Black Salve for Skin Cancers

Balm of Gilead Cancer Salve (aka Black Salve, a folk remedy)

Legal Disclaimer: No claims can be made about Balm of Gilead.
This instructional document has been prepared as a narration of what users have reported throughout the last 30 years to be the most effective way of usage, as well as reported results. It is not intended as a scientific study and it's not offered as endorsed by the AMA or FDA.

Historical Background:

In 1890, Tom McCrorey was diagnosed as having incurable, cancerous tumors on his neck. Physicians refused to operate, not wanting to risk the jugular vein. Tom said he paid attention to a repeated dream that came to him about how to make a medicine to cure himself. He obtained the elements and herbs for the medicine from some gypsies traveling through Texas at the time, mixed up a black salve and applied it to his tumors. In less then a month, Tom was healed and went on to live another 70 years. Over his live time he shared the recipe only with an old friend. After Tom's long life, his son and grandson sought out the old friend who taught them how to make Black Salve.

The grandson started a company in the 1960's, ordered some tests at the University of Colorado, and the vet college at Ft. Collins tested the salve on all viruses known at the time. They discovered that the salve killed all of them (viri) on contact. With one application, sarcoids on horses (similar to skin cancer) had an 80% cure and two applications achieved 100%.

For many years, BS has been used to cure cancer eye in cows, save herds of calves from early viral diseases, treat sarcoids on horses and abnormal tissue growths in all kinds of pets. By word of mouth ranchers, homesteaders, rodeo people and other folks used it on external cancer, tumors, and growths on themselves. Some successfully treated gangrene and even leprosy.

Tom's son, Howard, was the first to use the salve internally. He had been diagnosed with stomach cancer and he took the first dose in a capsule without telling his doctors the night before surgery. Surgery was postponed in the morning because he was running a fever which continued for several days. On the fifth day, Howard passed a large quantity of black, vile smelling feces - apparently the growth itself.  When doctors took new x-rays the cancer was gone. Howard lived another 25 years without the stomach cancer ever recurring. H2 decades later he used the salve to cure himself of bone cancer.

Howard provided the salve to thousands of people and accepted donations from those who could afford it to cover shipping and ingredients cost. In his seventies, he got caught in a blizzard and died, but several close relatives carried on the work.

RECIPE:

25% Galangal root powder (3 TBS)
25% Bloodroot (3 TBS)
50% Zinc Chloride (6 TBS)

Set zinc chloride in an uncovered bowl to liquefy. Depending on heat and humidity, that may take 1.5-4 days. Then add remaining herbs and stir thoroughly. It will be thin at first but will thicken up.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE Topical Use:

B.o.G. is not a gentle healer. In many reported cases, it is a relentless substance which hunts down and penetrates all abnormal  tissue. Pain, swelling, and sometimes fever is associated during its use.  Animals seem to mind it less than people. Almost all report re-growth of either healthy tissue or scar tissue. Half of the people reported a moderate or heavy scar. If you can't tolerate scar tissue, consider castor oil and vitamin E ointment to help with healing the skin (NOTE: We know Helichrysum e.o works better than vitamin E, don't we?)

The following are recommendations based on what the majority of users have found to be effective. These recommendations describe the absolute MINIMUM doses. It cannot be stressed enough that B.o.G. is VERY POTENT.  Do NOT assume that if a little works more will be better. Use the smallest dose and increase only if truly seems necessary, more will possibly extend the healing period much longer than needed. Everyone is different, so proceed with caution. Do NOT overdo it! This salve will call a burning sensation if there is cancer present. Begin with a small amount of salve on ONE cancer and follow the directions. Some people are able to remove several cancers at once, others cannot. You'll want to learn your own tolerance for the burning, as well as how quickly your body is able to remove the toxins which will be released, so begin SLOWLY.

Once you have established a tolerance level, clean the affected area and apply a liberal amount of salve. Cover with a bandage and leave alone for 24 hours. If cancer is present, you will feel the burning and a white scab will begin to form. If it is not cancerous, there should be no significant effect. If pain is too severe, only leave on for eight hours, wash off and cover with vitamin E ointment and cover with a bandage.

