Cancers

the hygienic system orthopathy chapter 23

Books on cancer are largely repetitions of other books on cancer. There is much iteration but small addition. They travel in circles and make no progress. Ours is a new approach to the problems presented by cancer.

Definition: Cancer is defined as a malignant tumor. There are two general varieties as follow

Carcinoma, or epithelioma, is cancer of the epithelial tissues, or a special form of hyperplasia of the epithelial tissue.

Sarcoma is cancer of the connective tissue.
Several forms of both are described but for all practical purposes these distinctions may be ignored. Indeed carcinoma and sarcoma are probably both due to the same causes acting on different tissues.

They are regarded chiefly as "diseases" of middle life and old age. They are seldom found in children and young people and there must be a good sound reason for this.
Symptoms To Expect
It is probably correct to say that children do not suffer from cancer for the reason that their habits have not had time to produce it. A few cases do develop in children, who must be predisposed to its development, and the number who develop the "disease" increases as age increases, clime, no doubt, to the fact that the causes which produce the "disease" continue to accumulate and grow in power as age advances. The causes operating to produce cancer take time to act and it is for this reason that cancer becomes more common as age increases.
In childhood and early life, irritation in the body is accompanied by intolerance. The young organism vigorously resists the causes of irritation and throws them off. This gives rise to the fevers, inflammations, sudden and fierce, and frequently of short duration, so characteristic of childhood.
As age advances and the tissues harden they cease to offer such violent resistance to irritation, but tolerate it, so that the "diseases" of middle life and beyond are not so fierce as in childhood and youth. The ever increasing cause begins to weigh down and depress the powers of the body. The ordinary powers of resistance to toxins and irritants and the usual means of disposing of surplus food are impaired and the body is forced to defend itself and dispose of its surplus food by some more or less unusual means. New growths of all kinds are composed of cells and in order to grow it is necessary that more food material be brought to them than is necessary for the sustenance of the normal tissue of the part. Long continued local over-irritation due to irritation or circulatory obstruction would seem to be necessary for the immediate production, of a neoplasm.

Cancer cells manifest marked resistance to toxic factors to which normal cells offer but slight resistance. This is especially seen in their resistance to the toxic factors active in the homiotransplantation of cancer, to which normal cells succumb. Does it not seem more than probable, then, that the changes which occur in normal, cells, when these are transformed into cancer cells are efforts at adaptation?

Cancer cells, like tumor cells, were originally ordinary cells which have assumed or have had forced upon them, increased intensity of proliferation and often an increased ameba-like activity. There is only a gradual transformation of normal into cancerous cells. Cancerous tissues retain the characteristics of the tissues in which (or out of which) they develop. There is no line of demarkation between normal tissue and cancerous tissue the two are really one.
Cancer cells do not grow more rapidly than do normal regenerating cells, but continue to grow long after the normal regenerating cells will have returned to the equilibrium of normal tissue. During this process the cells, step by step, assume characteristics which are very similar to those possessed by regenerating cells, but these characteristics are even more accentuated in the cancer cells and, instead of returning, after a time to the equilibrium of nominal cells, they tend to retain these accentuated characteristics as fixed possessions.

Symptoms: There are three diagnostic symptoms of cancer. These are induration, pain and cachexia. Tilden says: "Without cachexia cancer has not yet evolved. Between induration (a tumorous hardening), pain, and cachexia there is a diagnostic no man's land."
Any hardening of tissue belongs to the cancer family. All that is needed to push it into a state of cancer is to increase the toxemic condition of the blood to the point of disintegration of such tissue.

