dr. Giorgio Piccardi became interested in Takata’s work and decided to repeat the Takata experiments, this time using a nonbiological colloid called oxychloral bismuth, which is prepared by dissolving trichloral bismuth in water. Heresy upon heresy – Piccardi discovered that the speed of this oxychloral bismuth reaction also varied according to celestial conditions! Unusual sunspot activity, eclipses and magnetic storms tended to interfere with and slow down the reaction, while periods of lesser cosmic activity tended to speed it up.

In 1954, Caroli and Pichotka in Germany took the work of Takata and Piccardi and demonstrated again that the rate of reaction varied with time and celestial conditions. There seemed little doubt that something out there in the heavens was definitely affecting events on the Earth. They could see it with their own eyes and time it with their stopwatches.

Piccardi also made another fascinating discovery when a boiler technician at the university complained to him that twice each year the rust in his boilers peeled off contaminated the water. And he could do nothing to control it. Piccardi theorized that the surface tension of the boiler water must have been reduced for some unexplained reason. But why? He noted that this phenomenon always occurred in September and March (to the astrologer, when the Sun is transiting through Virgo and Pisces). When the surface tension of water is reduced, it becomes “wetter.” Softening agents added to wash water reduce the surface tension, thus increasing the water’s ability to dissolve dirt. In Piccardi’s case, the softened water even dissolved the rust.

Schwenk’s experiments seem to support the idea of moving rapidly under favorable cosmic influences and more slowly when influences are adverse, for by remaining relatively quiet we are far less suspectible to outside influences. That, of course, is purpose of bed rest an illness.

BIOLOGICAL CLOCKS. At Northwestern University Dr. Frank Brown has done some fascinating work on mechanism that seems to be built into all living things, which Brown calls biological clocks. This refers to the ability of living organism to sense changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, which is only one ten-millionth as strong as the emanations given off in the immediate area of home electrical appliances. These changes in the Earth’s magnetic field follow a predictable schedule related to the positions of the Sun, Moon planets. For example, Brown discovered that oysters kept their cycle of opening and closing according to the Moon-timed tidal phase of their original home even when transported a thousand miles inland.

This biological clock mechanism can easily be tested in your own home. In the Fall, place some flower bulbs in darkest part of the cellar, away from all light, and leave them there until the following Spring. Check them periodically, and you will find that they do not sprout during the Winter months. But when their normal growing time arrives in Spring, they sprout even in storage.

When bulbs are stored, the tissues do not die, they “breathe.” Dr. Brown carefully measured the rate of respiration (utilation of oxygen) by bulbs in the stored condition. His experiments showed that as Spring approaches, the rate of respiration increases; they require and use more oxygen. The only possible signal these bulbs could receive is from the magnetic-cosmic field surrounding the Earth.

If you wish to learn more about biological clocks, read The Living Clocks, by Ritchie R. Ward, published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York. It contains a very fascinating account of this research.

Pharmacology and Nutrition

Pharmacology is concerned with the physiological effect of “foreign” substances introduced into the body: in other words, drugs and poisons. How or why the early drugs worked was not of particular concern to doctors at that time. The fact that they worked at all was the important thing. The ancients and not-so-ancients had discovered the curative properties of certain herbs, and that was that.

But there were those who “cared.” And these pharmacologists and herbalists set out to discover why certain drugs worked and how they changed the chemistry of the body. Some biochemists who related the first biochemical discoveries to diet in order to improve the health of the body were in fact nutritionists. The discovery in the past century of certain chemical compounds essential to body health, called vitamins, spurred this research on.

Unfortunately, both biochemists and nutritionists overlooked a vast body of knowledge, which at the time was in disrepute, that would have helped them immeasurably. That body of knowledge, of course, was astrology, the oldest science. Because astrology is empirical, based on gross observation alone and unprovable in the test tube or under the microscope, it is generally considered irrelevant to their studies. This situation is still not much changed today, but the nutritionists are learning, as are the forward-looking astrologers. One day the teachings of all three sciences will be merged for the greater benefit of mankind.