(Note: Again, I'd use aloe gel with C-6 herbs infused in castor and Meadowfoam e.o., thickened with Propolis rich beeswax)

Remove the bandage at the end of 24 hours, rinse thoroughly with hydrogen peroxide (food grade is best) on a cotton ball, cover well with a softening salve or ointment, or castor oil. If you feel that you should apply another layer of B.o.G, it is OK, just follow the above directions.  Then after 24 hrs remove , clean, and keep bandaged.

Twice a day clean the edges to keep them loose and free of pus, do not let a hard scab form. 5-7 days later should show the core loosening up and trying to work its way out (if you think this is gross, you can BET on it).
Swelling will most likely occur and the cancer will be painful and/or itch.  This is normal, and the growth will change color after the first day and may even become 'dead white'. There will sometimes be pus as the body ejects the mass, just keep it clean and keep changing the bandage until the area is healed.

More than two applications do not seem to be necessary for external growths. More applications cause increased pain and longer healing time.  Do not try to pull the growth out or force it in any way, the roots must come out or dissolve! Let it do its own thing, it WILL happen, be patient!  After the core comes out you will have a hole in your flesh and you may even see muscle, but it normally doesn't bleed. Keep it clean, soft and covered until the core area is filled in and new skin has formed.  Colloidial silver can also be used before you put a new bandage on, this will help keep any infection from developing (Note: I'd use peoples paste at this point: equal amounts of powdered goldenseal root, myrrh resin, slippery elm - substitute the normally used 4th herb, comfrey (we don't WANT it to close just yet) with propolis for its anti-everything and analgesic properties)

Internal Use:

• Internal cancers of all known body zones have dissolved under the onslaught of B.o.G, it hunts down and kills abnormal tissue wherever it is:
• Colon and uterine cancer: 1 internal dosing plus using enemas or douche (one quart water, one full 'dried pea' volume of B.o.G).
• Brain cancer should be monitored by a professional because of the swelling that will occur. It may have to be relieved by a surgical hole being placed in the skull to release the pressure.
• Breast cancer has been healed with both external and internal applications.
• Emphysema, AIDS and viruses also seem to come under subjection to B.o.G.

Specific Directions:

For the first 20 days, take mornings and evenings after a meal.  It is somewhat acidic having a ph like vinegar and could make you nauseated if taken on an empty stomach. Use only wood or plastic utensils when handling it. Lift out enough B.o.G. to make a ball HALF the size of a dried pea.  Pack the half pea dose into a gelatin capsule and swallow.

What can you expect?

Lymphomas, such as appear on the neck or arm, may change from the texture of a hard lump to rather soft, pliable, even squishy. You may continuously run a low fever. Sweat, urine and feces may be darker than usual and have offending odor. At day 20, it is wise to have your physician take a biopsy or test your cancer for malignancy. For many, but not all people, the test reveals that the cancerous tissue is present, but dead.  After the first 20 days, a great deal of zinc has been built into your system, it is prudent to take a complete five day break from the salve.  During these 5 days double your doses of vitamins and minerals to help balance the system. If you think illness or growth is still present, take B.o.G. for a second 20 day period, just as directed above. Up to 4 circles can be done if needed. After each circle supplement your diet with vitamins and minerals, fresh clean filtered water, organic veggies and fruit. Take extra vitamin C and avoid caffeine and alcohol.

WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING
BoG CONTAINS HERBS THAT ARE LISTED AS POISONOUS BY THE FDA. IT ALSO CONTAINS ZINC CHLORIDE, WHICH IS VERY  CAUSTIC. DO NOT GET INTO EYES, KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN. IF ACCIDENTAL CONSUMPTION OCCURS, GIVE ACTIVATED CHARBOAL ORALLY IN POWDER FORM MIXED WITH WATER AND SLOWLY DRINK AS NEEDED.

USE EXTREME CAUTION!!!