Etiology: Cancer is a problem of general biological importance, for both tumors and cancers occur among both plants and animals. The fact that cancer occurs in many animals, mammals, birds, fishes, etc., is enough to refute, the theory that its occurrence is essentially connected with civilization. When we see cancer of one location more common in one people than in another we account for it by the differences in their modes of living. But its presence in practically all peoples proves that the basic cause is not any particular habit or practice.
Much of our perplexity with regard to cancer grows out of our failure to see things whole and in proper proportion. Cancer is not some spontaneous horror suddenly sprung upon us without any provocation on our own part. It is the last gesture in a long chain of toxemic crises, none of which are specific in beginning nor in ending. A cold is the Alpha in a chain of pathological developments of which cancer is the Omega.
In Vol. VI of this series we traced the evolution of cancer through the following more or less well-defined stages: irritation, inflammation, induration, ulceration and fungation, which is cancer. Dr. Claunch traces it through five similar stages as follow: inflammation, hypertrophy, hyperplasia, atrophy and malignancy, which is cancer.
It is well to understand that these stages are not sharply defined and demarkated, but shade gradually into each other. Stages three and four in each of these classifications correspond to "pre-cancer," while stage five in each of them includes both "early cancer" and cancer. Both Dr. Claunch and I have made it clear that cancer has its beginning with the first departure from the ideal health standard, that it is an end-point in a chain of causes and effects, each stage of which is built upon and grows out of the preceding one and each stage of which prepares for the next. There is an unbroken continuity from the first departure from health to the final ending in death from advanced cancer.
We hear on all sides that the cause of cancer is unknown and this allows us to ignore the obvious fact that every influence that impairs the general health contributes to the production of cancer. Cancer should be traced back to its ultimate beginnings in those early departures from high health which are so obviously due to our indiscretions in eating and living in general. Cancer is preceded by early cancer; early cancer by pre-cancer; and pre-cancer is preceded by years of pathogenic factors and pathological developments.
Failure to recognize the continuity and unity of pathological developments and to grasp the principle of pathological evolution accounts for the chaos in present theories and practices. Until we have learned to recognize the genetic connection between cancer and the preceding and concomitant pathological developments in the body and to understand that they rest upon a common substratum of cause aside from the body itself, we will not be in a position to deal intelligently with either the problems of cancer prevention or those of cancer cure.
Cancer is not cancer at the beginning. It is the end of a series of toxemic crises starting in youth, even in infancy, and ending in a pathology of indurated tissue which finally ulcerates and suppurates, and is marked by an overwhelming cachexia — a fatal anemia from chronic septicemia.
Pre-cancer may be a gastric ulcer, a fistula, a fissure, an indurated breast, a chronic cystitis, or the stump of a removed tumor, or an X-ray or radium burn, etc. Between the pre-cancerous stage and early cancer, there is no distinct line of demarkation — they are not distinguishable from one another. Nor is there a line of demarkation between the pre-cancerous stage and the stage which immediately preceded it. One development is the son of another and we should not forget the parentage.
Why does last year's ulcer become this year's cancer? Why does the fistula become cancerous? What produces this change? Obviously it is an evolution out of the prior condition and is produced by the same causes, perhaps intensified, that produced the prior condition.
Let us not forget the antecedents of the pre-cancerous condition. Suppose "early cancer" and then "cancer" have evolved out of a gastric ulcer: Where did the ulcer come from? It developed out of a previous hardening at the site of chronic inflammation, which, in all likelihood, began as a catarrhal inflammation (gastritis), due to overeating of carbohydrate foods. Cancer is merely the last stage in a long series of developments. When the variation from the normal type of tissue in which the tumor originates passes beyond a certain more or less indefinite line, the tumor becomes malignant. This represents merely another stage or step in the pathological evolution, and not the addition of some new element. It is the result of the continued action of the original producing causes.
There is no possibility of learning causation so long as pathology ignores all origins, so long as we ignore the early forms or stages of pathology and study only its end-points. In those early stages of pathology, which are so tangibly due to our indiscretions, lies the essence of pathology in general. To comprehend the simple issues here involved is to know the grand secret of health and natural immunity, subjects which orthodox science prefers not to understand.

