Nature Cure by Henry Lindlahr (best short books to read txt) 📕

Cancer

Let us see how our theories of the Unity of Disease and Cure apply to cancer, the much-dreaded and rapidly increasing disease which is considered absolutely incurable by both the laity and the medical profession.

Allopathy says that the only possible remedy is “early operation.” Nevertheless, in the textbooks of medical science and in medical schools and colleges it is taught that cancer and all other malignant growths “always return after extirpation.” In fact, every student of medicine is expected to state this in his examination papers as part of the definition of malignant tumors.

The great majority of medical practitioners hold, furthermore, that cancer is a local disease. This is proved by the fact that they apply local, symptomatic treatment.

In reality, however, the disease is constitutional. Therefore, after removal of the growth by surgery, the electric needle, x-rays, etc., the cancer or tumor is liable to break out again in the same place or in several places.

The surest way to change insignificant, so-called “benign” (not fatal to life) fibroid or fatty tumors into malignant cancer or sarcoma is to operate upon them. Wens and warts are often made malignant by surgical interference or other local irritation.

In my article titled “What We Know About Cancer” in the August, 1909, issue of the Nature Cure Magazine I quote from an article by Burton J. Hendrick, the cancer expert, published in the July, 1909, number of McClure’s Magazine, as follows:

“Clinical observation long ago established the fact that any irritating interference with a cancer almost always stimulates its growth. In his earliest experiments Dr. Loeb found that, by merely drawing a silk thread through a dormant or slowly developing tumor, he could transform it into a rapidly growing one. Cutting with a knife produced the same effect. This accounts for the commonly observed fact that, when extirpated cancers in human beings recur, they increase in size much more rapidly than the original growth.”

The late Dr. Senn, the great cancer surgeon, admitted these facts in an interview given to Chicago press representatives upon his return from his trip around the world in 1906. The press clipping reads as follows.

“Avoid Beauty Doctors”

“Incidentally, Dr. Senn advises women who worry over their disfigurement of moles about their heads and shoulders to have those so-called beauty spots removed early in life, but he tells them they should not go to beauty doctors to have the operations performed.

“He knows of hundreds of cases, he says, where cancer has resulted from the irritation of moles by an electric needle, or by constant picking it. ‘Have a surgeon cut the mole out,’ is his advice, as it will hurt little and leave no scar.”

To this we answered in our comments on the interview: “If the little knife of the beauty doctor causes cancer, what about the big knife of the surgeon?”

In point of fact, our office records show that a large percentage of malignant growths are the direct result of surgical operations.

Cancer Not a Local, But a Constitutional Disease

For many years I have been teaching in my lectures and writings as well as in private advice to patients that cancer is a constitutional disease; that it is rooted in every drop of blood in the body; that it is caused by the presence of certain disease taints or of food and drug poisons in the system; that these poisons irritate and stimulate the cells in a certain locality and cause their abnormal multiplication or proliferation in the forms of benign or malignant tumors.

I also claim that meat eating has much to do with the causation of cancer.

Certain discoveries by Dr. H. C. Ross of London, England, confirm my claims that cancer is not at all of local and accidental origin, but that it is constitutional, and that it may be caused by the gradual accumulation in the system of certain poisons which form in decaying animal matter.

One day, while experimenting in his laboratory, Dr. Ross brought white blood cells or leucocytes into contact with a certain aniline dye on the slide of a microscope and noticed that they began at once to multiply by cell division (proliferation). This was the first time that cell proliferation had been observed by the human eye while the cells were separated from their parent organism.

Dr. Ross realized that he had made an important discovery and continued his experiments under the microscope in order to find out what other substances would cause cell multiplication. He found that certain xanthines and albuminoids derived from decaying animal matter were the most effective for this purpose and induced more rapid cell proliferation than any other substances he was able to procure.

Dr. Ross obtained these “alkaloids of putrefaction,” as he called them, from blood which had been allowed to putrefy in a warm place. He found that albuminoids derived from decaying vegetable substances did not have the same effect.

His discoveries led him to believe that the alkaloids of putrefaction produced in a cut or wound by the decaying of dead blood and tissue cells are the cause of the rapid multiplication of the neighboring live cells, which gradually fill the wound with new tissues.

Thus, for the first time in the history of medicine, a rational explanation of Nature’s methods for repairing injured tissues has been advanced.

Dr. Ross applied his theory still farther to the causation of benign and malignant growths, reasoning that the alkaloids of putrefaction produced in or attracted to a certain part of the body by some local irritation are the cause of the rapid, abnormal multiplication of cells in tumor formations.

In benign tumors the abnormal proliferation of cells takes place slowly, and they do not tend to immediate and rapid decay and deterioration.