Black Paste Ingredient - Galangal profile Galangal(Alpinia officinarum) (HANCE.)

Family: N.O. Zingaberaceae or Scilaminae Synonyms---Galanga. China
Root. India Root. East India Catarrh Root.
Lesser Galangal. Rhizoma Galangae. Gargaut. Colic Root. Kaempferia Galanga.
Part Used---Dried rhizome.
Habitat---China (Hainan Island), Java.

Description---The genus Alpinia was named by Plumier after Prospero Alpino, a famous Italian botanist of the early seventeenth century.

The name Galangal is derived from theArabic Khalanjan, perhaps a perversion of a Chinese word meaning 'mild ginger.' The drug has been known in Europe for seven centuries longer than its botanical origin, for it was only recognized in 1870, when specimens were examined that had been found near Tung-sai, in the extreme south of China, and later, on the island of Hainan, just opposite. The name of Alpinia officinarum was given to the herb, as the source of Lesser Galangal. The Greater Galangal is a native of Java (A. Galanga or Maranta Galanga), and is much larger, of an orange-brown colour, with a feebler taste and odour.

It is occasionally seen at London drug sales, but is scarcely ever used. There is also a resemblance to A. calcarata.The herb grows to a height of about 5 feet, the leaves being long, rather narrow blades, and the flowers, of curious formation, growing in a simple, terminal spike, the petals white, with deep-red veining distinguishing the lippetal.

The branched pieces of rhizome are from 1 ½ to 3 inches in length, and seldom more than ¾ inch thick. They are cut while fresh, and the pieces are usually cylindrical, marked at short intervals by narrow, whitish, somewhat raised rings, which are the scars left by former leaves. They are dark reddish-brown externally, and the section shows a dark center surrounded by a wider, paler layer which becomes darker in drying. Their odor is aromatic, and their taste pungent and spicy. They are tough and difficult to break, the fracture being granular, with small, ligneous fibers interspersed throughout one side. The drug is exported, chiefly from Shanghai, in bales made of split cane, plaited, and bound round with cane. The root has been used in Europe as a spice for over a thousand years, having probably been introduced by Arabian or Greek physicians, but it has now largely gone out of use except in Russia and India. Closely resembling ginger, it is used in Russia for flavoring vinegar and the liqueur 'nastoika': it is a favorite spice and medicine in Lithuania and Esthonia. Tartars prepare a kind of tea that contains it, and it is used by brewers. The reddishbrown powder is used as snuff, and in India the oil is valued in perfumery.

Constituents---The root contains a volatile oil, resin, galangol, kaempferid, galangin and alpinin, starch, etc. The active principles are the volatile oil and acrid resin. Galangin is dioxyflavanol, and has been obtained synthetically. Alcohol freely extracts all the properties, and for the fluid extract there should be no admixture of water or glycerin.  Medicinal Action and Uses---Stimulant and carminative. It is especially useful in flatulence, dyspepsia, vomiting and sickness at stomach, being recommended as a remedy for sea-sickness. It tones up the tissues and is sometimes prescribed in fever. Homoeopaths use it as a stimulant.  Galangal is used in cattle medicine, and the Arabs use it to make their horses fiery. It is included in several compound preparations, but is not now often employed alone. The powder is used as a snuff for catarrh.

Dosage---From 15 to 30 grains in substance, and double in infusion.
Fluid extract, 30 to 60 minims.

Blood Root (Sanguinaria canadensis)

Family: Papaveraceae Other Names: Red Root, Red Indian Paint, Tetterwort, Blood root, Indian paint, Indian plant, pauson, red paint root, red puccoon, red root, sanguinariat Parts Used: Dried rhizome ActiveCompounds: Isoquinoline alkaloids, including sanguinarine (~1%), chelerythrine, sanguidaridine, oxysanguinaridine, sanguilutine, berberine, coptisine, chelilutine, protopine, sanguidimerine, sanguirubine, a- and b-allocryptopine and others.