Tilden says: "Cancer is nothing more at the beginning than chronic catarrh. In a subject of scrofulous diathesis, the glands are likely to take on lymphangitis; if the lungs are the most vulnerable part, so-called tuberculosis develops; if an injured breast is the vulnerable point, glands enlarge and so-called cancer develops; if a slight abrasion is incurred on the genitalia and is badly treated, a 'chancre' develops, local glands become involved and we have so-called syphilis. The three diseases are one, manifesting differently because different environments and tissues are invoked, and complicated from the first by a greatly depressing psychology. These diseases are made deadly by the fear often implanted by doctors. All may be easily corrected before hope is killed."
Every man who comes down with any one of these so-called "diseases" has brought on enervation, and a toxic state of the system, by wrong living. These "diseases" can be prevented when people know enough to take care of their health, know that a cesspool under the diaphragm is a thousand times more dangerous than all the cesspools or drainage conduits found in the cities.

Victor P. Fleming says: "Then what is the cause of cancer? First and all-important is toxemia. The tissue resistance becomes lowered through many factors, such as age, traumatism, continued irritation, stasis, disfunction of organs, or overwork of organs. Time cell fluids become abnormal or unbalanced in their salt-content proportions, and cells take on abnormal growth. Cancer cells cannot thrive in tissue free from toxemia. There is also a disturbance of the internal gland secretions and vital forces which control cell-growth."

Diet in cancer production: Animal tumors and cancers are often allied with the presence of parasitic infection. Cancers are found almost wholly among meat eating animals and only rarely among vegetarian and fruitarian animals. In plants, nitrogenous excess seems to favor tumor and cancer development. Among races of men, cancer incidence is highest among the meat eating peoples, lowest among vegetarian peoples; highest of all in one section of Australia where the per capita consumption of meat is the highest in the world.
In the Valley of Death there is predacity, parasitism, insectivorism, carnivorism, cannibalism, degeneracy, tumors, cancers, extinction. There is abundant evidence, experimental and otherwise, to show that nitrogen-excess (anti-symbiotic feeding) results in so much and such virulent poisoning that the organism is predisposed to cancer development.
Overeating is continued for years after the first symptoms give warning that the body is no longer able to tolerate the excess of food. There is a vicious circle of affinities at the base of all morbidity, of which overeating and wrong eating are integral and important parts. Let no one say that overeating, or meat eating, is the cause of cancer. They are causes of enervation and toxemia. Cancer is an end-derangement following many crises of toxemia. The extreme toxicity and rapid degeneration seen in cancer are results of many cooperating factors. There is no unitary cause for cancer.

