Walther Cloos

Walther Cloos (1900 to 1985) was a German pharmacist and writer who became a pioneer of anthroposophical pharmacy, the medicine-making side of the tradition founded on Rudolf Steiner's teaching. Raised in Darmstadt, he studied pharmacy at the Stuttgart Technical University, heard Steiner lecture in 1921, and in 1925 joined the laboratory staff of the Institute of Clinical Medicine in Stuttgart, the group that later became the German Weleda company. There he developed the metal distillation method that Steiner had suggested would increase the medical action of metals, producing the metallic mirror preparations known as metallicum preparatum. His work centred on medicines made from minerals and metals, for which he wrote some 200 monographs, and he studied the habitats and biodynamic cultivation of medicinal plants with farmers and the botanist Gerbert Grohmann. He also wrote books on the physiology of the earth and on gemstones, and lectured to physicians, farmers and students.