Remedies For: Expectorant, anti-spasmodic, emetic, cathartic, nervine, cardio-active, topical irritant. Blood root is mainly used in the treatment of bronchitis. Whilst the stimulating properties show in its power as an emetic and expectorant, it demonstrates a relaxing action on the bronchial muscles. It thus has a role in the treatment of asthma, croup and also laryngitis.

However, by far the most important contribution Sanguinaria has to makeis in chronic congestive conditions of the lungs including chronic bronchitis, emphysema and bronchiectasis. It acts as a stimulant in cases of deficient peripheral circulation. It may be used as a snuff in the treatment of nasal polypi.

Description: Native of N. America and Canada, bloodroot is a small perennial plant, about 6 inches high, found in shaded, rich soils. The finger-thick rootstock contains a red juice when fresh; when dried it is yellow inside and brown outside. The leaves are basal, each coming from a bud on the rootstock; they are cordate or reniform in shape, palmately veined and lobed. It bears a white flower with 8 to 12 petals arranged in two or more whorls.

Dosages: Decoction: Put l teaspoonful of the rhizome in a cup of cold water, bring to the boil and leave to infuse for l0 minutes. This should be drunk three times a day.

Tincture: take 1-2 ml of the tincture three times a day.

Combinations : Blood root is excellent when used in combination with Horehound and Elecampane for congestive complaints. In pharyngitis it combines well with Red Sage and a pinch of Cayenne. Safety: Large doses are sedative and overdoses can be fatal.

DO NOT USE WITHOUT MEDICAL SUPERVISION. NOT RECOMMENDED.
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Sanguinaria canadensia (Blood root)

Therapeutic Actions:

• Antibacterial
• Antiviral
• Cardioactive
• Emetic
• Expectorant
• Relaxes bronchial muscles
• Stimulates peripheral circulation
• Uncouples oxidative phosphorylation and intercalate with DNA Clinical

Indications:

• Aphthous stomatitis
• Asthma
• Bronchitis
• Laryngitis
• Nasal polypi

Contraindications:

• Pregnancy due to the uterine effects of berberine, chelerythrine and protopine

Drug/Nutrient Interaction:

• Limited data Chemical

Constituents:

• Isoquinoline alkaloids: Berberine Chelerythrine Chelilutine Chelirubine Coptisine Oxysanguinaridine Protopine Sanguidaridine Sanguidimerine Sanguilutine Sanguinarine Sanguirubine a-and B-allocryptopine

Toxicity Symptoms:

• Diarrhea
• Dilated pupils
• Headaches
• Increased expectoration
• Muscular relaxation
• Nausea Cold extremities
• Vomiting
• Death by cardiac failure

Treatment:

• Charcoal
• Maintain fluid and electrolyte balance

On cancer but had a Zinc Chloride usage in it.

© Richard Walters (Excerpted from Options: The Alternative Cancer Therapy Book)

Harry Hoxsey

For over three decades, Harry Hoxsey (1901-1974), a self-taught healer, cured many cancer patients using an herbal remedy reportedly handed down by his great-grandfather. By the 1950s, the Hoxsey Cancer Clinic in Dallas was the world's largest private cancer center, with branches in seventeen states. Born in Illinois, the charismatic practitioner of herbal folk medicine faced unrelenting opposition and harassment from a hostile medical establishment. Nevertheless, two federal courts upheld the "therapeutic value" of Hoxsey's internal tonic. Even his archenemies, the American Medical Association and the Food and Drug Administration, admitted that his treatment could cure some forms of cancer. A Dallas judge ruled in federal court that Hoxsey's therapy was "comparable to surgery, radium, and x-ray" in its effectiveness, without the destructive side effects of those treatments. But in the 1950s, at the tail end of the McCarthy era, Hoxsey's clinics were shut down. The AMA, NCI, and FDA organized a "conspiracy" to "suppress"a fair, unbiased assessment of Hoxsey's methods, according to a 1953 federal report to Congress. Hoxsey's Dallas clinic closed its doors in 1960, and three years later, at Hoxsey's request, Mildred Nelson, R.N., his long-time chief nurse, moved the operation to Tijuana, Mexico.

