The dying person’s need for healing

The problematic term “therapia minima” (palliative care) leads us to the question of physicians’ engagement in one of the most important moments in a human biography. Certainly, many medicines used in the preceding treatment period can be discontinued. Nevertheless, it is important to pay attention to the current need for treatment, and medicines that support human beings’ ability to overcome illness should still be administered in this phase.

After all—all ability to overcome illness, however small, is in a broader sense health-giving, and continues to require support. Of course, one would adjust a mistletoe treatment, for example, to fit the current situation and change the rhythm of the applications and concentrations. Eventually, the soul-spirit being will loosen itself more and more from the metabolic-limb system and will no longer respond to a higher-dosed Viscum medicine there. Many cancer patients explicitly request the continuation of mistletoe therapy in advanced stages of the illness, despite the injections. Pain therapy will also need to be adjusted, as the need for morphine, for example, often decreases in the period before death. Previously required doses should not simply be continued, unchanged.