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Chapter 8
Different Authors' Cancer Therapies by Diet - A Survey

     K. H. BAUER wrote that "we must distinguish sharply between nutritional prophylaxis and cancer therapy by diet."⁴⁵ Dr. Bauer takes a strictly negative attitude to the question of dietary therapy in cancer. For this reason, he lists the dietary regimes of a number of authors:

1. Fischer-Wasels (1930-1935) recommended the avoidance of overeating, nutrition poor in sugar, water and salt, poor in vitamin B, cholesterol, alkaline, and a higher acidity to be reached by intake of acid foods and addition of acids. (See Dr. Kuhl.)
2. Auler (1937-1941) recommended a non-sparing diet, rich in salt and spices, raw meat several times weekly, juices of vegetables and fruits and oils to replace animal fats.
3. Freund and Kaminer, whose dietary experiments were highly regarded for a long time, suggested replacement of animal fats by vegetable oils to avoid growth of the sick bacterium coli and prevent the formation of normal fatty acids. Carbohydrates were to be reduced and the intestines were to be cleansed by means of physics and medication. Freund and Kaminer were the first to list permitted and prohibited foods (1912-1925).
4. Kretz, Vienna (1939) leaned closely on the recommendations of Freund for the improvement of the general condition of the cancerous organism.
5. Bruenings, Frankfurt a/Main (1930's) recommended a diet poor in carbohydrates and rich in proteins, aided by insuling; he believed in improvement by an acidifying effect.
6. E. Salzborn, Vienna (1940) advocated a dietary regime for inoparable cancer patients which consisted of little protein and fat, few vitamins, minerals and foods with a reduced amount of carbohydrates because of fermentation and gas production.
7. Ingebos (1942) recommended a regime based on the ideas of Mason in Loewen; the regime avoided fats and foods rich in fats, especially those rich in cholesterol, and also avoiding artificially colored foods and drinks. He prohibited salt and meat and fish-frozen, smoked or sterilized. Easily digestible foods were permitted: lean fish grilled or broiled, chopped lean meat, brains, and thymus which could be cooked. All vegetables should be served raw or cooked in water; vegetable soup and oatmeal, vegetable oils, fruit and potatoes were part of the regime; bread was permitted. Alcoholic beverages, pepper, mustard and paprika were forbidden, as was smoking.

     Bauer presents a summary of answers to questionnaires submitted to 34 physicians by the Monatschrift fuer Krebsbekaempfung.⁴⁶ With the exception of Professor Denk of Vienna, all the physicians showed a negative attitude to dietary therapy in their answers. Some looked upon diet more as a means of preventing "causes of cancer" than a means of treating cancer.

     In his book, Cancer and Diet, Dr. Frederick L. Hoffman reached the conclusion that cancer is not local in its origin; treatment should, therefore, not be limited to the local lesions.

     "A deranged metabolism is the result of dietary and nutritional disorders manifesting themselves in various ways, not difficult of ascertainment by modern methods of exact scientific determination, chiefly gastric and blood analysis, or other precise methods of indicating blood disorders."

     "I am absolutely convinced that the underlying cause of cancer is to be found in an excessive intake of foods of a high organic or mineral content, or generally of an alkaline base instead of acid. ... In brief, the teaching of modern-day nutritional science should be the urgency of moderation in all things - moderation in food intake, particularly as to highly-spiced foods, moderation in bodily fluids, including alcoholic beverages, coffee and tea, as well as moderation in the use of tobacco. Immoderation in any one particular direction favors the local development of malignant growths. ... I consider my own duty discharged in presenting the facts as I have found them, which lead to the conclusion that overnutrition is common in the case of cancer patients to a remarkable and exceptional degree, and that overabundant food consumption unquestionably is the underlying cause of the root condition of cancer in modern life."⁴⁷

     In Dietotherapy Clinical Application of Modern Nutrition, carcinoma of the stomach is described as essentially a surgical problem. A post-operative diet is required only after subtotal or total gastrectomy. "Once the patient has survived the operation and the convalescence has followed, the diet is very liberal and practically without restrictions. Patients who have suffered partial resections of the stomach can manage practically the same diet as normal persons."⁴⁸

     Kurt Stern and Robert Willheim wrote, "In regard to the relation between food quantity and tumor growth, the prevailing majority of authors have expressed the opinion that food restriction is followed by a depression of neoplastic growth."⁴⁹

     Like F. L. Hoffman (1937), E. Friedberger (1926), A. Tannenbaum (1940-42), W. Caspar (1938) and others expressed the same opinion and advocate moderation in food. A real therapy is nowhere to be found, although some authors are not as pessimistic as others.