The Bio-Medical Center, as the clinic is now called, treats all types of cancer, with Nelson overseeing a staff of fully licensed medical doctors and support personnel. The records indicate that many patients, some arriving with late stages of the disease, have been helped and even completely healed of cancer by the nontoxic Hoxsey therapy, which today combines internal and external herbal preparations with a diet, vitamin and mineral supplements, and attitudinal counseling.

The medical orthodoxy labeled Harry Hoxsey "the worst cancer quack of the century." His herbal medicine was denigrated as worthless, simply "a bottle of colored water" containing extracts of useless backyard weeds.  FDA officials would go to patients' houses, intimidate them, tell them they were being duped by a quack, and take away their Hoxsey medicines. The American Cancer Society added the Hoxsey therapy to its blacklist of Unproven Methods in 1968, using its customary phraseology about the lack of any evidence that the treatment works.

Yet no representative of the ACS has ever visited the Bio-Medical Center or scientifically tested the Hoxsey remedies. Hoxsey repeatedly urged the AMA and NCI to conduct a scientific investigation of his formulas, but his pleas went unanswered. Instead, his practice was outlawed, the FDA banning the sale of all Hoxsey medications in 1960. His therapy was driven out of the country by a close-minded medical fraternity that continues to view inexpensive, nontoxic herbal medicine as a direct competitive threat.

Today we know that Hoxsey's plant-based remedies contain naturally occurring compounds with potent anticancer effects. According to eminent botanist James Duke, Ph.D., of the United States Department of Agriculture, all of the Hoxsey herbs have known anticancer properties.  ~ All of them are cited in Plants Used Against Cancer, a global compendium of folk usage of medicinal plants compiled by NCI chemist Jonathan Hartwell.  Furthermore, Duke noted, the Hoxsey herbs have long been used by Native American healers to treat cancer, and traveling European doctors picked up the knowledge and took it home with them to treat patients.

Hoxsey treated external cancers with a red paste made of bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis~a common wildflower-mixed with zinc chloride and antimony sulfide. The rootstock of bloodroot, a spring-blooming flower, contains an alkaloid, sanguinarine, that has powerful anti-tumor properties.

North American Indians living along the shores of Lake Superior used the red sap from bloodroot to treat cancer. Drawing on Indian lore, Dr. J. W. Fell, working at Middlesex Hospital in London in the 1850s, developed a paste made of bloodroot extract, zinc chloride, flour, and water.

Applied directly to a malignant growth, Dr. Fell's paste generally destroyed it within two to four weeks. In the 1960s, various teams of doctors reported the complete healing of cancers of the nose, external ear, and other organs using a paste made of bloodroot and zinc chloride-a mixture virtually identical to Hoxsey's.2 The American Medical Association condemned Hoxsey's "caustic pastes" as fraudulent in 1949, even though a prominent Wisconsin surgeon, Dr. Frederick Mohs, in 1941 had used a red paste identical to Hoxsey's to fix cancerous tissue that he surgically removed under complete microscopic control.3 Medical historian Patricia Spain Ward reported "provocative findings of antitumor properties" in many of the individual Hoxsey herbs when she investigated the Hoxsey regimen in 1988 for the United States Congress's Office of Technology Assessment.4 The basic ingredients of Hoxsey's internal tonic are potassium iodide and such substances as licorice, red clover, burdock root, stillingia root, barberis root, pokeroot, cascara, prickly ash bark, and buckthorn bark.  Ward noted that "orthodox scientific research has by now identified antitumor activity" in most of Hoxsey's plants.

