DR. W. E. JACKSON (Closing): Mrs. McP-, will you please step forward? I definitely left the prescribing of this case until now, for a very good purpose. I had a specific reason. I could have written your questions, asking whether the patient had cancer or whether she had recovered from cancer. I could not have done it four or five years ago, but I could now because I have heard those questions so many times since then.
Will you please expose the thigh, Mrs. McP-? Gentlemen, this is the area on the thigh. The scar has shrunken a good deal. My thumb is at the other end of that scar. I know Mrs. McP will not object to your coming up and feeling of that scar if you wish to.
Thank you very much, Mrs. McP.
Now, then, we come to the questions. I will grant the fact that the abdominal masses may or may not have been malignant. Frankly, I dont know whether they were. The abdomen was not opened, therefore no biopsy was done, but it would be logical to assume that they were malignant. From my standpoint it would have been very foolish to have subjected this patient to surgical procedure. That would have pulled her down physically for the sake of doing a biopsy of the abdominal mass, when a biopsy already had been done on the mass in the thigh.
Regarding metastasis, I do not agree with the discusser. I dont think there is such a thing as a metastasis. That is a radical statement, I know. I believe that the cause which produces it in the original site eventually, if nothing is done, will cause it to develop in other sites, not through metastasis but through the original causative factor. I know that statement is not agreed to by everyone, and I know most of you dont agree with it. It is not a question of whether you believe it or not I do believe it.
In regard to the ample excising of the original mass, there are comparatively few times that the patient does not have a return of the trouble, particularly in a melanosarcoma. Some types of carcinoma can be apparently cured, and I underline the word “apparently,” giving the patient years and years of relief and apparent cure by excising the mass and, as they say, “getting all the roots”; but when they do that they may have done something to the physical condition of the patient so that it is raised to the point where the cause disappears and does not return, and not because they had gotten all of it. No matter how much of it one gets, in my opinion, if the cause exists it will reveal itself.
Furthermore, in this patient a small nodule was removed in 1940. No biopsy was taken. In 1944 it began to return, and by 1945 it was quite large and caused a lot of disturbance, mentally and otherwise, and therefore it was removed again. It was definitely a melanosarcoma.
If this patient had had x-ray or radium treatment there would have been no question but that those abdominal masses had been melanosarcoma. If they disappeared, sure, they were cancer, regardless. But the fact that I can do it, or that you can do it, or that someone else can do it with a homoeopathic remedy “Well, you cant say it was cancer, because you dont know.” It depends upon whose horse looks over whose tense as to who has to go to jail and pay the penalty.
Concerning the prognosis: Yes, I frankly admit it is poor business to say that a patient will or will not live for a certain length of time. In a case of melanosarcoma six months is considered conservative. In other words, they say, “There is no chance; you might as well tell him and let him live as happily as he can.” Of course he doesnt live happily; he dies very unhappily.
I agree positively that the application of x-ray and radium creates a hindrance. The patient in the first case under this heading had had x-ray and radium treatment and kept getting worse, until I was sure she would not live as many as seven days when I took her case. I told her family to bring her back in seven days, but I didnt expect to see her again; I thought sure she would be dead. However, she recovered, and a year and a half later I read a paper on her case. She was at the meeting held up north.
At the time I read that paper on case No. 1, I stated that the patient had had x-ray and radium. I was asked, “Did you ever have a case that did not have x-ray and / or radium treatment and the patient got well?” Now I have such a case, and they will say, “Oh well, it wasnt cancer to begin with.” It doesnt matter whether you do or dont youre damned either way.
Concerning cause and effect: Yes, I think there are more people who die of x-ray and radium burns and destruction of tissue by those methods than ever died of cancer. If you do not find the cause, no matter what the therapy is, your patient is not going to get well, and will not recover.
How can this be presented? Doctor, I frankly admit that it was a poor way to present this paper, but I did it purposely. I have tried in every conceivable way that I know of to try to present these cases so that people will even discuss them. Thank goodness, you did today. Usually they are passed off with no discussion, as just a figment of my imagination.
Surely there are ways and means and symptomatology on which to prescribe things. Do you wish to stay here all afternoon and listen to it? No; and I wouldnt want to stay here and subject you to it.
Constipation in this patient? Why havent I cured her constipation? I dont want to cure the constipation I want to cure the patient. The constipation is only one of the symptoms, and until the patient is completely well she cannot be considered completely well.
As I stated before, it is a mental and nervous condition, and it is up to me or to someone else who is better versed than I am, to remove that mental inhibition. Our subconscious is so deeply imbedded that we cannot over come it. Possibly it is my fault, possibly partly the patients fault. I am still trying to find out. Someday, when I do get that straightened out, she is going to straighten out like that!.
Why do I know that? I know it because her constipation has completely cleared for two or three days or a week at a time, and has then returned, as bad as or worse than before, and then has cleared up again. I know that when she has no constipation her mental attitude is completely normal, or what we consider normal.
One reason why I wrote this paper and insisted on the patient being present was because I wanted to take this means of helping her and trying to relieve some of her inhibitions.
Spontaneous recovery? Yes, there have been quite a number of spontaneous recoveries from cancer. When the patient got better physically, the causative factors disappeared and the cancer disappeared. It reversed in order.
[The patients bowels resumed normal function on July 11, 1950 and have remained normal-Ed.].
