All tumour production is an evidence, in Mr. Greene’s phrase, of “instability of tissue,” and therefore all remedies which have an action on tissue-formation may act as remedies in cancer. The problem is to find the remedy or remedies particularly indicated for each case.
But although there is no clear dividing line between tumours that are malignant and those that are innocent, there are certain broad features in the characterisation of cancers that are pretty definitely ascertained. That cancer is in a low degree and in a very slow way infectious, I have not any doubt. That the infective principle exists in the growth itself and in the discharge from the growth, is proved by the power of the Homoeopathic nosodes prepared from these; by the infectivity of the growth in the patient himself-infecting glands and surrounding tissues; by the experimental test of the transference of cancer from one animal to another of the same species including the human being.
Other evidences of the transmissibility of cancer are -the occurrence in married couples with a frequency greater than the law of coincidence would account for; and the existence of “cancer houses.”
An instance of this came under my notice many years ago. It occurred in a palatial house in London, owned and occupied by a well-known baronet. When the family were absent from town, the house was left in the charge of a caretaker, an old army man nd his wife. This man was taken ill in the house, and died of cancer of the stomach. Not long after, his wife died (not in this house) of the same disease. Some years later the baronet was taken ill, and died after two years’ illness,. of cancer. A years or so after this his wife died of the same disease, and their eldest son, the next baronet, followed his parents.
But cancer is a complex disease, and the formation of the tumour may be regarded as the final chapter of a series. Heredity plays an important part; contagion plays a, perhaps, sometimes less important p[art; and other factors sometimes play an all-important part quite independently, as it seems, of the other two. Blood-poisoning of many kinds may be the determining factor in the causation of cancer. I have seen cancer develop in two cases apparently as a result of blood poisoning from drains, in some of the insanitary places abroad. One was in an elderly lady, who developed a severe sore throat, not diphtheritic, but of the ordinary drain-throat type. When she returned from abroad the acute symptoms had passed away, but she was far from well, and malignant disease of the throat developed. The other case was in a young lady, who had a large uterine fibroid, but was otherwise in good health, when she was exposed to insanitary conditions in a hotel she was staying at abroad. She become unwell in an indefinite sort of way, and soon after noticed pain in her right breast, where a lump had formed.
The late Dr. R.T. Cooper was the first to point out this connection between ordinary blood-poisoning and cancer, so far as I am aware; and it was he who insisted that cancer was a disease much more easily acted on b remedies than many other less formidable maladies. the reason of this is that cancer is more prone to break down than many other diseases, and in this way its elements are, so to speak, more soluble and more easily open to attack by the “phagocytes “-the active cells which “eat up” morbid elements and carry them away in the ordinary channels of exertion.
Before leaving the subject of the nature of cancer I may mention the fact, which has been noted by many observers, that there is a pre-cancerous stage in most cancer cases which may be detected and cured if the origin is discovered in time.
Cases of intractible rheumatic pains, of indigestion which will yield to none of the ordinary indicated remedies, chronic headaches, and neuralgia.
An instance in which rheumatism was apparently changed into cancer by a heavy dose of Salicylate of Soda is given in the preface of my book on Rheumatism.
“Patients whose parents or relatives have died of cancer often have rheumatism in some form or other. If this state is properly treated by specific remedies, the tendency may be cured; if it is not properly treated, the chances are that cancer will sooner or later develop.
“One definite case of this has come under my observation. A married lady of cancerous family history was a great sufferer from rheumatism. On one occasion the pain settled in the right hip, and the doctor in attendance, an allopath, prescribed a massive dose of Salicylate if Soda which almost immediately removed the pain, and it never returned. But very soon something else appeared in the shape of a lump on the anterior border of the axilla involving the great pectoral muscle. this was cancer. The rheumatism in this lady’s case was in reality a pre-tumour stage of cancer, and might have been treated as such. The sudden arresting of the rheumatic expression of this constitutional state rapidly determined the tumour formation.”
A somewhat analogous case may be mentioned here. An unmarried lady had for years suffered from low vitality: cold hands and cold and clammy feet, and somewhat indefinite rheumatic pains in various parts of the body. Among other symptoms were, at times, great depression of spirits and a fear that she would go out of her mind. (Her father, it may be mentioned, had committed suicide.) At the age when the change of life was approaching there appeared in the right breast a nodule of scirrhus cancer; with the appearance of this, all the other symptoms improved.
Thus it not seldom happens that in the formation of the tumour the pre-cancerous symptoms clear up; and herein lies some justification for the recourse to surgery. A cancerous tumour is stored-up disease. But if the mass is excised without any attempt being made to correct the constitutional state which has led to the formation, the chances of recurrence are very great, and the actual condition is made worse instead of better.
That cancer is a disease easily cured by medicine I should be sorry to assert, but that it is easily influenced by them is most certain. In a very large number of cases it has been actually cured; in many other sit has been arrested when already developed, and prevented when taken in the formative stage. There are many remedies which have proved efficacious in the cure of cancer, and some of them I shall mention in the course of this work. But first of all I will speak of the action of nosodes.
In the old school, Dr. Colley of the United Stages has used a fluid derived from microbial cultures, and Dr. Doyen of Paris has attacked the disease by means of a nosode. or preparation derived from the disease itself. They have met with some success. The cancer nosodes of the homoeopaths are chiefly Scirrhinum, Carcinosinum, Durum, Mamillinum, Epitheliominum, Sarcominum. The first four are variants of the same nosode. Carcinosinum, Durum, Mamillinum are preparations of Dr. Burnett’s and were named by him.
It must not be imagined that the nosodes of cancer are specifics for the cure of any and every case. There are more ways than one of curing cancer, but there is no one way which is suitable for all cases. Of all the remedies for cancer, in my experience, the nosodes form the most important class, and the use of them ought to be more familiar than it is to homoeopaths themselves.
