AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE LONDON
HOMOEOPATHIC HOSPITAL.
On Oct. 9th an open meeting of the Homoeopathic Cancer Commission was held at the London Homoeopathic Hospital. Sir William Willcox, the eminent pathologist and adviser to the Home Office, was in the Chair, and the meeting was graced by the presence of Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane and other distinguished people. Doctors had come from all parts of England and from SCotland to attend the meeting, at which Dr. George Burford delivered the address printed below.
He described in full detail a recent cancer cure of his, which is all the more noteworthy as Dr. Burford is a surgeon. HOmoeopathy has to its credit numerous cancer cures, many of which have been described in my books, Miracles of Healing and How they are Done and New Lives for Old – How to Cure the Incurable (John Murray).
I hope that the wonderful results described by the lecturer will stimulate many readers of this journal to send substantial contributions to the Homoeopathic Cancer Commission or to the Secretary of the Homoeopathic Hospital in Great Ormond Street, plainly marked “Cancer Commission.”
EDITOR, “HEAL THYSELF.”.
WE meet to-day as an outward and visible sign of intellectual protest against the stilted view that regards malignancy as outside the range of legitimate therapeutics. Au contraire, we would predicate that it is in the fine adjustment of remedy to malady that is contained the final deliverance of the human race from the thraldom of malignancy.
Thus, as Mr. Searle Baker, one of the members of this Commission, puts it, “It is not an unreasonable postulate that a factor exists to inhabit the tendency of living cells to reproduce themselves indefinitely. In the case of malignant growth, this inhibitory factor appears to be a substance seated locally outside the blood stream and discharged into the lymph.”.
A peerage and Westminister Abbey-to slightly vary Lord Nelsons memorable phrase-await the genius who brings cancer under a therapeutic control similar to that initiated by Pasteur and Koch for tubercle, and by Lister for surgical sepsis.
Is not the effort daily made to bring about this denoucement? One of the brilliant research workers of the age- Sir John Bland Sutton-once said that enough brains and money had been expended in cancer research to float and equip a whole fleet of Dread- noughts.
But to uplift us from such an atmosphere of unadulterated pessimism, we have the encouragement of Huxley, that a new scientific truth passes through three stages:- The first: “that it is obviously and inherently ridiculous and absurd”;.
The second: “that none of the recognized and trusted authorities regard it as true”;.
And finally: “everybody knew that long ago.”.
In the present-day institutions of light and leading there have laboured enthusiasts who have scorned delights and lived laborious days in the endeavour to find the cause of cancer (microbic, biologic, traumatic); the remedy for cancer (medical, chemical, or surgical); the effective prophylaxis against cancer (dietetic, the nomadic open-air life, the abandonment of existence in great aggregations).
All to what end? The two most fashionable remedial measures of the day are surgery and radium, and such is public opinion that probably every one, or nearly every one, who has died of cancer in this country during the present year has been previously surgically operated on, or has had radium or X-rays instituted as part of the treatment.
But Sir George Newman and the Registrar – General tell us with deadly iteration of the annually increasing cancer mortality: figures that have steadily mounted for the last half century. The deaths from malignant disease in the British Isles amounted last year to no fewer than 60,000. What kind of a remedial screen against cancer is this we possess that will let 60,000 lives in one year escape through its meshes?.
Is this the best that the resources of the twentieth century can do against the most deadly malady of the time-the best that aseptic surgery and radium and rays of sorts, and chemicals from the Arsenic of the ancient Egyptians to the Lead of the modern Lancastrians can do? May not methods such as have brought tubercle and malaria and hospital gangrene into subjection-may not methods of this kind, etherialized and sublimated, rid civilization of its present incubus? Let us see.
On June 21st in the current year, I was consulted concerning a lady who has been for six weeks in one of the larger hospitals of London, a hospital to which a medical school is attached. The clinical history up to that date was that three months preceding she had consulted a local physician concerning a recent and unexpected uterine haemorrhage.
This physician, evidently alarmed at the patients condition, advised an immediate visit to Harley Street, the upshot of which was reception forthwith into the private department of one of the larger London hospitals to which I have alluded. A pelvic operation was carried through, followed by two internal radium packs.
Here the patient remained under active treatment for six weeks: the issue being that the friends were finally informed that the malady had proved to be hopeless-that he resources of medical art and science had been exhausted in the endeavour to cure the patient but to no avail; that the expectation of life for her was about three months, and the friends were desired to remove her home with no unnecessary delay.
In this dilemma, home and hospital alike proving devoid of succour, the relatives came to me and stated their quandary; I absolutely declined to make any promises whatever, pointing out that the institution and the specialist already engaged were of the highest order, and finally consented to take her into this institution as, possibly, the very present help in time of trouble they were seeking.
The patient was transferred the same evening, the friends stating they scarcely expected her to bear the stress of the journey. She was in no condition to bear the detailed physical examination, nor did the status praesens require it; the thing was sufficiently obvious.
The next day the abdomen was found somewhat tumid and uniformly sensitive to touch. There was no liver enlargement nor any detectable thoracic involvement. But P.V. and P.R. the pelvis showed the uterus about the size of a two mouths pregnancy, drawn to the R. and fixed in cervix, and a blood-stained discharge staining the examining finger.
And now commenced the battles between the pelvic cancerous mass- with some peripheral extension into the abdomen on the one hand; and the corporate resistance amplified and concentrated by the fine adjustment of carefully chosen remedies to that end. The specific treatment throughout was of the character known as homoeopathic and coming under two categories: constitutional and symptomatic.
On the first day a single dose of Thuja 1m.
On the second day a single dose of Thuja 10 m.
On the third day a single dose of Thuja 50 m.
On the tenth day a single dose of Radium 10m.
Hydrastis tincture and Arsenicum 30 followed on successive weeks.
So much for the control of the cancerous toxaemia.
The symptomatic stresses were relieved as follows:-
For sleeplessness, she has been accustomed to receive Heroin 1/6 gr. each evening. I yielded to her entreaties the first night, she being newly brought from elsewhere. But this remedy was not repeated: other medicines such Belladonna or Gelsemium or Ignatia were given one or other each night for a week and found perfectly effective.
On the third week a monthly period started and to control its disturbance Pulsatilla was prescribed. The convalescence pursued an equable course day by day after the second week.
This practically summarizes the therapeutics of the convalescent period while in hospital. The convalescent history while in hospital covered some three or four weeks.
When the patient left hospital the pelvic cavity was still of irregular outline, somewhat nodulated, and the uterus fixed to the pelvic wall behind. It was evident that absorption had gone on during residence in hospital, and it was probable that further diminution in tissue bulk would continue.
The patient came into hospital on June 21st of the present year and returned home on July 18th, practically a four weeks residence. This [showing a picture of a lady of abounding health] is her outward and visible semblance on the day she left. The continued supervision of her convalescence has been carried on at the patients residence near Beckenham by Dr. Harold Wynne Thomas, who will report to us later.
But before Dr. Thomas picks up the threads of this historical recovery for us, there are a few points still which will serve to point the moral and adorn the tale. The history of the convalescence abounds with anomalies.
ANOMALIES.
1. Doubtless to most of you the most profound and inexplicable anomaly will be the apparent control and elimination of malignancy by remedies of any sort – homoeopathic or other.
My immediate response is that it is a further instance of what can be done by the fine adjustment of remedy to malady-when the adjustment is fine. Nor is the occasion by any means isolated. A twelve month ago there were given in this room other instances where post hoc was evidently propter hoc as regards curative result and remedial administration in cases of malignant growth.
