Chapter 11: Local Treatment of Cancer

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We have given you the principal remedies for the internal treatment of cancer which is the most important of all, and now we will consider the local remedies. Most of the physicians who claim to be able to treat cancer in this country have a formula for an “escharotic paste” and with that paste they claim to be able to cure cancer in all its forms. This is the worst form of Quackery. I have elsewhere told you why it is impossible to permanently cure cancer by any form of purely local treatment. Cancer is NOT A LOCAL DISEASE. The growth is only the local manifestation of a constitutional disease, therefore you will see how silly it is to think that trying to remove the local growth would ever cure the cancer. Dr. Benjamin H. Broduax, of Louisiana, one of the most intelligent and deepest thinkers this country ever produced, wrote in a letter he sent to me just before his death as follows: — “I wrote them that there was always a cause behind an effect, and that the knife removed practically the effect without touching the cause.”

In my early life I used to depend much more upon local treatment, that is escharotic pastes, than in later years. By constant study and the testing of all remedies I could find for cancer I am learning to depend less and less on the escharotics but more and more upon internal remedies to cure cancer. You can find formulas most anywhere for these escharotic pastes; their name is legion. My old formula was as follows: —

Paste No. 1

Saturated solution Chloride Chromium,
Saturated solution Chloride Zinc, a. a. 3iiss.
Solid Ext. Sanguinaria,
Pulv. Sanguinaria, a. a. 3vi.
Glycerine, 3i.

Mix. This should be prepared when you have to use it, as it gets hard after a time. The saturated solution of chloride chromium is prepared by Prof. John Uri Lloyd, of Cincinnati, Ohio. It is the least painful of any caustic but does not go quite deep enough. It should be kept on hand for it is the remedy to apply when you have removed the growth and are healing up the sore. It is the best thing to use to touch the unhealthy granulations (proud flesh) when the sore seems to be healing too fast or becomes indolent. Touch the places with a camel’s hair brush wet in the above solution two or three times.

For small skin cancers upon the nose and forehead use paste No. 2, made as follows:

Paste No. 2
Pulv. Galangal root,
Chloride 7.inc, a. a. 3i.
Starch, 3ss.
Mix. Add water enough to make a thick paste.

Paste No. 3. This I use in most cases where I want to go deeper in the flesh as in cancer of the breast, lip, hand, foot, arm or back.

Paste No. 3
Solid Ext. (alcoholic) Sanguinaria, 3iv.
Chloride Zinc, 3xii.
Starch, 3i.
Red Saunders, 3ii.

Mix. The extract of sanguinaria should be the soft mass, not the dry solid extract. Add a little water if needed to soften the paste; if too thin add a little pulverized sanguinaria.

Paste No. 4. This is the same as No. 3 with this addition. I add to paste No. 3, when I am going to use it, equal parts of saturated solution of chloride zinc and a twenty-five per cent. solution of carbolic acid. When I am ready to treat the patient I add enough of the above mixture to Paste No. 3 to soften it and saturate it with the liquid.

All these pastes should be thoroughly rubbed up with your spatula until they are perfectly mixed and of the proper consistency to spread well and not run over on the healthy flesh. I use Paste No. 4 when I have a large, ulcerated growth in the breast, where I have to go down deep into the breast to get at the bottom of the diseased mass.

Having outlined (by careful examination of the diseased growth) the size of it, you spread adhesive strips all around the growth a half an inch to an inch wide to protect the healthy flesh. Spread your paste on soft white cloth (an old sheet is good). Cut the cloth the size of the diseased mass; when the paste is all spread cut it in a little all around with your scissors, so it will lay down smoothly over the growth. Now press it all down with a wad of absorbent cotton to make it adapt itself to every part of the diseased surface. Next place adhesive strips, one or two, lengthwise and crosswise to retain it in its place. Keep on the plaster twenty-four hours; then remove it and apply another. It is well each time you change the plaster to bathe the growth with warm water leaving a moist surface. The plasters should be continued until the patient tells you that the growth feels heavy, like a dead weight, When you press your fingers down upon the growth it feels HARD like the sole of your shoe. It has now been on long enough and you begin to poultice with your POULTICE POWDER made as follows: —

Poultice Powder
Pulv. Slippery elm,
Pulv. Flaxseed,
Pulv. Lobelia seed,
Pulv. Bayberry bark, a. a.

Mix. Sig. Put one or two teaspoonfuls of the powder into a cup, add boiling water enough to make a poultice. Stir it up well until you get all the lumps out of it. Then spread it on soft white cloth big enough to cover the growth and the red inflamed skin around it. Do this every two hours. Remember and have the patient bathe the skin around the growth every time they change the poultice with equal parts of Distilled Extract Witch Hazel and warm water. When the growth breaks loose and drops out on the poultice, if it looks healthy as if the cancer was all out, you may apply the “Yellow healing salve” made from the following prescription:

Yellow Healing Salve
Burgundy Pitch,
White Pine Turpentine,
Beeswax,
Mutton Tallow,
Olive 0il, a. a., 3i.
Melt, stir and when cool add Cosmoline, 3v.

Mix. Sig. Spread on soft white cloth and apply to the sore three times a day. It will draw out all the unhealthy pus (cancer juice) before it heals it up. If it draws too hard, causes smarting or much pain, add one part vaseline to three parts salve and apply as before. The above “yellow healing salve ” I have used in all the years of my practice and I have never found anything to equal it.

COMPOUND SYRUP SCROPHULARIA
(Cancer Syrup)

After many years of testing different remedies for the internal treatment of cancer to form a combination which could be dignified with the name “CANCER SYRUP” — a remedy that could be depended upon in the more advanced stages of cancer when the system has become saturated with the germs of cancer — I have devised the following formula. It has been the earnest study of my life to find such a combination which I could leave as a help to my brother physicians in their efforts to cure the more desperate forms of this disease. I have the utmost faith in the curative power of this combination. I have never mentioned this remedy: to any one and would not until I had thoroughly tested it in many difficult cases of genuine cancer so that I could conscientiously recommend it in my book on cancer. Great care should be taken to get fresh herbs to make the syrup. It is prepared as follows:

Scrophularia (Figwort) leaves and roots, 3xxxii.
Phytolacca root, 3viii.
Rumex crispus root, 3viii.
Celastrus scandens bark and root, 3iv.
Corydalis formosa root, 3ii.
Podophyllum root, 3iv.
Juniper berries, xiii.
Prickly ash berries, 3i.
Guiacum wood, 3ii.

Mix. Coarsely bruise the articles. Moisten with dilute alcohol and let them stand for two or three days. Then put in a steam displacement apparatus and pass through the vapor of three pints of alcohol; continue this displacement with the steam of water until the strength is exhausted. Set aside the three pints of tincture which passed first and evaporate the remainder to two pints. Mix these together and add syrup Ovi. Add oil sassafras q. s. to flavor it. Dose, one tablespoonful three times a day, or sufficient to keep the bowels regular every day.