It is the privilege of Homoeopathy to relieve those unfortunate patients who suffer from incurable diseases. Relief is given by the orthodox doctors, who employ the most effective and most dangerous hypnotics. In case of cancer the orthodox practitioner has little to relieve the patient, except morphia. Thousands of cancer patients receive no treatment. Morphia is used only at the last. This is understandable. Morphia is apt to upset the patient terribly when he comes out of the morphia stupor. Its after effect may be compared to that of an alcoholic debauch.
Homoeopathy has the glory of having cured hundreds of cancer cases who have been declared absolutely incurable by orthodox doctors and surgeons. Every able homoeopathic practitioners has effected cures of cancer. Unfortunately homoeopaths receive cancer cases as a rule, only when it is too late to cure them, and when orthodox medicine has done its best, or its worst, with operations, radium, etc. Happily homoeopathy can give wonderful relief to the incurable.
I would give a few examples of such treatment by homoeopathic and dietetic means.
CANCER OF THE STOMACH.
One of the most horrible diseases existing is cancer of the stomach. Tens of thousands of people die of it every year, and in nearly every case on is told that the sufferer had the habit of taking boiling hot food and especially boiling hot drink. I imagine that at least 90- per cent. of the sufferers from cancer of the stomach have brought the trouble on themselves by the habit of drinking things boiling hot. One can quickly put ones hands through a gas flame without burning them. One can quickly dip the finger into almost boiling water without scalding it. Most people are able to take tea at the temperature of 150 degrees Fahrenheit while they cannot stand a hotter temperature in the bath than from 105 to 110 degrees.
I ask people who have the habit of taking over-hot liquid to put their finger into the tea which they have just enjoyed. They snatch out the finger in a hurry because otherwise they would burn it. Then I explain to them that there are no pain nerves in the oesophagus, the swallowing tube which leads to the stomach, and in the stomach itself, and that the liquid passes so quickly over the tongue that it has no time to burn it, that repeated scalding of the stomach is apt to lead to the most dreadful of diseases, to cancer of the stomach. I suppose I have saved a large number of people from this disease owing to the lesson which I have given them in my consulting room.
Cancer of the stomach is readily treated by enterprising surgeons. However there are in the United Kingdom probably not ten people who were operated upon for cancer of the stomach and who survived the operation by five years. As a rule the operation seems to lead only to greater suffering. It seems to spread the disease all over the body and the pain in the stomach of people who have not been operated upon seems to me to be less than the dreadful suffering experienced by those who have had an operation on the stomach or who had the whole of the stomach excised.
On October 30th, 1935, I was visited by a Mrs. S. from Swansea who was staying with a friend in London. She had been operated upon for cancer of the stomach on August 3rd of same year, but happily she had been told that she had been operated upon for a gastric ulcer. She had lost a great deal of weight, looked deeply jaundiced, lived on almost nothing, had violent, burning pain relieved by cold drinks which were apt to be vomited when they got warm- a Phosphorus symptom. She felt a considerable nausea and she vomited food readily. Her condition was a deplorable one. She ate what she fancied.
I gave her a diet of barley gruel made with water with mild added, softly boiled unbleached sultanas which had been run through a sieve, rusks with the minimum of butter, extremely weak China tea with increasing quantities of milk and if these foods should be tolerated in the stomach, she was to take basins of brown bread and milk, a beaten up egg, etc. For medicine I gave her Phosphorus 3, a dose every hour or two, and a combination of Nux vomica 1 and Carbo vegetabilis 1x before meals. I gave her Ipecacuanha 3x marked “nausea, 3 as needed” and Colocynthis 3x marked “pain relieved by doubling up, 3 as needed,” and I cheered her up as well as I could.
On November 4th, the friend with whom she stayed wrote to me: “On the whole Mrs. Ss progress has been fairly satisfactory. She has had less pain and vomiting and has been able to take a little more food than formerly.” The next letter dated November 7th, after a weeks treatment, stated: “Mrs. S. has now returned to her own home. Her complexion has distinctly improved and the dark circles round her eyes have diminished considerably. She seems stronger and is more upright and alert in her movements.
