Secondary manifestations occur after removal by rays of all kinds, just as they do after surgical removal. In other words, these methods do not counter, or enable the system to counter, the underlying cause of the disease.
So far as Radium is concerned I ascertained this fact, at first hand, from Doctors Wickham and Degrai, when I visited Paris many years ago, and a pilgrimage to the Radium Institute, which I made specially a few days ago to confirm this point, shows that the same thing holds still. Therefore, do not let us fall into the fatal error of thinking the removal of the growth alone is the removal of the disease. So long as we do so, so long will the results of treatment remain barren so far as complete cure is concerned. If, on the other hand, we treat the disease by stimulating the recuperative forces of the system to eradicate the “specific element” first of all, the outlook will be very different, and if we need further help in this we have Dr. Bach’s assurance that countering by the effects of noxious intestinal bacteria materially assists in this direction. For this purpose Dr. Bach, whose instinctive perceptions reach so far beyond those of the ordinary worker in his particular field, has been using homoeopathic attentions of bacterial toxins in place of the more crude vaccines.
After this, while this is being continued, we can resort, if necessary, to Dr. Berry’s astonishingly effective method of removing any remaining tissue, and if our constitutional measures are continued persistently and assiduously for some time after this, we shall be justified in resting assured that, in a very large percentage of cases, the disease will be entirely eradicated.
Here, then, we have a threefold attack. First, Homoeopathy as it is ordinarily understood. Second, antibacterial therapy which is Homoeopathy in another form, and lastly, Rays on this new principle, which, seeing that they can cause epitheliomatous tissue to develop, represent a special form of Homoeopathy of their own.
Surely with such weapons as these, perfected as they undoubtedly will be as time goes on, who can doubt that the dawn of a new hope is breaking, and that the dread could, which has cast a despairing gloom over humanity in the past, will soon be dispersed, to remain for all time no more than the memory of a ghastly nightmare. DISCUSSION.
Dr. CLARKE said if the International Congress has done nothing besides producing Dr. Cooper’s paper it would not have existed in vain. (Applause.) He did not think that the whole area of treatment of cancer homoeopathically or otherwise had been put so systematically before. In Dr. Cooper’s paper they would find the means of approaching any kind of case.
Dr. PATRICK said he envied Dr. Cooper his remarkable series of successes in cases of cancer. There were one or two questions which he would like to ask Dr. Cooper. Firstly, with regard to the special preparation of the medicines which Dr. Cooper had indicated, was that an essential point in the therapeutics? Were the belladonna and the other remedies which Dr. Cooper used (an d which, he took it, Dr. Cooper’s father had originally employed) different from the ordinary tinctures which one obtained from Nelson’s and other chemists? Was their action different?
Dr. COOPER said they were not different. One could obtain the same result from the ordinary tinctures made in the ordinary way; but he did think that the tinctures which his father had used seemed to gave a great power. His father had an idea- and he personally thought it was quite possible-that making the tincture from the actual growing plant and exposing it to the action of the sun did increase its value. He could not say so absolutely, but he had noticed that sometimes a so-called Arborivital tincture would act when an ordinary one would not. In the case of mentha pulegium that was not an arborivital.
Dr. PATRICK said the next question he wanted to ask was whether the selection of the remedy in those cases which Dr. Cooper had shown had been entirely made on the situation of the growth, or had the patient had any other indications from the ordinary therapeutic standpoint for the particular remedy chosen?
Dr. COOPER replied that one could get other indications for any particular remedy. It was an additional help. The specificity of site was a very useful indication, and it came in when one was at one’s wits end to find the actual cause of the malady or other specific indication for treatment.
