New Light on the Cancer Problem
By David Paulson
The Alarming Increase of Cancer — Recent Researches That Point to Sure Relief By DAVID PAULSON, M. D.
Medical Superintendent of the Hinsdale, Illinois, Sanitarium The cancer plague, from a medical standpoint, is the livest and yet the most deadly problem that confronts the human race. God has permitted the hand of man to banish yellow fever from our fair land. Medical science is slowly but surely compelling malaria to retreat. Diphtheria has been robbed of its terrors, and the death rate from tuberculosis is decreasing year by year, while that from cancer is increasing at an amazing rate. Dr. Charles A. L. Reed, of Cincinnati, Ohio, formerly president of the American Medical Association, says: “I am not an alarmist, but I cannot shut my eyes to the facts that are forced upon me in my daily experience. That experience teaches me that cancer is increasing in this country literally by leaps and bounds. Tuberculosis causes more deaths than any other one disease. Cancer is now second on the list. In less than ten years, if present tendencies are permitted to continue, their positions in the death-dealing category will be reversed. More than sixty thousand people died from this malady alone in this country last year. There were twice as many more people who were afflicted with the disease, most of whom will die this year.” A recent bulletin of the Illinois State Board of Health says that one out of every twelve deaths in the state above the age of thirty is caused by cancer. In England, while the death rate from tuberculosis has been cut in two in the past generation, that from cancer has increased threefold. There are cities in Great Britain where the death rate from cancer is already greater than that from tuberculosis. Dr. Robert Bell, physician in charge of cancer research at Battersea Hospital, England, says: “Cancer is to a large extent the bitter fruit of our so-called civilization. We are of necessity compelled to come to the conclusion that cancer is one of the many evils for which civilization is solely responsible.” Dr. Roger Williams, a cancer expert of world-wide reputation, has shown that wealth, with its tendency to luxury and idleness, greatly increases the tendency to cancer. Dr. Ewing, another eminent authority, says that cancer chooses a notable portion of its victims among the well nourished and the indolent. Cancer is a growing penalty on a one-sided civilization. Dr. Bell furthermore declares that cancer is nature’s protest against disobedience, and is the penalty she imposes upon those who have ignored her teachings. Dr. Albert S. Gray, the popular health writer in the Chicago Daily News, says that a group of the most advanced physicians for a hundred years have testified that there is a close connection between cancer and dietetic errors. Dr. Evans, formerly health commissioner of Chicago, states that people who belong to families where cancer predominates should live abstemiously. More than twenty years ago, Dr. Banks, of London, suggested that the principal cause of cancer was the great increase in the consumption of animal food. Dr. L. Duncan Bulkley, the senior physician to the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital, has been a close student of this entire question for more than thirty years, and has naturally had a wide experience with cancer cases. He has recently written a notable book entitled “Cancer, Its Cause and Symptoms.” He asserts that the use of meat in England has doubled during the past generation, until now they consume 130 pounds for every man, woman, and child in the land; and during this same length of time, cancer has increased fourfold; while in Ireland, where the consumption of meat is only one third that of England, the deaths from cancer are only one half as great. He states that in Italy, which consumes the least meat of any European country, the cancer death rate is practically the lowest in Europe. He calls attention to the striking fact that in the United States, the consumption of meat has increased until the Bureau of Agriculture in Washington finds it has reached the excessive amount of 172 pounds for every man, woman, and child in our land. At the same time, cancer has increased so rapidly that in some of our large cities, it is now responsible for seven or eight per cent of all the deaths. In a recent paper read before the American Medical Association, Dr. Bulkley said: “In striking contrast to the enormous extent and increase of cancer in meat-eating communities may be mentioned the almost absence of the disease in regions where the diet is largely confined to the products of the ground. During a rather extensive trip through the far East, I was unable to see or even hear of any cancer, although I met a large number of medical men, and made inquiries in regard to the same in district hospitals, with a total of many thousands of patients. In Japan, Korea, China, the Philippines, India, Siam, and Egypt, I got the same response—that cancer is rarely seen among vegetarian people.” This observation by an eminent authority on the cancer problem is in harmony with the following significant words found in “Testimonies for the Church,” volume 9, page 159: “Flesh food has a tendency to animalize the nature, to rob men and women of that love and sympathy which they should feel for every one, and to give the lower passions control over the higher powers of the being. If meat eating were ever healthful, it is not safe now. Cancers, tumors, and pulmonary diseases are largely caused by meat eating.” Ehrlich, a famous German investigator, found that when mice live upon a rice diet, they cannot be inoculated with cancer; while mice living on a meat diet can be made to take cancer readily, and the cancerous tumors develop quickly, and continue to grow until they destroy the animals. He even found that when cancerous mice were placed upon a rice diet, the tumors ceased to grow, and in many cases disappeared. Russell, who has made a monumental study of this question, makes this interesting observation in his book “Preventable Cancer”: “The Russian Dukhobors have existed as a community about a century. They are plain-living, and do not eat flesh or stimulants. About seven thousand of them immigrated to Canada798when expelled from Russia. They refrain from fish, flesh, and fowl as food, and live on fruit, vegetables, and nuts. Cows are kept for milk. No tea nor coffee is drunk. Wholesome bread, jam, honey, and vegetable butter from sunflower seeds are eaten regularly. The houses are roomy, airy, and clean. The people are scrupulously clean, regular, and orderly. I have just heard from the manager that he has never known of any cancer among them.” Professor Madden, of Cairo, writes that it is the consensus of opinion among the medical men of Egypt that cancer is never found among the black races of that country who live almost entirely upon a vegetable diet, but is somewhat common among those who live and eat much more like the Europeans; and Russell, quoting Dr. Renner, of West Africa, says that cases of cancer occur among the