For example, two Hungarian scientists in 1966 reported "considerable antitumor activity" in a purified fraction of burdock. Japanese researchers at Nagoya University in 1984 found in burdock a new type of desmutagen, a substance that is uniquely capable of reducing mutation in either the absence or the presence of metabolic activation. This new property is so important, the Japanese scientists named it the B-factor, for "burdock factor."5 Hoxsey himself believed that his therapy normalized and balanced the chemistry within the body. Like many other holistic healers, he considered cancer to be a systemic disease, not a localized one. Cancer, he wrote, "occurs only in the presence of a profound physiological change in the constituents of body fluids and a consequent chemical imbalance in the organism." His herbal medicines are intended to restore the original chemical balance to the body's disturbed metabolism, creating an environment unfavorable to cancer cells, which cease to multiply and eventually die.6 The herbal remedies are said to strengthen the immune system and to help carry away wastes and toxins from the tumors that the herbal compounds caused to necrotize. While this theory may be inexact, current research appears to be vindicating Hoxsey, or at least showing that his method merits a thorough, unbiased investigation by the medical orthodoxy.

Mildred Nelson was first introduced to the Hoxsey approach in 1946, when her mother, Della Mae Nelson, underwent the Hoxsey therapy for cancer.  Mildred, a conventionally trained nurse from Jacksboro, Texas, believed Hoxsey was a quack, so she went to Dallas to try to talk Della Mae out of her foolishness. Instead, she ended up taking a job at Hoxsey's clinic as a nurse. Her mother recovered and is alive and well today. Mildred's father was also treated by Hoxsey for a recurrence of cancer in the eye socket, having had one cancerous eye removed earlier. He became cancer-free and remained so until his death in 1957 from meningitis.

According to Hoxsey's autobiography, You Don't Have to Die (see Resources), his family's healing saga began in 1840 when Illinois horse breeder John Hoxsey, his great grandfather, watched a favorite stallion recover from a cancerous lesion on its leg. The horse, put out to pasture to die, grazed on one particular clump of shrubs and flowering plants and healed itself.  John Hoxsey picked samples of these plants, experimented with them, and formulated an herbal liquid, a salve, and a powder. He used these medications to treat cancer, fistula, and sores in horses that breeders brought from as far away as Indiana and Kentucky. The herbal formulas were handed down within the family, and Harry's father, John, a veterinary surgeon, began quietly treating human cancer patients. From the age of eight, Harry served as his father's trusted assistant. After years on the road as an itinerant healer, he opened the first Hoxsey Cancer Clinic in Dallas in 1924.

Thus began a protracted battle pitting Harry Hoxsey, an ex-coal miner and Texas oilman whose family traced its lineage to Plymouth Colony, against the American medical establishment. Hoxsey was arrested more times than any person in medical history, usually for practicing medicine without a license. But no cancer patient ever testified against him. On the contrary, his patients would gather at the jail in a show of support, hastening his release. Senators, judges, and some doctors endorsed his anticancer treatment. Although the colorful, flamboyant healer fit the stereotyped image of a quack, legions of supporters, once gravely ill with cancer, said they owed their lives and continued well-being to him.

Finally, in 1954, an independent team of ten physicians from around the United States made a two-day inspection of Hoxsey's Dallas clinic and issued a remarkable statement. After examining hundreds of case histories and interviewing patients and ax-patients, the doctors released a signed report declaring that the clinic. . . is successfully treating pathologically proven cases of cancer, both internal and external, without the use of surgery, radium or x-ray.

Accepting the standard yardstick of cases that have remained symptom-free in excess of five to six years after treatment, established by medical authorities, we have seen sufficient cases to warrant such a conclusion.

Some of those presented before us have been free of symptoms as long as twenty-four years, and the physical evidence indicates that they are all enjoying exceptional health at this time.

We as a Committee feel that the Hoxsey treatment is superior to such conventional methods of treatment as x-ray, radium, and surgery. We are willing to assist this Clinic in any way possible in bringing this treatment to the American public.

But the treatment was denied to the American public. In 1924, according to Hoxsey's autobiography, Dr. Malcolm Harris, an eminent Chicago surgeon and later president of the AMA, had offered to buy out the Hoxsey anticancer tonic after watching Hoxsey successfully treat a terminal patient.  Hoxsey would get 10 percent of the profits, according to the offer, but only after ten years. The AMA would set the fees, keep all the profits for the first nine years, then reap 90 percent of the profits from the tenth year on.  The alleged offer would have given all control to a group of doctors including AMA boss Dr. Morris Fishbein.  Hoxsey refused the offer, or so he claims. The AMA denies that any such incident ever occurred. In any event, two things are certain: The "terminal" cancer patient, police Sergeant Thomas Mannix, fully recovered and lived another decade. And Morris Fishbein became a powerful, relentless enemy of Hoxsey.

