Essiac Essentials

but there was much more material that came away outside of that.”
    December 1938 — patient very well and is very hopeful of a complete cure.
    Copy of a letter written to Miss Caisse by Mrs Douglas, Highland Creek, Ontario, December 9th, 1938.
     
    “Miss Rene Caisse
    Bracebridge, Ontario.
     
    “Dear Miss Caisse,
    “In reviewing the history of my illness, I wish to state that I have not felt well since my boy was born sixteen years ago, but more particularly during the past twelve years after having had a fall in a fire. I have had medical attention by the best of family physicians during all that time but not one of these doctors was able to diagnose the source of my illness nor would they recommend specialists at my request, as they felt they were fully confident of their ability to terminate my suffering.
    “During the past three years, I suffered untold agony with pains in my back for which doctors gave me opiates and nerve tonic, even though I had informed the doctors that I was functioning irregularly, similar to a state of menopause, at the early age of forty.
    “On March 16th, 1938, I experienced a most unnatural flow which continued from that date right through until October 1938, at which time I noticed a considerable cessation of my condition.
    “My doctor was attending me regularly. On June 27th, 1938, when he saw that I failed to respond to his treatment, he admitted that my condition needed hospitalisation. My husband took me to Dr. Frawley, chief gynaecologist of St. Michael’s Hospital, and he instantly diagnosed my case as cancer of the cervix and uterus, caused he thought by a chronic condition of unhealed lacerations at childbirth. Dr. Frawley advised hospitalisation for removal of tissue for verification of his diagnosis by the Pathological Department of Health but, as I was not well enough at the time to take ether, I went to my sister’s (at Markham) for a rest. She took me to her doctor’s office where he removed tissue from the affected parts which he took to the pathological department himself. The report came back that the tissues had shown malignant cancer.
    “The doctor advised hospitalisation, radium and deep X-ray treatment. He advised that I had only twenty per cent chance of a cure and that, if I didn’t take radium, my chances to live would be limited to approximately four years. Three of my friends, neighbour women, had had similar treatment and died within three years. They told me they were dying a death of fiery internal furnace. So, knowing of their untimely deaths and awful agony, I was determined to die comfortably if needs be by the inroads of cancerous growths rather than take radium and die as well in agony.
    “I heard of the Rene Caisse Cancer Clinic and started my treatments there in August 1938. I was an invalid, unable to do my own housework or eat, weighing 117 pounds and becoming weaker every day. But today, December 9th, thank God, I weigh 130 pounds, I eat three full-course meals a day, do my own housework as well as nurse my daughter, recently operated on for appendicitis. I have not had time to become wholly well, but I state definitely that I feel better and stronger since taking this treatment than during the past twelve years. When my doctor saw me last week, he was astounded at my vigorous appearance and radiant health. When I told him that your Caisse cancer treatment had performed the miracle, he immediately defended himself and Dr. Frawley by stating that I evidently did not have cancer at all, as my case must have been diagnosed incorrectly. It appeared to me that he said this only to discredit the benefits of your cancer treatments. But, what he does not know is that the pathological department definitely diagnosed the tissue taken from my cervix or uterus as malignant cancer and sent the result to another doctor.
    “I will subject myself to any medical examination that you may recommend in order to prove that your treatment is beneficial to suffering humanity who are deprived of its benefits by antagonistic doctors who are doing all in their power to discredit the merits of your cancer treatment.
     
    “Yours truly,
    (signed) Mrs T Douglas.”
     
    When Mrs Douglas testified at the Cancer Commission hearing, she was asked by the Chairman if there had been a subsequent biopsy. She replied that she had gone to be examined by Dr. S. Cosbie at the Toronto General Hospital just one week earlier.
    He had told her: “It doesn’t look like