Chapter 9: Have Patients Under Your Personal Care
Where many doctors make a big mistake is in trying to treat these cancer patients at a long range. It is absolutely necessary that you should have some place either in your own home or near by where you can have these patients under your eye every day, until such a time as you can feel sure they are on the high road to health. If you prescribe for them and send them home to follow up the treatment, they may or they may not follow your instructions. Complications may arise from time to time and your patient is left to the care of a doctor who does not know anything about the treatment of cancer and often times cannot treat successfully the most common ailments that may arise. Should your patient while at home meet with any accident requiring surgical treatment or have any acute disease it will in either case weaken the vitality of the patient and many times undo much of the good that has been accomplished by your treatment.
Unfortunately in many cases your patients wil1 meet with no encouragement from their family doctor and from their friends who come to tell them “Oh, you can’t be cured, it is sure to return. My doctor says there is no cure for cancer.” All this kind of talk has a depressing effect upon your patient, especially on those of a nervous temperament and who are easily influenced by those around them. Your patients need pleasant surroundings, cheerful society, and all the encouragement they can get. It is all important that those who are able should walk out every pleasant day. They need the air and also the exercise. Sometimes they will make excuses for not going out, but if they can come to their meals they can walk out and exercise.
Above all do not starve your patients. See that they get good nourishing food, for that, when properly digested, helps to make good blood. You should impress it upon your patients that they are coming under your treatment to get well and not to grow worse. Many patients have been tortured so by some form of local treatment and they fully expect that they have got to be very much worse before they get rid of their disease. This is a mistake. Impress upon their minds the fact that their GENERAL HEALTH MUST BE BETTER before the CANCER will begin to improve. This is the very foundation of a successful treatment of cancer.
Many a time I have seen cases of cancer where the patient looked better and felt better in a week from the time they began my treatment. The remedies had already begun to raise the nerve power, to build up the vitality of, the patient. The eye, the pulse and the tongue will tell you at once when the system of your patient is responding to your treatment. If you allow the vitality of your patient to GO DOWN you may rest assured that the cancer will take on a new lease of life and begin to GROW.
Many men who claim to treat cancer devote all their time and attention to the local condition and find out when it is too late what a big mistake they have made. Do not be deceived. Cancer is a “SLEEPING LION,” only waiting to spring up to life and action if you allow it to do so. This is the reason why a surgical operation will never cure cancer, because every time you put a knife into a cancer it only irritates it, arouses the sleeping lion and makes it grow just so much faster and hastens the day of the patient’s death.
Never experiment on your patient. Your business is to try to cure them. They have paid their good money and they are entitled to the best service you can give them. The nearer you can get the vitality of your patient to the normal standard of health the more positive you can be of a cure in the case. Do not forget this fact for it is the secret of a successful treatment of cancer. Any physician who is steeped with the idea that nothing but a SURGICAL OPERATION will do any good in cancer will never succeed with this treatment, or with any other. For “he that is convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” Be goes about the treatment of a case in a half hearted way that spells failure at the very start. On the other hand a doctor who has become disgusted with surgery as offering any chance of a cure, one who is willing to learn and wants to do something for the victims of cancer, will make a better success with it because his heart is in the work. Believe in yourself have confidence in your remedies, get after the disease with a determination to conquer it. You will remember in the boat race in Virgil “the crew won because they expected to win.”
Many a time in my professional life when things looked bad with some case I had and other doctors had given up the fight I went after the disease with a fixed determination that I would conquer it and I did. You must think of what one prominent man said, “The Almighty hates a Quitter.” In some of the greatest battles in the world’s history victory has been snatched from apparent defeat by the general who would not be conquered. I shall watch with deep interest your battles with this disease and I shall rejoice with you when success crowns your efforts, just as much as if it was my own case. We are enlisted in a good cause and the “Father of us all” will bless our efforts when we do our part. Now in the sere and yellow leaf of old age I look back with intense satisfaction over many a hard fought battle with cancer in some doctor’s wife, some doctor’s mother, some good doctor himself, or some dear friend that by the blessing of Divine Providence was restored to health when death from cancer seemed staring them in the face. It is a source of joy and gratitude to me that I have been the humble instrument in the hands of the GREAT PHYSICIAN to carry on the work of saving these victims of cancer from an untimely grave. When my life’s work is done may some man be raised up to take my place and carry on this great work for poor suffering humanity. There are 50,000 victims of cancer dying every year in America; truly the “harvest is great and the laborers are few.”
Good, earnest, conscientious men are needed to take hold of this specialty and master it. It is a grand opportunity for a doctor to do an immense amount of good and win fame and fortune in his profession. Physicians are needed not only to try and cure such cases but also as consulting physicians to help other doctors to cure their cases.
I am always ready and willing to help a doctor who is in earnest and wants help but I am too busy and life is too short to waste my time on doctors who think they know it all and no one can teach them anything. Such men are to be pitied but I pity their patients a great deal more. When a physician is willing to be taught and is ambitious to do things in his profession, I can help him as I have many others. Your profession, your alma mater, your family, your country demands the best there is in you. Are You doing your best? Or, are you just contented to drift along at the tail end of the profession when you might be in the front ranks?
THE TREATMENT OF CHRONIC DISEASES
One reason why so many doctors have failed to make a success of the treatment of cancer by medicine is their ignorance of the successful treatment of Chronic Diseases. As I have mentioned elsewhere, you seldom meet with an uncomplicated case of cancer, and unless a physician knows how to meet each complication as it arises he will not make a success of the medical treatment of cancer. An experience of several years in general practice will give him self-reliance and much general know1edge of his profession. A working knowledge of the materia medica, not the materia medica of Hare, Ellingwood or Kent, but the whole realm of drug action must be studied by the doctor who wants to succeed and do something for these victims of cancer.
To help our physicians to a better understanding of the definite treatment of not only acute but also chronic diseases, I have written a book under the title “DEFINITE MEDICATION.” It gives clear cut indications for each remedy. It tells the reader definitely what to do for each diseased condition of our bodies. Many of our text-books of to-day say you may use this remedy or that remedy; that Dr. So and So has used this or that drug. There is always an element of uncertainty about all the treatment. Page after page is taken up with the technical part of the disease but only a small paragraph is given to the treatment. The regular school seems to have lost faith in their remedies and have resorted to serums to heal the sick. If ever there was time that such a book as “DEFINITE MEDICATION” was necessary it is to-day to stem the tide of medical nihilism and Drugless healing. A doctor must be taught to believe in his remedies by showing him how and when to use them and what he can do with them. When you can prove to a physician that your remedies will actually do more for the sick than his will you have secured his confidence. Never argue with a brother physician or abuse him or the school of medicine he represents. Facts, results, are the strongest argument to batter down the walls of his prejudice. The book on “DEFINITE MEDICATION” is a companion volume to this book on “CANCER” and the doctor who is preparing himself for the treatment of cancer needs both of the above books, and he needs to study them thoroughly. Every chapter in these two books is a lesson and forms a part of the course of instruction in the treatment of cancer.