At the beginning, colon-douching is advisable to clear away impacted filth, and may subsequently be used occasionally if considered desirable. Needless to remark purgatives are to be shunned as they do not effect complete evacuations and are habit-forming and poisonous.
In cancer cases it will be invariably found that congestion exists not only in the colon but also in the other three organs of elimination, the kidneys, skin, and lungs, and these should be cleaned out and brought to their optimum efficiency. The only way to stimulate the kidneys, is the very simple one of drinking plenty of water. A day might be set apart for hydropathic measures and a very large quantity of water can be taken during the course of it. As regards the skin, hot and cold baths will excite its activity; and where nothing else contra- indicates, Turkish baths will be of great value.
If there is a history of suppressed skin disease particular attention should be paid to establishing the skin as an efficient eliminating organ for it has been observed that cancer has disappeared when erysipelas, a violent skin affection, intercured and voided out the body poisons. The lungs can best be helped by bodily exercise if the patient is able to move about.
Walking, mountaineering and mild physical culture are excellent methods of increasing vitality and detoxicating the system. A few hours activity in the open air before breakfast is suggested. On the question of more strenuous exercise advice should be sought, as in certain internal tumours violent movements might be harmful.
Diet is by far the most important factor for strengthening the resistance of the body and obtaining control over the rebellious cells. Many people advise prolonged avoidance from food and a subsequent semi-starvation diet; but it is generally agreed that fasting has no great effect on the ultimate outcome of the disease and might be dangerous in its weakening effects. The only cases where a short fast should be prescribed are those plethoric and full blooded individuals in whom reduction of body weight is necessary for the success of treatment.
In an anti-malignancy diet, meat and meat extracts, fish, fowl, white bread, white sugar, coffee, condiments and alcohol are totally prohibited. A diet of fruits, nuts, vegetables, milk, wholemeal bread, bran and natural foods must be adopted. I may mention that tomatoes and grapes are rumoured to be of particular value, and large quantities of these can figure in the menu. Such a diet will keep the alimentary tube in a wholesome condition and will bring to the starved tissues a big amount of vitamins and mineral elements.
Whilst it is impossible to connect the disease with deficiency of any particular substance in the food, there is evidence to show that there is an obscure relation between it and prolonged insufficiency of the water soluble vitamin B and the other vitamin agents found in association with in nature.
At any rate in the dietary of civilization, the cause of the disease, that particular agent appears to be suffering most in the crowding out. Yeast, especially brewers yeast, which is an extremely rich source of it, can be used with advantage by cancer patients and has given good results.
When this treatment is in progress, homoeopathic medicines can be employed with immense advantage. In the pharmacopoeia of Homoeopathy there are many valuable drugs which under favourable circumstances may devastate a tumour. Phytolacca and Conium have been valuable in breast cancer, Ruta in rectal growths. Lycopodium and Ornithogalum have each destroyed stomach cancer, Kali carbonicum dispelled an uterine one, Phosphorus, an epithelioma of the tongue.
Thuja and Gelsemium, Phosphorus and Symphytum have been successful in cases of sarcoma, which is a malignancy arising from connective tissue structures and is almost invariably fatal. Then there are the cancer nosodes, viz. Carcinosinum, Epitheliominum, Scirrhinum, etc., which in highly dynamized form have merited a high place in the therapeutics of the disease. None of these drugs, however, are specific.
Each one demands a certain symptom totality before it can act in accordance with the law of similars and the homoeopathic manuals of Clarke or Boericke or any other authority will reveal an extensive list of drugs with the particular cancer conditions in which they appear to act effectively. When the right remedy is found it will stimulate like an electric current the vital reactions of the body to throw off the disease. It is useful to note that Hydrastis internally, or externally in the form of the mother tincture, as a lotion or a gargle is valuable as a routine measure and where no other drug is particularly indicated.
It is almost a matter for tears when one considers the amount of money which is likely to be spent in this country in insane researches for poisonous “specifics”, new types of mutilation and deadlier rays, whilst disease and death are overtaking increasing numbers of people in the prime of their lives. Half of it could establish sanitaria where the above treatment could be carried out and half could be usefully spent in preventive measures to render much of the expense under the first-half unnecessary.
If such treatment were in general practice one good result would be that sufferers would come forward earlier as the crazy fear regarding the disease — fear of the operating table and its tragic sequels– would disappear. For those who would not recover the treatment presents a comparative euthanasia. I am afraid, however, that it will be a long time before these ideas on cancer will be accepted here, as the forces of orthodoxy are strongly entrenched. For the area of the Irish Free State there is but one homoeopathic doctor, one nature cure practitioner, and a small number of doubtful herbalists.
In England and in other places, I am glad to know that orthodox medicine is being slowly forced to the wall. Journals like “HEAL THYSELF” and various health and nature cure magazines together with the numbers of unregistered medical men in practice are doing excellent work in teaching people how to keep healthy and to be immune from the dread scourge. In this connection I may say that there is no one living who has done more in the fight against cancer than the Editor, Mr. Ellis Barker.
I have already mentioned his two Cancer volumes (now in cheap editions) and to all who may be interested further in the problem, I heartily commend them to be read and studied. In comprehensiveness of detail and survey, and in clarity of thought and expression, they are unexcelled, and I venture to think they will remain so. They must have saved great numbers of people from an agonising death and greater numbers still from the torturings of doubts rooted in ignorance.