     The different dietary propositions made at the International Congress for Totality Treatments of Tumors in 1952 were not put into practice, although many of the propositions had the correct approach.

     It is not necessary here to pay attention to the many proposals for applying one or more vitamins, or enzymes or those mixed with minerals. It would be a primitive concept to propose that the administration of one or another enzyme, vitamin or mineral or their composition would change or counteract the enzymatic disturbance or intracellular nature.

     Nearly 100 years ago, Otto Voelker wrote: "The degree to which a disease is open to therapeutic attack is inversely related to the number of remedies that we possess."⁵⁰ Nowhere is this more true than in cancer, for which treatments have been advanced by the thousands. The older ones included: crab or crab soup, no doubt an early application of the mistaken theory that "like cures like"; purgation; yeast treatment; different dietary regimes; hyperemia and its opposite; bloodletting; salves - first black and later, if this proved ineffectual, red ones; caustic pastes; hot iron-burnings; pipe clay; blood-cleansing teas; silver and gold; mercury; copper; phosphorus; arsenic - externally and internally; narcotics; compressions; colds-long before the recent venture into chemotherapy; acids; alkalis; diaphoresis; vegetable products of all sorts, including violet leaves and toads; auto-vaccine (Blumen-thal); polysaccharide (Hatt); implanting of erysipelas streptococci, etc.

     The modern cancer reemedies include: surgery, X-ray treatment; radium; ionized minerals (gold, phosphorus, iodine, cobalt); combinations of vitamins; hormones; Revici's Iodoacetate; Krebiozin, and the newest proposal of "creation of cancer focci on the skin as cancer of one organ shields other organs to a considerable extent."⁵¹

     As cancer author William H. Woglom writes, "If we have no cure of cancer today, surely it is not from lack of trying."⁴⁸

     To present a historical survey of all the therapeutic attempts to influence the cancer growth, or at least to alleviate pain, would be extremely difficult. A complete survey may run into thousands of enumerations, as old popular cancer remedies, based on natural observations, may be found in almost all countries of the world. Even in modem scientific therapy, almost all attempts have failed, whether in the fields of bacteriology, immunology or biochemistry. In summarizing the relations between tumors and enzymes, Kurt Stern and Robert Willheim said that "of the therapeutical uses of enzymes in tumor pathology it would be an extremely primitive concept if administration of one enzyme or the other were to be proposed as an effective means of counteracting an enzymatic disturbance of necessarily intracellular nature. As a matter of fact, no instance is known in general pathology, with the exception of gross intestinal deficiencies of enzymes, in which an enzyme therapy has proven useful (pepsin and trypsin)."⁵² Professor Leupold had some results by changing the "blood-chemismus - the cholesterin-sugar-phosphatic system."⁵³

     Peller brought up a theory for cancer cure in his book by saying, "cancer of one organ shields other organs to a considerable extent. A cured cancer leaves an increased resistance to the development of another primary tumor in some other part of the body. Although the nature of this resistance is unknown, its utilization for cancer control is possible. ... The primary tumor is a local manifestation of a general disposition to cancer."⁵⁴ Peller arrived at this notion from some observations in tuberculosis. It was concluded by several authors that tuberculosis of the skin (lupus) protects the other organs, especially the lungs, against the tuberculosis infection.

     A few words may be added to the above-mentioned contradictions in cancer treatment: scientists have skirted the nucleus of the problem throughout the centuries as described in the history of medicine. As soon as one of Nature's secrets is uncovered, apprehension and skepticism appear.

     The history of medicine is filled with tragic errors which allowed such a long time to elapse between the time of discovery of a basic principle and the actual medical application of the discovery for the good of mankind. To quote from a recent paper by Hammet, "Nowhere today is this delay more unhappily evident than in the field of cancer research. The accumulated data of Rous, Shope, Coley, Bittner, Strong, Andervont, Green, Greene, Williams, Taylor, Furth, Twombly, Cowdry, Diller, Bawden, Pirie, Stanley, Wyckoff, Kunitz, and others indicate beyond per-adventure the path for getting at something of practical benefit to the cancer patient of the future other than surgery and radium."⁵⁵

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