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"THE LIVER is the largest single organ in the body and is surpassed by none in the multiplicity and importance of its valious physiologic activities. Accordingly, the state of the liver and the level of its functional efficiency are of great significance to the general bodily economy, both in health and in disease."56
Physiologically, it may be stated: the liver can remain damaged for a long time because the deterioration of the liver cannot be detected before the great functional reserves have been consumed. In addition, the liver has great capacity to regenerate, therefore, a partial destruction may be restored if the deterioration is not extensive and rapid.
The liver has manifold functions, and most of them are closely associated with the function of other organs. One is forced, therefore, to take several functional tests to measure the functional degree of the liver. The constant upward and downward trend of this large dynamic organ makes it necessary to repeat the tests before a more positive statement can be formed. The importance of the liver will be best described by comparison with the chlorophyll contained in the cells of leaves - maintaining metabolism and the life of the plant.
When several authors examined the function of the liver of 50 patients with various types of cancer of the gastro-intestinal tract, they found a pronounced hepatic dysfunction.57 After removal of the tumors, the liver recovered to a certain degree, for some time. Thus, the changes showed that the deterioration can be reversed. May I anticipate that the treatment described here does the same: The absorption of the tumor mass and glands and the restoration of the function of the liver.
Jesse Greenstein stated that, "there seems to be little doubt that hepatic insufficiency is a concomitant phenomenon with cancer and, as the authors emphasize, such damaged livers impose an additional hazard to those normally accompanying operative procedures."58
In some biochemistry books on cancer, the liver deterioration in cancer is divided into three stages: The first stage represents the time of the development and the appearance of cancer. During that time the dysfunction of the liver is, as many authors assume, present but undetectable by means of tests or palpation. I believe, however, that the liver has lost K and K-group minerals so that the oxidizing enzymes can no longer be reoxidized in sufficient quantities to control all cell growth.
During the second stage, the tumor grows and some metastases appear in glands. One can palpate an enlarged liver (hypertrophy) and find some edema in the organs. At that time, we assume that the activity of the cancer has increased while the defense and the healing power of the body has decreased correspondingly.
In the third stage, in which the cancer has gained supremacy, rapid poisoning and destruction of essential organs set in with later dissolution of these organs, including the liver which can no longer maintain its substance and functions.
In the first stage, the tumor protein would seem to be supported by normal food; in the second stage, most probably, the protein is supported to a greater or lesser degree by the muscle tissue. At this time there is considerable hyperlipemia present, which remains until the reserves of the body's lipids are consumed.
In the third terminal stage, there is an acute, rapid loss of muscle and liver substance, since very little defense or resistance is left. How the tumor produces such a condition is unknown. Jesse Greenstein assumes the production by the tumor of a circulating toxin, which accelerates the catabolism of the body tissues.59 Rudolf Keller thinks that the progressive loss of potassium and the minerals of the potassium group lower the electrical potentials and the defense of the cytoplasm in muscle and liver cells. The stimulation of the visceral nervous system by the loss of potassium and the increase in tumor poisons also seems to be a contributing factor to this deleterious effect. A high percentage - about 90 per cent - of our patients are terminal cases. These patients cannot wait for treatment to be developed. This was the reason that forced me to bring my treatment to its highest efficacy in every respect.
The first physician who drew attention to the combination of cancer and the liver or gallbladder system probably was Frerichs, in 1861. Later, many physicians agreed with him, such as Zenker, Fuetterer, Siegert, Karnot, Blond, etc. The existence of the relationship was denied by Krehl, Heller and others. The pathologists were also of different opinions: Aschoff and Backmeister decided that the disease of the liver and bile system were accidental findings. Lubarsch and others opposed this view.
Neither clinicians nor pathologists nor biologists were able to solve the problem which was the first or the causative factor. The great difficulty is that we cannot determine when the pathology of the liver or bile system starts.
The newer labeled examination with C14 glycine by Norbert E. and D. M. Greenberg60 proved that the liver and plasma of tumor-bearing animals have an increased protein metabolism.
The same effect occurs also in pregnancy (measured by glycine C14 and P32 in livers of tumor-bearing animals) which reflects a quicker growth somewhere else in the body. This means that this condition is not specific for cancer and is not caused by specific toxins.
It is important to recognize that, in our body, all the innermost metabolic processes work together, are dependent upon one another, and will be deranged with each other in diseases. S. Spiegelman said in an article as well as at the Third International Congress of Biochemistry in 1955: (p. 185) "For over 60 years there have existed in the micro-biological literature a series of observations subsumed under the title of `enzymatic adaptation,' in which a particular compound apparently evokes a well-defined change in the enzyme patterns of cells, grown in its presence. The last decade has witnessed a renewed interest in these analogous findings. There, genetic and enzymological aspects have been reexamined with the aid of more rigorous techniques and methodology than those that were available to the earlier workers. These newer procedures made it possible to show in a number of cases that the phenomenon of enzymatic adaptation possessed the following important features: a) the changed enzymatic activity was not due to the selection of pre-existent mutant types but rather to an included enzymatic modification against a constant genetic background; b) the observed change in enzymatic activity could be ascribed to the appearanoe of active apoenzyme rather than to the accumulation of co-factors or intermediates, unique to the metabolism of the inducing substrate. ... It was necessary, therefore, to revise statements as genes control potentiality of enzyme synthesis."
The problem of the liver was, and still is, partly misunderstood and partly neglected. The metabolism and its concentration in the liver should be put in the foreground, not the cancer as a symptom. There, the outcome of the cancer is determined as the clinical favorable results, failures and autopsies clearly demonstrate. There, the sentence will be passed - whether the tumors can be killed, dissolved, absorbed, eliminated and, finally, whether the body can be restored.