In malignant tumors the “wild” cells, created in immense numbers, decay almost as rapidly as they are produced because the abnormal growths are devoid of normal organization. They have no established, regular blood and nerve supply, nor are they provided with adequate venous drainage. They are, therefore, cut off from the orderly life of the organism and doomed to rapid deterioration.

The processes of decay of these tumor materials liberate large quantities of alkaloids of putrefaction, and these, in turn, stimulate the normal, healthy cells with which they come in contact to rapid, abnormal multiplication.

The malignant growth, therefore, feeds on its own products of decay, aside from the systemic poisons and morbid materials already contained in the blood and tissues of the body. These morbid products permeate the entire system. They are carried by the circulation of the blood into all parts of the body. This explains why cancer is a constitutional disease, why it is, as I stated it, “rooted in every drop of blood.”

It also explains why cancer, or rather the disposition to its development (diathesis), is hereditary.

If the original cancerous growth is removed by surgical intervention, x-rays, the electric needle, cauterization or any other form of local treatment, the poisonous materials (alkaloids of putrefaction) in the blood will set up other foci of abnormal, wild proliferation. Medical science has applied the term metastasis to such spreading and reappearing of malignant tumors after extirpation.

Dr. Ross’ findings throw an interesting light on the relationship between cancer and meat eating. Is it not self-evident that in a digestive tract filled most of the time with large masses of partially digested and decaying animal food enormous quantities of alkaloids of putrefaction are created? These are absorbed into the circulation, attracted to any point where exists some form of local irritation and then stimulate the cells in that locality to abnormal proliferation.

“But,” it will be said, “meat eating alone does not account for cancer, because vegetarians also succumb to the disease.” This is true. Alkaloids of putrefaction are constantly produced in every animal and human body. They form in the excretions of living cells and in the decaying protoplasm of dead cells, and if the organs of elimination do not function properly, these morbid materials will accumulate in the system.

Furthermore, the Diagnosis from the Eye furnishes positive proof that Hahnemann’s theory of psora is based on truth. I quote from my article in the Nature Cure Magazine August, 1909:

“For a hundred years, Hahnemann’s theory of psora has been scouted and ridiculed by the allopathic schools and even among homeopaths only a few have accepted it. Now we are confronted by the remarkable fact that, at this late day, the Diagnosis from the Eye confirms the observations and speculations of the great genius of homeopathy.

“After suppression of itchy eruptions, lice, crab lice, etc., spots ranging in color from light brown to dark red appear in different places in the iris of the eye. These ‘itch spots’ indicate the organs and localities of the body in which the suppressed disease taints have concentrated.

“Such suppressions represent not only the scrofulous taints which Nature was trying to eliminate by means of eruptions and parasites, but, in addition to these, the poisons contained in the bodies of the parasites and the drug poisons which were used to suppress or kill them.

“It has been found that the bodies of the itch parasites (~Sarcoptes scabici ~) contain an exceedingly poisonous substance which the homeopaths call ‘psorinum’. When these minute animals burrowing in and under the skin are killed by poisonous drugs and antiseptics, the morbid taints in their bodies are absorbed by the system and added to the psoriatic poisons which Nature has been trying to eliminate.

“Thus, after suppression of itchy eruptions or parasites, the organism is encumbered with three poisons instead of one: (1) the hereditary or acquired scrofulous and psoriatic taints which the cells of the body were throwing off into the blood stream and which the blood was feeding to the parasites on the surface, (2) the morbid substance contained in the bodies of the parasites, (3) the drug poisons used as suppressants. (Such poisons may lie latent in the system for many years before they become active and, in combination with other disease taints and with food and drug poisons, create the different forms of chronic destructive diseases.)

“These facts explain why the itch spots in different areas of the iris of the eye so frequently indicate serious chronic, destructive disease conditions in the parts and organs of the body corresponding to these areas, why; for instance, in asthma and tuberculosis we often find itch spots in the region representing the lungs or why in cancer of the liver or of the stomach itch spots show in the area of stomach or liver.

“That the itch or psoriatic taint is actually at the bottom of the cancerous diathesis is attested by the fact that all cancer patients whom we have treated and cured, with two exceptions (whose healing crisis took the form of furunculosis), broke out with the itch at one time or another during the natural treatment. In most of these cases the bodies of the patients were inflamed with fiery eruptions for days or even weeks at a time.

“Nature Cure allows these healing crises to run their course unhindered and unchecked; in fact, we encourage them by air and sun baths, cold-water treatment and homeopathic remedies.”

What has been said verifies my claim that benign and malignant tumors can be cured only by thorough purifying the system of all morbid and poisonous taints and by building up the blood to a normal basis, that is, by providing it with the proper elements of nutrition, especially with the all-important organic salts.

That this