Irritation as a Cause of Cancer: The "precancerous irritative conditions" are almost universally considered as the best established factors in the causes of cancer. To quote from a work issued by the American Society for the Control of Cancer and prepared for the use of physicians: "One form of cancer after another has been shown to be related to some form of chronic irritation, as a direct or indirect contributing factor. We know that cancer of the cervix, the lip, the tongue, the rectum, the stomach, and many other forms of malignant disease of the external skin — Marjolin's ulcer, the cancer associated with the wearing of the peculiar charcoal-heated kangri basket of Kashmir, the paraffin workers cancer and the roentgen-ray workers cancer — are all closely associated in their inception with some form of chronic and repeated irritation."
It should be known, however, that not all seats of chronic and repeated irritation become cancerous. Indeed, an almost infinitesimal percentage of such sites ever develop cancer. Dr. Bulkley says: Local injury, sudden or prolonged, has been proclaimed by many as the cause of cancer. But while this may be the reason of the appearance of the lesion in some particular locality, * * * the absurdity of regarding this as time real cause of cancer is evident when we realize how frequently blows are received on the female breast, and how rarely cancer develops. Or, how many millions of men smoke, and have ragged teeth and how comparatively rare is cancer of the buccal cavity. Again how the hands and feet are constantly submitted to injury, and often to prolonged irritation, and yet how very seldom is cancer seen in these localities, nor do warts or corns on the hands and feet develop into cancer, etc., etc."
This being true, and it is, it follows that there must be some underlying constitutional state which predisposes to cancer. For irritation alone is not enough to result in cancer. Indeed, as the many "causes of cancer" are presented, and are later shown to be not causes of cancer, we become more sure than ever that back of this condition there exists a universal basic cause, composed, of course, of many factor-elements, which must receive attention if we are to either prevent or remedy the trouble.
Perhaps we must lose some peculiar tissue resistance before cancer can develop. There are cases in which the resistance to cancer development is so great that no ordinary amount of irritation can produce cancer. Other cases develop cancer with a minimum of antecedent injury. We are certainly on the wrong track when we concentrate our attention upon the local irritation and ignore the "soil" condition.
X-ray cancer, paraffin cancer, arsenic cancer, mineral oil cancer, tar cancer, parasitic or worm cancer, kangri cancer, and carcinoma arising in old sores, as the result of acquired perversion of the regenerative processes, develop in those who are prepared, by a previously developed cancer soil. Not every one who is subjected to these sources of irritation develops cancer. Irritations of all kinds must find a responsive sub-stratum before they can produce a cancer.
If chronic irritation leads to cancer, what leads to chronic irritation? Cancer statistics show that most cancers develop in the stomach, breasts, uterus, intestine, liver, gall-bladder, rectum, prostate, and bladder, rather than in the mouth and skin. Chronic irritation from toxemia and intestinal intoxication are the chief internal sources of irritation.
Before irritation of any kind can result in a local growth there must first exist an autogenous poisoning of the body. Cancer is preceded by and accompanied with many evidences of systemic impairment and metabolic perversion, particularly perversion of protein metabolism.
Cancer of the bladder is frequent in aniline workers — certain aniline dyes are excreted in the urine. Cancer of the breast develops as the end-result of a preceding chronic inflammation. Cancer of the lip and tongue develop at the site of chronic irritation, usually from smoking, or from the habitual use of alcohol. Cancer of the throat grows out of the same causes. Cancer of the liver and gall bladder may result from persistent inflammation of these organs. Cancer of the stomach evolves out of chronic gastritis and gastric ulcer. Two-thirds of all cancer of the stomach is an evolution out of a preceding gastric ulcer. In vegetarian Japan, where the rice is highly spiced, cancer of the stomach is very common. Cancer of the skin is found in people whose occupations bring them into contact with thermal and chemical irritants — flour, soot, oil, kangri basket, etc. Cancer of the womb is the final culmination of long-standing chronic affections in this organ. It is not uncommon for leucorrhea and painful menstruation to have existed from puberty to middle life. X-ray and radium burns frequently result in cancer. Drugs, vaccines and serums all produce more irritation than spices and condiments. Mineral oil, taken as a laxative must irritate the digestive tract as similar oils do the skin. Antiseptic douches irritate the womb and vagina of women who employ them. The wide-spread use of these elements of spurious "feminine hygiene" may account, in large measure, for the great increase in uterine cancer within recent years.

Constipation: In many quarters stress is laid upon intestinal stasis (constipation) as a cause of cancer. Indeed, too much stress is laid upon constipation, which is the effect of necessary antecedents, and not enough (or none) upon these antecedents. The evils that are blamed upon constipation are outgrowths of the causes of constipation and not of the constipation. It is unwise to stress a symptom and ignore its causes, magnifying this symptom into the cause of many affections, even cancer, and neglect to consider the antecedents of the constipation as causes of the other affections. It cannot be shown that the cancers of animals (and certainly not of plants) are in any way allied with constipation, nor with the presence of intestinal kinks; and certainly not with aluminum cooking utensils, tarred roads, etc.
When medical men (many of them) turned to "chronic intestinal stasis" as the cause of cancer, it meant that they had begun to recognize that factors and pathologies are concerned in the production of cancer other than local irritation, protozoa, or other parasites. They are looking to body chemistry, to perversions of nutrition, as the fons et origo of these destructive lesions. Toxemia and its myriads of causes answers to the needs of the problem, as they must someday recognize.