The progress of the disease depends upon the possibility of whether and to what extent the liver can be restored, of course, unless there are some complications and destructions in the vital organs.
The treatment of the liver is generally more symptomatic, but not with the described treatment.
"It has become increasingly evident that liver cirrhosis is intimately associated with primary liver cancer, and that environmental factors play an important part in the pathogenesis of both diseases," Berman stated. Kasper Blond said: "In the liver we have tried to show that cirrhosis of the liver is not a disease sui generis, but only a sign of a disorder of metabolism which causes a chain of events leading to many conditions which the medical generation of today considers to be diseases sui generis. The whole syndrome of metabolic disorders which we call oesophagitis, gastritis, duodenitis, gastric and duodenal ulcer, cholecystitis, cholangitis, pancreatitis, proctitis, and others are considered only stages of a dynamic process, starting with liver failure and portal hypertension, and resulting in cirrhosis of the liver tissue and in cancer. Cancer is a mutation of somatic tissues caused by chronic damage of the liver. The structural changes of the somatic tissues are the result, not the cause, of the metabolic disorders."61
Blond has studied this problem since 1928 to explain cancer physiology and pathology through bile production, - absorption, secretion, and storage as a disorder of the cooperative organs. He came to the conclusion that we can solve most of the involved problems if we study the physiology of man as a whole, rather than cells, structures, or single organs. In that respect, he goes contrary to most cancer authors who emphasize "a direct study of the site of malignancy itself," as, for example, Jesse Greenstein.62
Blond did not try to develop a therapy on that basis but took his viewpoint from statistics and came to the conclusion that "98% of all cancers of the internal organs succumb not to the cancer but to the liver disorder."63 He does not even make any suggestion to help the liver in the fight to defend or maintain the body. Blond's conception seems to be right and reasonable. His enumeration of the liver syndromes, however, seems to be too strongly pronounced. I find them much less accentuated even in the more advanced cases. Not all cancer cases have cirrhosis, although the majority show a "precirrhotic" stage of liver hypertrophy.
Dr. George Medes reported to the meeting of the American Chemical Society in 1955 that changes in the chemistry of the living cells all over the body have been determined in rats when liver-cancer strikes. He suggested that the discovery will shed new light on the way cancer forms in the body and the way it may be prevented. Dr. Medes concentrated on the synthesis and utilization of fats by living and growing tissues under various dietary conditions. Acetic acid, which is known to be formed from both fats and carbohydrates, has been used to represent foods. Earlier, Dr. Medes found that, while all tissues could use both of these substances for the production of fats, there was a difference in normal tissue and tumors. The normal liver of the rat utilized acetic acid to synthesize and oxidize it to carbon dioxide and water at several times the rate at which the tumor did, whereas the reverse occurred with glucose in normal and tumor-bearing rats.
In 1926, the Mayo Clinic reported the very low incidence in liver carcinoma of 0.083 per cent. That increased till 1949. The highest incidence was reported during 1948 to 1952. It is generally accepted that the rising incidence of primary carcinoma of the liver may be due to an increasing incidence of liver diseases and cirrhosis in general. These are regarded as causes of the neoplastic transformation. The latest statistics of the incidence of primary carcinoma of the liver show the predominance of this disease for certain racial groups and geographic areas.
In general, primary carcinoma of the liver is much more common in colored races than in the white race, while malignancies in general are less frequent in colored people. The percentage of liver carcinoma to other carcinomas is one to two per cent in Europe and America while Chinese have 33 per cent; Javanese, 36.1 per cent; Filipinos, 22.2 per cent; Japanese, 7.5 per cent; and South Africans in the Gold Mines, 86.6 per cent. Ewing and other authors found that primary hepatomas and 50 per cent of primary cholangiomas are associated with cirrhosis. The Damocles sword of cirrhosis hangs over all cancer patients who have far advanced malignancies in their abdominal organs. We know that all these organs send their blood through the portal veins into the liver where tumor cells settle very frequently as soon as the liver, working as a filter, has lost its defense power.
Teratomas of the liver are extremely rare. For liver function tests, see special textbooks. Abels, Rekers and others reported a high incidence of hepatic dysfunction in patients with cancer of the intestinal tract.
In his book, Spellberg says that "Primary cancer of the liver occurs so much more frequently in the cirrhotic liver as compared with the normal liver that cirrhosis has been referred to as a precancerous lesion."64 And, he also says, "There is no dispute that an adequate diet is essential in the treatment of liver diseases."65
Several authors have observed that if the surgeon removes a tumor of one of the abdominal organs, the liver is the first organ which recovers. This observation shows that the poisoning from the tumor seems to be the underlying cause of the liver disease (in later stages).
Experiments have revealed that in the second stage of cancer the sources for nitrogen will be taken, more or less, from the cancer-bearing body. During this condition the liver shows enlargement; the enlargement corresponds to the weight of the animal plus that of the tumor. Before death, however, the liver loses rapidly in size and weight, and the liver cells have to provide the body with its last reserves. Finally, it may be mentioned that liver perfusions have shown that in the liver cells many reductions of hormones and metabolic processes take place. The presence of androgens and activated vitamins and enzymes has proven that the liver can accomplish reoxidations and metabolic regenerations. Some authors think that most of the oxidizing enzymes are reactivated in the liver.
The functions of the liver cells are so vitally important for the body that they could be compared with the activity of the chlorophyll of the plants. The liver is regarded so unique biologically that recently it was called the "balance wheel of life."