She has not vomited at all since last Sunday and has not experienced a great deal of pain. She is always at her best experienced a great deal of pain. She is always at her best from 2 p.m. until bedtime. Since she had been on the diet which you have prescribed, she has no experienced any nausea. There is just one thing which will interest you, and it is that she has resumed her interest in reading. During the week she was here, she not only read the newspaper with interest but was absorbed in reading the Life of Queen Victoria.”.
I was highly gratified by her improvement, but of course very sceptical as regards the ultimate result. However on November 12th, Mrs. S. wrote to me herself from Swansea: “I am very pleased to inform you that I am feeling better and find great benefit from the digestive tablets, Nux Vomica and Carbo vegetabilis combined. I also find great help from the tablets which I take on Wednesday and Saturday night.” On Wednesday nights she had to take Carcinosinum 200, and on Saturday nights Bacillinum 200. There was tuberculosis in her family, and I suspected that cancer was superimposed upon tuberculosis.
I then tried Ornithogalum 3x between meals, a specific for cancer of the stomach, which did her a little good. On November 15th Mrs. S. wrote to me: “The sickness is much better I weighted myself and am 7 stone, having lost 2 st. 4 lbs. since last May. Taking things on the whole, I am better since receiving your treatment, for which I am very grateful, and I hope soon to be able to tell you that I am better still.”.
I gave her every encouragement although her small and totally insufficient intake showed quite clearly to me that she was rapidly going downhill. On November 20th she wrote: “I find the sickness is easing off since starting the treatment. I am not able to et up every day, but do so when I feel able. I like the sieved sultanas very much.” As she was losing weight and as the cancer was obviously rapidly encroaching upon the system, I tired Natrum cacodilicum lx, a dose three times a day, which unfortunately had no noticeable effect.
The patient wrote to me on November 22nd: “I feel rather disappointed. I weighed myself yesterday and find I weigh 6 st. 8 lbs. and lost 6 lbs. in two weeks, the most I have lost in such a short time since first I started losing weight. Could you suggest any reason for it? ” The reason was, of course, quite obvious. However I did not tell her the terrible truth, but replied: “It is perfectly natural that you should lose weight as you have been under-feeding so much for so long. The most important thing now is to increase your intake.” I gave her some suggestions to overcome her dislike for food.
Unfortunately the improvement proved short-lived. At the beginning of December, she was doing badly, and very soon the end came. However, I have the very slight satisfaction of knowing that during the first two two or three weeks, there was distinct improvement in her condition. In at least 90 per cent. of the cancer cases, and even in the worst cases, such as that of Mrs.S., one can produce some improvement by putting patients on a fleshless and fishless diet, keeping their bowels open and giving them the indicated homoeopathic medicines.
A SARCOMA CASE.
On February 7th, 1936, I received a letter from a Mr. W. J.s. of Exeter, in which he told me that his wife had undergone a considerable number of searching treatments, operations, etc., and that an X-ray had revealed the existence of a sarcoma in the left lung and on the ribs adjoining it. He had been told by the doctors that the condition of his wife was hopeless, and that she might live for two months with rapidly decreasing strength. Happily the woman did not know that she had a sarcoma, and believed that she merely suffered from osteo-arthritis. I sent her, provisionally, some advice and medicines, and then received a letter from the wife herself She wrote:.
“I am 52, and have three children aged 22, 19 and 13. A year before the last baby was born I had a miscarriage, and have had something the matter ever since. In 1924 I went into hospital and had the womb (which had dropped) fixed up, followed by curetting. After that I had very bad sick headaches and attacks of pain in the right side and up under the shoulder, which the doctor said was the result of gall-stones. So in 1927 I again went into hospital and had the gall-bladder removed and also the appendix. It was slow progress the next few years. Then I seemed to pick up and be better, until the monthly periods stopped in July, 1932.
James Ellis Barker wrote a very large number of books, both under the name James Ellis Barker and under his real German name Otto Julius Eltzbacher, The Truth about Homœopathy; Rough Notes on Remedies with William Murray; Chronic Constipation; The Story of My Eyes; Miracles Of Healing and How They are Done; Good Health and Happiness; New Lives for Old: How to Cure the Incurable; My Testament of Healing; Cancer, the Surgeon and the Researcher; Cancer, how it is Caused, how it Can be Prevented with a foreward by William Arbuthnot Lane; Cancer and the Black Man etc.