Another opponent was Assistant District Attorney Al Templeton, who arrested Hoxsey more than 100 times in Dallas over a two-year period. Then, in 1939, Templeton's younger brother, Mike, developed cancer. He had a colostomy, but the cancer continued to spread; his doctors told him nothing more could be done for him. When Mike secretly went to Hoxsey and was cured, Al Templeton had a change of heart. The once-hostile prosecutor became Hoxsey's lawyer.

Esquire magazine sent reporter James Burke to Texas in 1939 with the aim of doing an expose that would discredit Hoxsey as a worth less, dangerous quack. Burke stayed six weeks, became a strong supporter of Hoxsey and later his publicist, and filed a story entitled "The Quack Who Cures Cancer." Esquire never published it.

In 1949, Morris Fishbein, longtime editor of the Joumal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), wrote an attack on Hoxsey that was published in the Hearst papers' Sunday magazine supplement, read by 20 million people. In the piece, entitled "Blood Money," Fishbein, the influential "voice of American medicine," portrayed Hoxsey as a malevolent charlatan and repeated many of the unsubstantiated charges that he had been printing for years in JAMA.

Hoxsey sued Fishbein and the Hearst newspaper empire for libel and slander. It seemed a hopeless David-versus~-Goliath contest, but Hoxsey won. Although his monetary award was just two dollars, he achieved a stunning moral victory. Fifty of his patients testified on his behalf. The judge found Fishbein's statements to be "false, slanderous and libelous." And Fishbein made astonishing admissions during the trial, such as that he had failed anatomy in medical school and had never treated a patient or practiced a day of medicine in his entire career. Even more shocking, Dr. Fishbein admitted in court that Hoxsey's supposedly "brutal" pastes actually did cure external cancer.

The leader of America's "quack attack" was now on the defensive. Critics charged the AMA with being a doctor's trade union, setting national medical policy to further its own selfish interests. The United States Supreme Court agreed that the AMA had conspired in restraint of trade.

Dr. Fishbein was forced to resign.

In 1953, the Fitzgerald Report, commissioned by a United States Senate committee, concluded that organized medicine had "conspired" to suppress the Hoxsey therapy and at least a dozen other promising cancer treatments. The proponents of these unconventional methods were mostly respected doctors and scientists who had developed nutritional or immunological approaches.

Panels of surgeons and radiation therapists had dismissed the therapies as quackery, and these promising treatments were banned without a serious investigation. They all remain to this day on the American Cancer Society's blacklist of "Unproven Methods of Cancer Management."

By this time, the Hoxsey clinic in Dallas had 12,000 patients and Harry Hoxsey was contemplating running for governor of Texas, a post that would enable him to appoint the state medical board and thereby get an impartial investigation into his therapy. Hordes of Hoxsey's patients flooded Washington, D.C., demanding medical freedom of choice. Hoxsey threatened to picket the White House with 25,000 cured patients. But the FDA and other federal agencies mounted a massive legal and paralegal assault. A therapy with the potential to help cancer sufferers was hounded out of the country.

When Mildred Nelson moved the clinic to Mexico in 1963, Hoxsey stayed in Dallas in the oil business. In 1967, he developed prostate cancer. He took his own tonic, but ironically, it didn't work for him. Although surgery is fairly routine for prostate cancer, he refused to have it, fearing that the Dallas doctors would take their revenge on him on the operating table.  Hoxsey spent his last seven years as an invalid, dying in isolation, nearly forgotten. He was buried around Christmas in 1974, without an obituary or tribute in the Dallas newspapers.