Dr. WYNNE THOMAS said there was one thing which he took exception to in Dr. Cooper’s paper, and that was the opinion expressed as to removal of early cancer. Dr. Cooper said that that was not necessary. All practitioners knew of cases which had been operated upon; the cancer had gone, and the patients had lived for years afterwards. Even in immediately treated cases surgeons had removed cancer and the patients had lived for forty years afterwards. Even in immediately treated cases surgeons had removed cancer and the patient had been removed, why did it not come again? Dr. Cooper advised non-removal in early cases of rapidly growing cancer. Dr. Wynne Thomas had a case some years ago where a woman had come with a swelling in her breast, and he removed, it the next day. The pathological report on the case showed a very malignant condition-one of the most rapidly growing cases of carcinoma of the breast. The woman had had no return whatever for twelve years, and then she had had some bleeding from the rectum. He had not been able to detect any swelling there, and had suspected a recurrence. He had sent her to London, but no one their found anything at all. She had been examined by the sigmoidoscope, and unfortunately during the examination the sigmoidoscope had penetrated the bowel and the woman died from peritonitis. There was not the slightest trace of any carcinoma.
Dr. CLARKE inquired whether the patient had had any homoeopathic treatment either before or after the operation?
Dr. WYNNE THOMAS replied that he had treated her for some time homoeopathically.
Dr. COOPER said the regard to the non-recurrence of growths which occured in allopathic practice, there were decidedly rare cases in which the removal of a growth would not be attended with any recurrence in the future, but those were really exceptions, and he did not think they proved the rule that the removal of tumours was the best possible method of dealing with cases when treating them constitutionally. If some possible specific action was going on for the benefit of the tumour in the system, was it not possible that that action might have been sufficiently completed before the removal of the tumour took place in those particular cases? In the case Dr. Wynne Thomas had mentioned the rapidly growing tumour had been removed at once, but immediately afterwards Dr. Wynne Thomas had given homoeopathic remedies. He did not think one could argue from that as to the advisability of operation in those acute cases. If it was very rapidly growing, and it seemed in a dangerous condition, possibly it was better to remove it then than to wait, because it might then have been far advanced. If it was very far advanced, and there was danger of immediate infiltration of the surrounding tissues, then possibly it might be an advantage to remove it; but the majority of cases were not quite so advanced as that. One ought to give the patient’s recuperative powers a chance of doing something before removal. When one did that one might find those recuperative powers removed the growth itself.
Dr. BURFORD thanked Dr. Cooper for his elaborate dissertation. He suggested that members should follow the plan which he himself had adopted after the last occasion on which Dr. Cooper had read another epoch-making paper. Personally he had that paper by him in his consulting room. It was ear-marked, dog-eared, and much be-pencilled; and the various successes which he had obtained had been wholly and solely due to the inspiration he had received from that former paper of Dr. Cooper’s. Something had been said about the all-important question of when to operate, if to operate at all. Their hands were forced, and were likely to be forced for all time in the direction of operation, until they could devise a method as spectacular in its immediate results and as obvious in its immediate benefits as removal by the knife.
As soon as homoeopathy could produce a method which would cure cancer within three weeks there would be no question would solve itself. The difficulty, however, was and always would be that there would be a definite embargo on the homoeopathic methods could be speeded up. He did not see any reason why they should not, and why results which now took three or four years to come about should not be realized within three or four weeks. It was no good homoeopathists bothering themselves by asking the question, “Is this case to be operated on or not?” until they gave their patients some assurance that some immediate relief-at any rate a visible alteration-would be brought about in the course of three or four weeks by medicinal measures. He knew of no other medical society in the world which could produce such an attendance as that present when such a subject was being discussed. To the medical mind the medical treatment of cancer had a hopelessly foregone conclusion: it could not be done and there was nothing in it. Three or four years ago he had sent round a questionnaire to all his colleagues in Great Britain which contained three question, one of which was: “In what percentage of cases do you employ homoeopathic treatment?” To his surprise and disgust the answer had been that in 60 per cent. of cases there was no treatment but knife. That was the homoeopathic settled conviction in 60 percent. of cases largely founded on personal experience. What personal experience? The experience that there was nothing so striking, so spectacular, to the public eye as the procedure of surgery.
