Essiac Essentials

years without further treatments.
    With Dr Fisher’s encouragement, Rene began experimenting in her makeshift basement laboratory. Using mice inoculated with human carcinoma, she tested decoctions of each herb individually until the eight original herbs were gradually modified down to the four in the recipe as we know it today — i.e. Sheep sorrel, Burdock root, Slippery elm inner bark and Turkey rhubarb root. When isolated, the Sheep sorrel appeared to act almost immediately on the physiology of cancerous tumours. It was made up separately into a decoction and injected intramuscularly near the site of the primary tumour — i.e. it might be injected around the groin to treat cancer of the uterus or the cervix. The other three herbs were administered orally.

     
    Medical Interest in Essiac Grows
     
    On October 27th 1926, eight doctors signed a petition directed to the Department of National Health and Welfare in Ottawa asking that Rene should be allocated the facilities to formally conduct an independent research study to investigate Essiac. The Department of Health and Welfare replied by sending two doctors to have her arrested for ‘practicing without a license’. When they found that she was working with nine of the most respected physicians in Toronto, arrangements were made for her to begin experimenting on mice at the Christie Street Veterans’ Hospital in Toronto.
    Dr. J. A. McInnes was supportive of Rene’s work and arranged for her to meet Dr. Frederick Banting, already known worldwide for his discovery of insulin, at the Department of Medical Research at the University of Toronto. Armed with detailed records and statements, x-rays and photographs, she hoped this might be the opportunity to convince the medical profession that Essiac genuinely had merit and was worthy of further investigation. After a careful examination of the evidence, he sat quietly for a few minutes before saying,
    “Nurse Caisse, I will not say you have a cure for cancer, but you have more evidence of a beneficial treatment for cancer than anyone else in the world.”
    He went on to advise her to apply to the university for facilities to improve on the research, even offering to work with her in his own laboratory there. But the offer depended on Rene revealing the identity of the full formula and didn’t guarantee that she would be able to continue personally with her research. She also realised that ‘they’ would then have the formula which could simply be filed in the archives and forgotten, and her application to do independent research could still be refused. So she turned down Dr. Banting’s offer.
    Lacking the additional status of being a registered medical practitioner, she was well aware that she was in no position to be professionally recognised, honoured or rewarded for her work. And to be properly recognised was important to Rene. She had the willingness and the courage to research something new and potentially controversial but she was dealing with a professional hierarchy that was predominantly male and she was unprepared for the level of resistance and sometimes open opposition that she would encounter. Rene craved emotional stability and approval. When she didn’t get it, she reacted in fear. Obstinate and uncompromising, with her back to the wall, she would attack rather than be attacked and for the rest of her life she held on to the one thing she knew she could protect — the secret of the formula.
     
     
    The Founding of the Bracebridge Clinic
     
    For several years Rene continued to work her twelve-hour shifts as a nurse during the day, spending most evenings absorbed in research and cancer cases. Inevitably the pressure of work began to take its toll. In 1927 she gave up her general nursing to concentrate solely on terminal patients. When tenants in her apartment building complained about the number of people lining up at her door, Rene decided to move out of Toronto to Northern Ontario where accommodation was much less expensive. She frequently returned to the city to assist doctors with animal studies at Christie Street Hospital and to treat recovering cancer cases with Essiac. Donations helped Rene to carry on with her work.
    When her mother became ill around 1929, Rene treated her with Essiac, both in the form of injections and as a decoction, telling her that the doctor had ordered it as a tonic rather than revealing that she had been diagnosed with cancer. Rene’s mother lived for another