Metastasis: It is argued that the presence of a carcinoma of the uterus and of a carcinoma of the stomach must be based on different irritants. When tumors are found to exist in some portion of the intestinal tract and also in one or both ovaries, the intestinal tumor is regarded as primary and the ovarian tumor as secondary, being derived from the primary one by metastasis. Metastasis is the name applied to the theory that particles of tumors break off or become detached from the "parent body" and are carried by the blood or lymph to other parts of the body where they attach themselves and begin the development of another tumor. Metastasis is auto-transplantation of cancer cells as opposed to homiotransplantation which is done at will.
Without denying the possibility of an occasional metastasis occurring, I believe that the theory is often merely a smoke-screen behind which doctors hide their ignorance. There is always the possibility, where two or more tumors or cancers develop in a patient, that they are concomitant and successive developments out of common causes and not one the offspring of, the other.
Wood records a case of epithelioma of the lip "which remained fairly localized and was successfully removed by operation with no recurrence at the end of a year." However, by this time there had developed a very large carcinoma of the thyroid, all the lymph-nodes of the neck being involved along with the surrounding tissue. The patient died. At autopsy no traces of the epithelioma of the lip were found in regional lymph-nodes and adjoining parts of the face but numerous small carcinomata were present. Both carcinoma and sarcoma may develop in the same individual concomitantly or successively, and some instance are recorded in which both types of these tumors have existed together in the same organ. These are especially found in the uterus.
Now all of these phenomena we regard as arising out of the same primary cause. The development of a tumor in one organ or tissue is due to the same cause that produces a tumor in another organ or tissue. Instead of multiple tumors, when these exist in different organs, being due to metastasis, we regard them as originating out of the same primary cause. They are not primary and secondary to each other, but concomitant or successive developments from a common basis. Wood records a case of development of carcinoma of the uterus ten years after the removal of a carcinoma of the breasts and says that "Metastatic connection between the tumors could be ruled out."
If the irritants that help to produce tumors are to be regarded as always acting from without, and never from within, then it may be right to say that carcinoma of the stomach and carcinoma of the uterus arise from different irritants. But this assumption is by no means necessary and besides, the irritant is a secondary and not the primary cause of the new growth.

Cachexia is a chronic septic poisoning of slow development. When tissues are deprived of oxygen they degenerate or become necrosed. A poison is generated which, if absorbed, brings on a general septic poisoning — cachexia. If the poisoning is great enough, or sufficiently long continued, it results in death. Death of tissue occurs when the enlargement is great enough and impedes circulation enough to cut off the oxygen supply. Ulceration is the name of this condition —or it may be cancer.
Dr. Tilden says that "Ulceration is active degeneration from cell apoplexy; cancer is passive degeneration from cell asphyxiation. Ulcer may be likened to cancer in that the former is the acute form; cancer — the latter — being the passive form. The two forms may exist together. Pathologists should be able to see the blending if they ever quit the bad habit of individualizing so-called diseases and researching for specific causes."
Due to the loose construction of tumors, these structures will break down more easily than normal tissue, once their nutrition is cut off or their drainage is impaired. They will undergo decomposition and sepsis will develop.
The degenerative changes which occur in the various types of tumors, "benign" and "malignant," do not differ from the alterations which occur in normal tissues when the blood supply is diminished or ulceration and cachexia have developed. Due to the imperfect character of their capillary circulation, and to the usually insufficient blood supply, and to thrombosis, which result, usually from pressure or stasis, tumors are more liable to hemorrhage and subsequent degeneration than is normal tissue. Hemorrhage, various types of degeneration, often beginning with fatty degeneration of its cells which may progress to calcification or even to bone formation and leading, ultimately, to necrosis or gangrene, result from pushing the tumor beyond the boundary of safety. And this is done by the continued operation of the original causes.
When a tumor is encased in a strong resisting capsule it may become so dense that even the capillary arteries are completely obstructed, then decomposition takes place, poisoning the blood —the poisoning is chronic septicemia and develops a fatal cachexia. When systemic poisoning takes place in this way, the change is called cancer. It is difficult to understand just why the authorities do not trouble to explain why the pathology is called cancer when it is brought on by obstructed circulation of normal tissue up to the asphyxiation climax, and from there, no extraneous pathological influence has entered. It is merely another link in the pathological chain. Malignancy is an autogenerated (endogenerated) sepsis that breaks through its restraining walls. Cancer is "benign" until irritation, inflammation and induration cause asphyxiation of tissue, then decomposition and cachexia destroy the patient.
Cachexia is a slow septic absorption involving the lymphatic glands first and the blood last. When a tumor dies from lack of nutrition — choked to death by its own growth — it decomposes and poisons the body. Cachexia is chronic septicemic lymphangitis.

