ONCE or twice a month the newspapers publish articles under headings such as “Epoch-making Cancer Discovery,” “The Cancer Problem Solved,” “The Cancer Microbe Found,” and we are told that such-and-such a researcher has made a discovery which will revolutionize our conception of cancer and its treatment and that within a measurable space of time cancer should be under control.
Great excitement is caused by the discovery, or the pretended discovery, of some scientist, other scientists publish criticisms or treat the new development with contemptuous silence, and in due course an “entirely new” or “most startling” discovery is described to us, which, after a few weeks, disappears completely and permanently from our view.
This kind of thing has been going on for decades. Thousands of industrious men and women are “researching” with microscope, test tube, animal experimentation, etc., millions are spent and the result of all this feverish activity during half a century has been nil. On another page is published an article “The Cancer Problem,” written by Dr. Erwin Liek, the eminent and fearless German Surgeon, who has performed thousands of cancer operations and who has come to the conclusion that the laboratories will never succeed in discovering anything useful.
The cancer problem is monopolized by researchers and surgeon, who loudly proclaim that they alone can solve it. We have been told ad nauseam that “cancer is incurable except by surgery.” Dr. Liek not only doubts the usefulness of laboratory investigation but the benefits of surgery.
According to him, surgery saves only 21/2 per cent of the cancer patients, or one in forty, and frequently the disease returns after a period of five years, immunity during which is supposed to constitute a cure. for decades doctors have been urged by the surgeons, by the Ministry of Health and by other important bodies to send every cancer patient immediately to the surgeon. In consequence of this agitation, the number of cancer operations, and especially of early cancer operations, has increased to an incredible extent.
Nevertheless, the cancer mortality in this country has exactly doubled during the last twenty years. That has been the pitiful result of the activity of researchers, surgeons, and radiologists. Radium has proved as disappointing as every orthodox treatment and surgery. In innumerable cases the use of radium has terribly aggravated the disease.
Unfortunately the orthodox school teachers that cancer is a purely local disease and that it can be “cured” by cutting or burning away the local tumor. If it were a local disease, surgery and radiology might succeed. Unfortunately the official conception is wrong. Cancer is a blood disease. Numerous radiologist have had their fingers burned by incautious use of the deadly rays. Frequently they develop cancer on the finger tips, which have been injured by X-rays or radium.
If cancer were a local disease, surgery should cure X-ray workers rapidly and thoroughly. However, we read time after time of unfortunate radiologists who had one finger after the other amputated, then the hand, then the lower arm, then the upper arm, and that eventually they died of cancer. One might as well try to cure a man of his gout by cutting off his gouty toe, or a man infected by syphilis by cutting out the primary sore. The syphilis organisms have swarmed throughout the body long before the primary sore was formed.
Laboratory research and surgery have proved futile in the fight against cancer. Common sense can solve the cancer problem, as Dr. Liek has shown. Liek, Sir Arbuthnot Lane, and many other leading surgeons have come to the conclusion that cancer is a disease of civilization, that it is a disease caused by chronic poisoning and faulty nutrition, and I have endeavoured to prove this in my two books, Cancer, How It Is Caused, How It Can Be Prevented, and Cancer, The Surgeon and The Researcher, published by John Murray.
Cancer is practically unknown among primitive races leading a primitive life and among wild animals. The more civilized a nation is, the more unnaturally it lives and the greater is the cancer mortality. The cancer mortality among butchers is about three times as high as among agricultural labourers. That simple fact is infinitely more important than all the discoveries and pretended discoveries of researchers, surgeons and radiologists.
Sir Arbuthnot Lane, Dr. Robert Bell, and numerous other surgeons and physicians in England and abroad, have told us that constipation and poisoning from the bowel is one of the principal causes of cancer, particularly of cancer in the food tract. Primitive natives and naturally living animals are not constipated.
Constipation among the civilized is universal. Food stagnating in the bowel, and particularly animal food, becomes virulently poisonous and the poisons of putrefaction thus created are absorbed into the system. We cannot wonder that the cancer mortality among butchers is three times as great as it is among agricultural labourers.
Most doctors hand over every cancer case and every case which they suspect to be cancerous to the surgeon because they do not wish to be reproached for having neglected to provide that form of treatment which at present is declared to be “the only hope”.
Whether the patient is treated by surgery or by radium, the doctor usually abstains from treatment, especially as the leading textbooks say that no treatment is of avail. Only a few doctors venture to treat cancer sufferers medicinally or dietically. I would give an illustrating example from my own experience.
Some years ago a Mrs. MacF. called upon me. She told me that a year ago she had discovered a small growth in her breast, had shown it to the doctor, who had promptly sent her to the surgeon and the surgeon had made a very extensive operation and had told her that, although the growth was cancerous, there was no danger of a recurrence because the disease had been tackled early and very thoroughly.
When she came to me she felt dreadfully ill. She had read one of my cancer books, and wished for my advice. She had always been terribly constipated, she emptied her bowels once in a week or once in ten days, had always lived on a devitaminized and demineralized diet, and her disease was undoubtedly due to poisoning from a very toxic bowel. The outward manifestation of that condition had been cut away by the surgeon, but she had been given no advice as regards diet and bowel control.
The doctor thought that he had done his duty by sending the poor woman to the surgeon and the surgeon evidently considered that his whole duty consisted in cutting out the growth without giving any dietetic advice, which probably he considered the doctors province. The local operation, instead of producing a cure, had caused a violent general cancer outbreak throughout the body, and the poor woman died in agony.
While orthodox medicine is bankrupt as far as treatment of cancer is concerned, homoeopathically, especially if combined with a wise diet, can offer some hope to cancer sufferers. This journal has published recently some brilliant cancer cures performed by two well-known Homoeopathic doctors, Dr. Emil Schlegel, who is more than 80, and the late Dr. John H. Clarke, my predecessor as editor of this magazine.
The late Dr. Burnett and other prominent homoeopaths have been highly successful in a number of undoubted cancer cases declared as such by the highest authorities on the basis of pathological, microscopical examination. Dr. George Burford, who is a surgeon and a physician has just published a pamphlet, Homoeopathy in Malignant Disease, published by John Bale, Son and Danielsson, London, in which he gives a brilliant survey of the homoeopathic and dietetic treatment of the disease, describing some of his own cases. I would quote the following:.
A twelve month ago we saw, in consultation in a distant part of England, a lady suffering with a malignant abdominal growth. For this she had been through two major operations, supplemented by two radium courses. The uterus and appendages were removed on the first occasion of operation and the cervix after an interval. During this time she had lost two stones in weight.
Pelvic examination revealed a series of nodular irregularities in the cavity, and haemorrhage from the irregular canal thus constituted. A similar anomalous contour existed in the rectum, but with no haemorrhage therefrom. The nodular mass was more bulky on the rectal aspect. The patient was blanched and emaciated, confined to bed, and practically of life.
Therapeutics here were resolved into a counsel of despair. In just such a spirit we advised, before leaving, a preparation of Arsenic of the organic kind, and Carcinosin 200th potency. An adjusted dietary with a copious water intake was super continued; in seven weeks the patient had regained half a stone in weight and was able to leave her bed and her room; haemorrhage and pain had ceased and did not return.
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.