Essiac Essentials

What Is Essiac?
     

     
    Essiac is a simple formula, blending four commonly available and prepared herbs to make a decoction. The formula was developed by Rene Caisse, a
    Canadian nurse, using a recipe originally devised by an unknown Native American medicine man exclusively for an Englishwoman with breast cancer in Northern Ontario at the end of the nineteenth century.
    Essiac combines the entire dried and powdered Sheep sorrel plant (Rumex acetosella), chopped and dried Burdock root (Arctium lappa), the dried and powdered inner bark of the Slippery elm tree (Ulmus rubra ) and the dried and powdered root of the ornamental Turkey rhubarb plant (Rheum palmatum).
    It is important to note that Rene Caisse’s Essiac is a decoction. This should not be confused with an infusion — a beverage made like tea by adding boiling water to the green parts or flowers of plants and steeping them to extract their active ingredients. By contrast, decoctions are very strong — unlike the weak beverage teas commonly sold in teabags. To make a decoction, hard materials such as barks, roots and seeds must be boiled for some time in a covered container. Throughout this book, Essiac will sometimes be referred to as “the liquid” or “the tea”. This is because, when taken as recommended, one ounce of the decoction is mixed with two ounces of warm water to dilute it and it is then sipped as a tea.
    The Essiac decoction is not difficult to prepare. The individual herbs are not expensive to buy and 180g/6.5 ounces of the combined formula will supply one person, taking Rene Caisse’s recommended dose of one fluid ounce of Essiac each night, with sufficient for one year.

    During her lifetime, Rene Caisse was a source of inspiration and hope to many, but she did not advocate ‘lay’ people making the Essiac formula because she said she didn’t trust them either to make it or use it properly. She said many times that she’d have printed the formula in the newspapers but she knew that no one would follow it. Everybody would want to change it.
    With Rene no longer available to verify and correct it, the Essiac formula has been subject to seemingly endless debate and escalating misinformation. Some of what was essentially hearsay has become passively accepted as fact. As a result, the way in which the formula has been interpreted has given rise to major discrepancies on both sides of the Atlantic.
    Twenty years after her death and at the closing of the twentieth century, Essiac has come full circle. Now, more than ever before, it has become increasingly important that the emphasis be laid where it truly belongs — in the hands of individuals in need, who can make Essiac in their own kitchen, using their own utensils, rather than relying solely on larger organisations and commercial companies for supply. In the continuing quest for proven knowledge as opposed to naive and wishful belief, this book has endeavoured to set the reality against the myth, using the formula as verified by Rene Caisse’s close friend and helper, Mary McPherson, in her sworn affidavit dated December 23rd 1994, Bracebridge, Ontario. Mary continued to make Essiac for Rene’s surviving patients after her death.
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    Chapter 2

The Rene Caisse Story

     
    After Rene Caisse had refined her herbal recipe she named it using her family name spelt in reverse — Essiac. Essiac is now well-known throughout the world as a healing remedy, particularly efficacious in the treatment of cancer. It can also be used as a preventative for cancer and for other illnesses associated with a compromised immune system.
    Rene was born in Bracebridge, Ontario in Canada on August 11th 1888. She was the eighth of eleven children born to a French/Canadian family originating from Quebec. Her mother was the controlling influence on the family and was greatly admired and respected in the town.
    “She and my father raised their eight girls and three boys to love and fear God, and to believe that respect and love of our fellow man were more important than riches.”

    As the children grew up, they became involved in the family business, married and had children themselves. Rene always respected and loved her parents, but she was very different from her brothers and sisters. Coming from a large family, she had learned to keep her own counsel and was very protective of her private space. Naturally secretive, intriguing and enigmatic, she was attractive when she was young, though never a