Prognosis: Tilden says, "If lymphatic gland enlargement, in the near-environment, is not tactilely palpable to the surgeon's fingers, the deadline of septic poisoning has not been crossed, and surgery and correct hygienic treatment can yet restore health." Again: "As soon as cancer has infected the glandular system all so-called cures, are worthless, and as long as the glands are not affected there is a doubt about the growth being cancer. A wart it is said, sometimes takes on malignancy." "Before decomposition or septicemia has developed, all so-called cancers are readily amenable to correct treatment. It does not lie in the repertoire of regular medicine. This progressive theory, or unitiveness of all so-called diseases, has not yet entered the philosophy of regular medicine." "When the lymphatics are enlarged and cachexia is established, the patient is doomed." "Surgery after cachexia is established, is the height of folly. It can do nothing but add to the suffering and shorten life."
The fatalism of medicine with regard to such conditions as tuberculosis, Bright's "disease," cancer, etc., has its basis in the fact that they begin only with the symptoms of comparatively advanced pathology, the phase that is past redemption, and ignore the inceptional stages, including the raison d'etre of the degeneracy. The fatal ending of advanced degeneracy should not be regarded as presaging the victory of pathology over life — of evil over good — when reform is made at a much earlier stage of the process.

Hopeless Cases: Fasting is an easy and rational way to die when cancer or other painful affection cannot be remedied. Tilden says: "A better way to die, when one is fated to go by way of cancer, is to stop eating. Nothing but peace, comfort, and enjoyment of friends to the end will be experienced by anyone who will not take anything but water. To eat and take morphine, or any narcotic or anodyne, causes a fiendish death." * * * "In those cases of cancer where there is absolutely no hope, if the patient will go without food he will go down and die normally and naturally, without pain, without discomfort, and can have the pleasure of conversing with his friends up to the last minute. And that is not all — he gets the last best chance for a cure. Some of these cases that are said to be hopeless, and afterwards killed by drug reliefs, if they were put on an absolute fast they would fool the prognostication sometimes by getting well."

