The formative, sculpting force that builds the teeth in balance with magnesium, and shows itself outwardly in the skill of a child's hands and feet.
Definition
The Fluorine Process in Anthroposophy is one of the formative processes of the human being described by Rudolf Steiner in Spiritual Science and Medicine (GA 312), the course he gave to physicians in Dornach from 21 March to 9 April 1920. Fluorine here is not a chemical ingredient to be dosed but a plastic, sculpting force that works in continuous balance with the radiating force of magnesium to build the teeth, up to the change of teeth around age seven. Steiner adds a striking macroscopic sign: the same working appears outwardly as the suppleness and skill of hands and feet, so a child's dexterity reveals the state of the tooth-forming process within. Its application is educational and medical at once: dexterity training, handwork, and skilled movement act as dental prophylaxis, and anthroposophic physicians read tooth formation as a window on the whole mineralising organisation of the physical body.
Steiner told the physicians gathered at Dornach in 1920 that the Fluorine Process deserves far more attention than materialist chemistry gives it. In the rarefied form in which fluorine occurs within us, it moulds like a sculptor: it shapes the tooth's contour and cement while magnesium radiates substance into the form. When the two fall out of balance in early childhood, the teeth decay early.
In Steiner's Own Words
The forming and fitting of the solid framework in the human organism takes place through continuous interaction between the forces of magnesium and fluorine respectively; in this interplay, the forces of fluorine act plastically, mould as a sculptor moulds, fill out contours and bar the way to the forces of radiation, whilst magnesium acts as a radiating force and constitutes the fibres of tissue, etc., into and along which the substance arranges itself. It is not a senseless phrase, but wholly in accord with the course of nature to say that a tooth is formed thus: It is shaped, as far as its circumference and its cement is concerned, by the activity of the plastic artist “fluorine,” and magnesium pours into it the forces which have to be shaped to a plastic form.
What it Means Today
Twenty-five years after the Dornach course, mainstream dentistry made its own fluorine discovery. The Colorado Springs dentist Frederick McKay had been tracking mottled brown enamel since 1901 and noticed that the stained teeth resisted decay. H. Trendley Dean of the United States National Institute of Health mapped the effect across American cities through the 1930s, and on 25 January 1945 Grand Rapids, Michigan became the first city in the world to fluoridate its drinking water. Dentistry had arrived at the substance Steiner said received far too little attention, yet the two approaches part company. Public health treats fluorine as an ingredient, measured in parts per million at the tap. Steiner treats it as a process the organism itself must perform: fluorine is already present in every drinking water, he reminded the physicians, so the real question is whether the body can master the complicated work of its absorption. The Thalira synthesis: Grand Rapids and Dornach answer different questions, for the first asks how to harden the finished tooth from outside, while the second asks how to school the living force that forms the tooth from within.
The practice implication is concrete. In the lecture of 6 April 1920 Steiner presents dental prophylaxis as a curriculum: teach a child intricate footwork, let boys and girls knit and crochet together as they do in the Waldorf School handwork lessons, and the forces that build sound teeth are strengthened, because supple fingers and skilful feet are the fluorine working made visible. A parent applying the indication would watch a young child's dexterity as attentively as the teeth themselves.
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