Essiac Essentials

calls and letters. Rene had to have an extra telephone line installed to cope with all the calls. Primarily the article attracted the interest of The Canadian Cancer
    Research Foundation and The Cancer Institute in Toronto. Rene was cautioned not to treat any more people and an oncologist from Sault St. Marie, Ontario, was authorised to set up a human study for the formula using the cancer patients in his own clinic beginning almost immediately in August.
     Rene’s Kidney Tablets

     
     
    A small, almost defunct, pharmaceutical company based in Toronto approached Rene that month, promising to set up clinical studies on human patients all across Canada in return for exclusive rights to market Essiac. She was eighty-nine years old and at the end of a long and difficult life. She didn’t want the formula to die with her but she didn’t know how else to preserve it. Eventually she turned over a version of the formula to the Resperin Corporation of Toronto for the token sum of one dollar. Almost immediately she knew she had done the wrong thing but it was too late.
    The promised clinical studies never got off the ground and the trials set up in Sault St. Marie were terminated in three months, concluding that Essiac had no merit. Properly conducted and focused clinical studies over a trial period of several years had often been promised but were never formally carried out during Rene’s lifetime. Even the Sloan-Kettering studies were sporadic and not conclusive.
    After so many years, she had given up counting on anything. As she said,
    “My goal has been control of cancer and alleviation of pain. Diabetes, pernicious anaemia and arthritis are not curable but with insulin, liver extract and adrenal cortex extracts, these ‘incurables’ live out comfortable controlled life spans.”
     
     
    Rene Caisse — The Final Year
     
    A public forum held in the spring of her final year at the St. Lawrence Market Place in Toronto failed to have the formula for the tea publicly recognised. In Detroit, Michigan, a Class Action lawsuit brought to court in a bid to recognise the formula in the United States in June of that year was dismissed.
    Mary organised a big party in the Community Hall in Bracebridge for Rene’s ninetieth birthday in August, 1978. In the following month, Rene was a great success and totally at ease at a cancer convention for alternative therapies in Detroit where she found herself among sympathetic people who understood and recognised her for her work in giving an important remedy to the world.
    The following month she fell and broke her hip. She was in the Western Hospital in Toronto for several weeks. After this her condition began to deteriorate. One night in December 1978 she fell again. When Mary came by the next morning she could not get into the house. Rene was taken to the local hospital in Bracebridge where she died shortly afterwards on December 26th.
    She had written:
    “In my heart, I still hope and pray for a miracle but in my mind I only see closed doors. The disappointment is a tragedy that has made my last years sad and frustrating. I am grateful that God has given me the strength to retain my sanity.
    “Perhaps some other country will have the courage to find and bring help to suffering humanity, though I had hoped that it would be my own beloved Canada, or our neighbour, the United States of America.”
    Rene Caisse is well remembered in Bracebridge, Ontario and Rene Caisse Lane can be found in the middle of town. The Rene Caisse Room, located on the lower floor of the local museum contains some of her original paintings, framed photographs, a glass cabinet displaying equipment for making and administering her remedy, and some literature about her life’s work. The Caisse family plot in a town cemetery is in full view from the main highway and Sheep sorrel grows unchecked all over the site. The inscription on her gravestone reads:
     

     

     
     

Chapter Three

The Essiac Herbs
     

     
    Rene Caisse’s original Essiac formula contains four herbs. This chapter details their individual characteristics and uses.
     
     
    Sheep sorrel
     
    Sheep sorrel / Rumex acetosella
     
    A perennial belonging to the Polygonaceae or Buckwheat family, Sheep sorrel is found throughout northern Europe including Iceland and Scandinavia, in Canada, the United States and in the Drakensburgs of South Africa. Commonly known as Sourgrass or Dogeared sorrel in Canada and Gypsy rhubarb in southern England