Prevention: Cancer develops in sick rather than in healthy tissue. Writing of cancer a few years ago, Sir Win. Arbuthnot Lane, noted British surgeon said: "Very many, years ago I demonstrated unmistakably that cancer never affects a healthy organ." Sir Berkeley Moynihan says: "It has been said that cancer never attacks a healthy organ, but that is to set the standard of health rather high." Precisely so! And it is high standards that we must have. Sir Berkeley continues: "It is, however, quite certain that any organ or the skin, when affected by some chronic disorder, is more apt to be attacked by cancer. This involves the necessity for us all, patients and doctors alike, to pay attention to health and to do all we can to keep fit."
Malignant growths occur in tissues the vitality of which has long been lowered. If cancer seems to run in families, this is because the moribund "soil" is a family characteristic, due in almost all cases to dietary habits fitted to a state of scavengerdom rather than to the high estate of him who is said to be only a little lower than the angels, him who was made "in the image of God."
This is equivalent to saying that good health is a sure guarantee against cancer. Or, to put it differently, cancer only develops in the sick. Cancer, as I have emphasized in this book, is the culmination or end-point of a long series of pathological causes and effects, beginning often in infancy, and persisting and accumulating throughout life. It is a degeneration and cannot occur without efficient degenerating antecedents.
The way to prevent cancer is to preserve health. And this latter is so simple, so easy, that with proper health education, the so-called cancer scourge should be ended in a few years. But there is no effort now being made to educate the public in right living. The government does not do it. The health (?) boards do not do it. The public schools do not make the effort. The churches are not attempting it. The public press gives no attention to this necessary work. The medical profession not only is not educating the public in healthful living, but, with a few honorable exceptions, the members of this profession oppose such teaching. Thus with a "Conspiracy of Silence" keeping the public in ignorance, disease and death increase year by year.
As I have previously pointed out, the prevention of cancer must begin far back of any stage where present efforts at prevention begin. It is certainly unwise to wait until symptoms of early cancer develop before we make any effort to prevent the condition. It is equally foolish to delay efforts at prevention until after the development of the pre-cancerous condition. Cancer is one of those conditions where "a stitch in time saves nine." The time to begin the prevention of cancer is at the beginning of life and this applies not only to this "disease," but to all others. The same measures that will assure us exemption from cancer, will also prevent the development of tuberculosis, diabetes, Bright's "disease," insanity, and other affections of the brain and nerves, affections of the heart and arteries, etc.
Cancer is the end of a chain of causes and effects — toxemia and toxemic crises — starting in youth, even in infancy, and ending in a pathology of indurated tissue which finally ulcerates and suppurates, and is marked by an overwhelming cachexia — a fatal anemia resulting from chronic endo-generated septicemia. This fatal ending may be prevented at any time before cachexia has developed. Cancer is the end of the chain of symptom complexes. The chain may be broken at any link and health reestablished by correcting the causes of the pathology.
Early operation is now advocated as a means of prevention. By removing thousands of lumps that were not cancer and would not have become cancer, the advocates of early removal have been able to create a vast amount of statistical data that appears to favor this procedure. This fallacy will be outgrown in time.
Early operation does not remove the causes that produce cancer. Early operation removes an end-point; it ignores all the antecedent stages. There is always more "pre-cancer" than "cancer" and no surgeon can ever hope to remove all the "pre-cancerous" spots from the body of his patient.
If we wait until we know, we wait until we cannot cure," say medical authorities. This is used to rush patients and physicians into operations for cancer. It says in effect: "operate at once, always operate, and operate on a mere suspicion." No less an authority than H. W. S. Wright, M.S., F.R.C.S., admits that this means performing many operations for the removal of growths that are not and would not become cancerous.
That cancer should be met early is sound reasoning, but surgical interference with organic integrity does not answer to the requirements of the problem and is by no means early enough. The same may be said for the X-ray and radium. How can X-ray, radium, serum, and the knife, one or all four, prevent the multiple influences requiring years to culminate in the end-effect known as cancer?
It is necessary to go back, far back, of the neoplasm, far back of early cancer, way back of pre-cancer, and remedy the general pathology upon which these rest. It is necessary to remove and correct all causes of local and general pathology. Any successful remedial program must take into account all of these antecedent stages and their causes. The mere removal of "early cancer" or of "pre-cancer" is not enough, for these are based on a pathological foundation that will evolve more "pre-cancer" and "early cancer." Early diagnosis, too, is futile in that it amounts merely to frequent examinations to see if growths are in evidence. Such studies of cancer are concentrated upon the growth itself, and ignore the basic pathology upon which alone cancer thrives. If no growth is found the present plan is simply to wait until one is found. Antecedent stages and causes are ignored.
The age-long quest for "cures" has been carried on from the point of view of disease, not of health. What will cure "disease"; not upon what does health depend, has been the question in the minds of the searchers and researchers. We have aimed not at the restoration and maintenance of integrity but at the expulsion of an entitative "disease." Health is wholeness, but we have failed to grasp the significance of this fact.
Repeated patching up, rather than radical self-cure through living reform, must end in physiological bankruptcy and degeneration — cancer, diabetes, "diseases" of the brain and nerves, etc. The present miscalled preventive and remedial programs are decidedly harmful. To say that they are failures seems hardly necessary in view of the steadily rising cancer incidence and cancer mortality.