descendants of liberated Africans who have adopted the European mode of living and consume large quantities of butchers’ meat. Russell writes: “I have brought forward much evidence to show the disastrous effect of the excess in diet, of stimulants, and of alcohol, especially in the form of beer, and of hot drug drinks, such as tea and coffee, a drug belonging to the class of potent vegetable poisons which is the ordinary daily drink of millions of people. Moreover, these drugs are usually drunk hot.” Dr. Bulkley notes the fact that the people in the United States consume one third of all the coffee produced, or more than Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain combined. Dr. Mayo, of Rochester, Minnesota, who has no doubt performed more surgical operations than any other man living, says that nearly one third of all the cancers of man are those of the stomach. He raises the question whether it is not possible that there is something in the habits of civilized man, in his cooking or the preparation of his food, that favors this condition; whether the taking of such hot foods does not have something to do with the development of cancer. He says that foods and drinks are often swallowed hotter than they can be held in the mouth, though the stomach is not so well protected as the mouth against the effect of heat; but as it does not have sensitive nerves, the injury is not immediately manifested by pain. Russell asserts that cancer has steadily and rapidly increased wherever there has been a steady and rapid increase in the consumption of rich foods and hot or toxic drinks—tea and coffee. He says that when natives among whom cancer does not occur, adopt this fare, they quickly become subject to the disease. AUTO-INTOXICATION FAVORS CANCER
Dr. Bulkley is convinced, after a vast experience with cancer cases, that there is a very close relationship between auto-intoxication, stagnation of the bowels, and cancer. Dr. Arbuthnot Lane, an English surgeon of world-wide reputation, says that cancer is invariably the last chapter in the story of chronic intestinal stagnation. Dr. Bell insists upon the following three points as a preventive of cancer: thorough mastication of food, a daily complete evacuation of the bowels, and living in a pure atmosphere. For the prevention of stagnation of the bowels, he recommends apples and carrots as especially excellent articles of diet, and genuine Graham bread, made of flour ground in an old-fashioned burr mill. He says the white bread so generally consumed is a poor substitute, and should be avoided.799 We are fortunate in having here in the vicinity of Hinsdale just such a mill, and can secure genuine Graham flour for those who desire it. Dr. Bulkley, in his recent book, records a number of cases of undoubted cancer in the early stages, where the disease disappeared when the patients were placed upon a strict vegetarian diet, with tea and coffee excluded, and proper attention was given to the bowels, and other hygienic measures were adopted. Dr. Bell reports a case in which the open air treatment was given, the bowels were thoroughly flushed every day, and the diet was restricted to non-cooked green garden stuff, vegetable juices, fruits, milk, and eggs beaten in milk; and within three months, all traces of the disease had disappeared. I personally recall a case of cancer where the surgeon snipped off a piece of the suspicious growth, sent it to three of the best laboratories in the United States, and all reported cancer. The patient had recently adopted a strict hygienic diet. As there was some delay in having the operation, when the time came, the growth was found to be disappearing, so the operation was postponed, and the patient is perfectly well to-day. There was at least one cure that could not be explained on the grounds of mistaken diagnosis. SURGERY, X-RAY, AND RADIUM
When the blood and the tissues have so nearly lost their vitality as to permit cancer to flourish, it is too much to expect, except occasionally, that even a thorough reformation will result in a cure. This article is written to induce tens of thousands who would otherwise have cancer within the next few years, to leave behind forever their juicy beefsteaks, and their toxic tea and coffee, and eat instead, plenty of fruits, green vegetables, and other wholesome foods containing the necessary “vitamines” and minerals that the blood needs, and that at the same time furnish sufficient bulk to stimulate the sluggish bowels. Stagnation of the human sewerage system is a more serious matter than a similar condition in the city sewerage system. Some cases that cannot be promptly benefited by diet alone can be helped by liquid paraffin. This is not a laxative, but acts merely as a lubricant. We are glad to supply it to those who cannot readily procure it at home. At our present stage of knowledge, unquestionably competent surgery, performed in the early stages, holds out the best hope for the cancer victim. Only let it not be forgotten that the same hygienic program which would have prevented cancer in the first place should now be instituted to prevent its recurrence. The same principle applies equally well when cancer is benefited by x-ray or radium. None of these things can cure the cancerous condition in the system. Unless the cause is removed, they can at best only shrivel up the growth, and thus postpone the evil day. Thus far, the so-called “sure cures” for cancer have all proved to be “a delusion and a snare”; and in view of the principles brought out in this article, they are likely to continue to be such, just as the sure cures for consumption were doomed to be failures. When we discovered that the consumptive needed fresh air to vitalize his blood, and nourishing food to build up his vitality, then we reached the real cause. Unquestionably the same principle holds good for cancer; and the quicker the public becomes thoroughly converted on this point, the sooner we shall see a mighty reformation, and people will begin to eat for health instead of eating for destruction and disease, as they do at present. A momentary gratification of a perverted appetite is a small recompense for the terrible penalty that nature too often imposes sooner or later in the way of torturing death by cancer, or a wrecked brain from a stroke of apoplexy, or crippled circulation from partial heart failure, or a wretched death resulting from Bright’s disease. Every intelligent physician knows that these chronic diseases are rapidly increasing in every part of the civilized world; and directly or indirectly, the root of them can be traced to dietetic errors and other wrong habits. It can be truthfully said of this generation, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Let those who have treated genuine dietetic reform as a joke, tremble as they consider how thin and ghastly is the jest, when all around them are the sad and suffering victims of violated law. We have the divine assurance that as we reform, and obey God’s natural law, He will add His special blessing, not only physically, but also spiritually. So come, let us return to Him.