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Diet, in the sense of Hippocrates, is a complete regime regulated by the family physician according to medical indications. Nutrition should be regarded as a remedy, prescribed as to kind and quantity or items to be forbidden. Nutritional prescriptions are a part of the total therapy only and must be completed by other prescriptions. The knowledge of such additional therapy is indispensable for the practice. A few directives as to the effectiveness on the various organs of response should be described in advance.
When I started the first treatment, weeks and months produced an increased sensitivity toward various natural stimuli caused by nutrition and medication. This increased sensitivity had some beneficial effects, but also some damaging ones. On the one hand, it helped to attack the tumor and metastases very quickly, but on the other, it made it difficult to feed the patients, as various allergies developed, for instance, against liver injections, liver juice138, orange juice, minute amounts of lemon, and different fruits and medications. Among the medications the most striking were opiates, codeine, novocaine (all types), penicillin and other antibiotics. It became necessary to find means of excluding all allergic reactions as far as possible. We succeeded in excluding the nutritional allergies by adding large doses of potassium and simultaneously applying a strictly saltless diet, increasing the doses of lugol solution and thyroid and increasing detoxication by means of additional coffee enemas and more frequent castor oil treatments. Patients remained sensitive to X-rays, so that even fluoroscopic examinations were damaging and had to be omitted as far as possible. They also remained sensitive to prolonged exposure to sunshine. Hypersensitivity to novocaine also persisted, so that dentists were advised not to use more than a third of the normal dose of 2 cc (0.6-0.7 cc). Anesthesia with this reduced dosage proved even more effective than that formerly achieved with the normal amount. Patients also retained a hypersensitivity to physical and mental exertion, so that a maximum of rest was necessary during the first months. Even after four or six weeks of treatment the more advanced patients were generally unable to do marketing and prepare the diet and juices by themselves. If there is a condition of perspiration, weakness and depression, the entire body should be rubbed two or three times a day with a soft brush wrapped in a washcloth and soaked in the following solution: one-half glass of water to which is added two tablespoons of rubbing alcohol and two tablespoons of wine vinegar.
The general function of the dietary regime, as developed by me originally for the treatment of tuberculosis, was regarded in many different ways by various authors who had spent years of work with it. One called it anti-phlogistic, another, dehydrating, a third, increasing the favorable inflammatory process, a fourth, acid-forming, a fifth, alkalizing, and yet another, increasing the healing processes in the system by unspecific stimulation therapy. The truth of the matter is that most of the above opinions are correct - they are partial effects which, taken all together, may be expressed as aid in the sense that it is activating the healing process in the whole system.
In biology the study of the functions of one substance in an organ is very difficult and disappointing.
Szent-Györgyi says "the more we study and know the single reactions of the muscles, the less we understand its function - and the function is a part of the whole body." In experiments on foodstuffs, scientists also examine single items in different sicknesses. The results are often very contradictory.
Dr. Alexander Brunschwig of New York Memorial Hospital was puzzled about the immunity phenomenon in cancer, as most surgeons are. The existence of some bodily defense against cancer "can hardly be denied." But "at best" this defense is "relatively feeble". What is more proper than to strengthen the defense, which, in a higher degree, means the healing power?
It is well known that my approach of studying the whole metabolism in its reaction is contrary to the prevailing viewpoint of the medical profession, which adheres generally to the thought that something specific, such as one medication, or a specific serum, or a combination of different sera, will have to solve the cancer problem. It has become more evident of late that the application of surgery and X-rays is encountering more skepticism by some surgeons and the public.
Until very recently, it appeared that whatever did not fit or agree with the prevailing practice or doctrine was "not scientific" and was pushed aside.139 None of the so-called "food-fanatics" probably assumes that one or the other item, used once, for a week, or for a year, will prepare the underlying conditions for cancer. This book explains that chronic intoxication and degeneration of the liver-pancreas apparatus and the whole metabolism may cause the underlying conditions for cancer. All other superficial presentations are misconceptions and mislead the reader. The introduction to the above-mentioned article reads as follows:
Sugar, white flour, preserves, spices, cheese, canned goods, cooked foods and tomatoes all cause cancer, we hear. Grapes, on the other hand, can ward off cancer and even cure it. These are some of the misconceptions about cancer which various food-fanatics and crackpots have held throughout the ages.
"None of them, of course, is true. Science has not found that any dietary item can lessen one's chances of getting cancer or recovering from cancer. Aluminum cooking utensils were once thought by some to cause cancer. Many people still believe that chemical fertilizers, used instead of the old-fashioned organic kind, make people more susceptible to cancer. Another myth which has grown only in comparatively recent years is that water fluoridation causes cancer."140
What "other" scientists and their followers assume is something entirely different. Their opinion repeated in short is, that many different damaging food items, taken together, or in combination with other damaging factors, such as artificial fertilizer, aluminum kitchen utensils, and dead food such as frozen food or food changed by chemical additions for preservation, and in addition other deficiencies in food, caused by refining processes or poisons caused by canning, etc., all taken together, can seriously influence and continue to influence our body and its vital organs. Nobody can reconstruct such conditions in animal experiments, but many observations in the history of peoples demonstrate their downfall by influences of civilization in a broad sense. Such accumulations (not one or another item) of poisons prepare the conditions for cancer diseases. In many cases, even the lifespan of a physician's practice is not sufficient to observe in many people the accumulation of all damages, as it may take sixty to seventy years or longer to observe the outbreak of the disease in healthy people with a strong body, a resistant liver and good reabsorption power.
It goes without saying that vegetarians also get cancer. Some of them conclude - how can such a treatment help against cancer when even vegetarians may become afflicted?
As far as I know, experiments with the whole metabolism in that respect are not being carried out anywhere in the world. All the experiments performed in that direction in the past twenty or thirty years show mostly the above-mentioned influence of single items on the whole metabolism. The results of these experiments are partly contradictory and partly conflict with other ideas. This is understandable, as animals and humans vary considerably in their metabolic equilibrium.
The amount of damage done by chemical fertilizers, spraying, and insecticides which lead to a chronic poisoning of the soil can be estimated when we realize how many poisons go into the fruit and vegetables we eat, into the cattle, the eggs and butter we consume and the milk which we and our children drink. We also have to realize the enormous amount of food one patient needs in a single year. Here is a record of the average quantity of intake of some patients in the course of one year; a very great part of which is converted into juices.
I am more than ever convinced that biochemistry and metabolic science will be victorious in healing degenerative diseases, including cancer if the whole body or the whole metabolism will be attacked and not the symptoms.