Care of the Patient: Cancer may be remedied, but not by any eleventh-hour reform. He who waits until the surgeons tell him he has "inoperable cancer" before instituting living reform is doomed to failure. Wait not until degeneration has advanced too far for vital redemption, but begin early to evolve back into that high standard of health and physiological excellency that guarantees freedom from cancer and other "degenerative diseases of later life."
Undoubtedly there are systemic conditions which are antagonistic to abnormal cell proliferation, just as there are conditions which favor such growth. The systemic conditions which are antagonistic to such growth are normal conditions and must be present at all times, even where such a growth exists, although in a weakened or lessened degree. If this "anti-cancer" condition can be restored, it must, of necessity, check the growth of cancer and even in some, if not in all, cases cause the cancer to undergo involution and disappear.
These systemic factors, which are antagonistic to abnormal cell proliferation, must depend upon the same natural forces and agencies upon which normal growth and health depend. The restoration of this "anti-cancer" power of the body must, then, depend upon a restoration of health — this is, upon normal nutrition, efficient elimination and normal physiological function throughout the body. All causes of pathology, however relatively unimportant, must be corrected and removed; and all effort at finding a specific cause abandoned. Everything is important.
The growth of the cancer must be checked, the cancer must be destroyed and its causes removed. Either the body must be able to absorb the neoplasm or else a method of destroying the cancer, which is not worse than the cancer itself, must be found. Far be it from me to declare that a successful method of destroying the growth, particularly in its earlier stages, will not be found; but, I do insist that such destruction is less than half the solution to the problems presented by a cancerous growth. Destroy it by any means you will, it will recur unless its causes are corrected and removed.
I have often thought that where operations are made for the removal of early cancer, they might prove ultimately successful if they were followed up properly. But what surgeon ever does more than operate. The patient is sent away from the hospital without any instruction about how and what to eat and how to live. He or she is allowed to return to the same method of eating and living that laid the foundation for the cancer in the first place. There is, quite naturally, a recurrence in a short time.
In his Notes on Tumors, Dr. Wood says: "In a very small proportion of human malignant tumors spontaneous disappearance for longer or shorter periods has been noted. The greatest number of such disappearances has followed incomplete surgical removal of the tumor, they have occurred next in order of frequency during some acute febrile process, and less frequently in connection with some profound alteration of the metabolic processes of the organism, such as extreme cachexia, artificial menopause, or the puerperium."
No more profound change in metabolism is possible than that produced by fasting and the change is of a character best suited to bring about the autolysis of a tumor, malignant or otherwise.
The conditions Dr. Wood mentions as causing, spontaneous disappearance of tumors are, for the most part, "accidents" and are not within the range of voluntary control. Fasting, on the other, hand, may be instituted and carried on under control and at any time desired. It is the rule that operations are followed by increased growth in the tumor. Spontaneous disappearance following incomplete removal is rare. The same may be said for extreme cachexia and artificial menopause. In fevers we have rapid autolysis in many tissues of the body and much curative work going on, but we cannot develop a fever at will. Pregnancy and childbirth occasion many profound changes in the body, but they are certainly not to be recommended to sick women as cures for their tumors. Even if this were desirable, it would be a hit-or-miss remedy. The effects of fasting are certain. There is nothing hit-or-miss about the process. It works always in the same general direction.
Fever is a curative process and does help to remove the cause of tumor. None of Dr. Wood's other causes of spontaneous disappearance assist in removing the cause of tumors. Fasting does assist greatly in the removal of such causes.
Victor P. Fleming says: "If the Toxemia is not great, and the local growth or involvement not too extensive, removal of Toxemia will result in a checking and disappearance of the cancer. Correct habits of living and eating will prevent a return. But the chief hope of conquering cancer lies with the dietitian when he learns correct dietetics, and must be along the line of prevention. The dietitian of today knows practically nothing about the influence of food in restoring and maintaining normal health. He prescribes food as he prescribes medicine, and with as little success. He is palliating with food and trying to fill a popular demand. In other words, he is trying to keep up with the procession. — Philosophy of Health, Aug., 1924.
To correct constitutional impairments and restore normal functioning requires both time and, rigid self-control and most people will not take the time nor will they practice control. They are so accustomed to thinking of quick cures by drugs and surgery — cures that cure without removing cause — that they are unwilling to submit to the slow process of physiological readjustment. Snap-shot cures have been taught and practiced by the medical profession for so long that the people expect and must have them; consequently, if one doctor doesn't cure at once, they consult another. This restlessness and demand for quick cures keeps a whole army of "researchers" on the alert for the discovery of new and more pronounced palliatives; for they never cure, they only "relieve" and complicate the condition.

Tilden advises: "Disease does not trouble those who do not break the laws of their nature. When disease comes, cure is satire, buffoonery, or downright idiocy. Stop breaking law."