The Bio-Medical Center in Tijuana, a glass-walled mansion within sight of the United States-Mexico border, is an outpatient clinic only. Patients who arrive before 9 A.M. are seen without an appointment. They are given a complete workup, including a physical examination, lab tests, and X-rays, and have their clinical history taken. Patients are advised to bring existing medical records from other hospitals and facilities.

After their appointment, which usually lasts one full day, sometimes longer, patients return home with enough Hoxsey medications and supplements to last several months. They are encouraged to make a follow-up visit after three to six months.

The herbal tonics, salves, and powders given are adjusted to suit the specific needs of each patient, taking into account his or her general health, the location and severity of the cancer, and the extent of previous treatments for it. The Hoxsey therapy is reportedly effective in alleviating pain in many cases.

Dietary specifications include the total avoidance of pork, vinegar, tomatoes, carbonated drinks, and alcohol. The forbidden foods are thought to work against the therapeutic action of the medicine.

Patients are also told not to consume bleached flour or refined sugar and to ingest very limited amounts of salt. Supplements include immune stimulants, yeast tablets, vitamin C, calcium capsules, laxative tablets, and antiseptic washes.

Patients are counseled to adopt a positive mental outlook and to assume complete responsibility for their own health. The clinic also offers chelation, immunotherapy, and homeopathy, as well as chemotherapy in extremely serious, life-threatening cases.  The types of cancer said to respond best to the treatment include lymphoma, melanoma, and external (skin) cancer. The clinic's patient brochure includes case histories of patients successfully treated for breast, cervical, prostate, colon, and lung cancers.  In 1965, Margaret Griffin of Pittsburgh was given one year to live by her conventional doctors. She had been having blackouts, and X-rays revealed that she had two tumors around her aorta. Exploratory surgery confirmed the existence of the tumors and also uncovered lesions in the right lung, a blockage of the superior vena cave, and metastases to the lymph glands.

Thirty doses of cobalt radiation failed to arrest the growing tumors and made Margaret feel worse. As time went on, her face became puffy, she experienced difficulty breathing, and she felt that she was going steadily downhill.

Margaret decided to fly to Dallas to try the Hoxsey therapy.  After visiting the clinic, she took four teaspoons per day of the herbal tonic for several months and followed the prescribed diet. She noticed no improvement, however, and was having serious doubts about the therapy's value. But after ten months on the regimen, her breathing improved, her strength returned, and she sensed a dramatic overall improvement. When she called her family doctor for a checkup, he refused to see her "because you didn't believe in my diagnosis." Subsequent X-rays taken by a different doctor indicated that the two tumors and related conditions were gone.

Margaret continued to take the Hoxsey tonic until 1979, when she went off it for a five-year period. In 1984, she had a build-up of fluid in her right lung. Surgery revealed a recurrence of the tumor blocking the superior vena cave. Margaret went back on her Hoxsey regimen, and her lung problem cleared up. X-rays taken in 1989 showed no sign of cancer, and today, more than twenty-five years after she was given a year at most to live, Margaret is alive, healthy, and active.

"Mildred Nelson is a totally dedicated healer," says Margaret.   "The medical community should pay homage to her. I told Mildred that I wish we could clone her. The world needs her." Approximately 80 percent of the patients seen at the Bio-Medical Center benefit substantially from the treatment, according to Nelson. No full-scale independent studies have ever been done to evaluate this claim, however. In an informal tracking survey, Steve Austin, a naturopath from Portland, Oregon, and colleagues followed approximately thirty-five Hoxsey patients.

They were able to stay in touch with twenty-two of them either for five years or until death. Austin, who teaches at Western States Chiropractic College in Portland, visited the Bio-Medical Center in 1983 and asked patients walking through the doors if they would be willing to participate in his survey. He then kept in touch with them through annual letters.  Of the twenty-two patients, eleven had died by the end of the five years and eleven were still alive. Among the survivors, three said their condition was deteriorating, but eight claimed to be totally cancerfree. All eight of the cancer-free survivors had previously been diagnosed in the states by medical doctors.

Austin, who plans to publish his findings, emphasizes that his case studies should be considered very preliminary. His sample was small,and it is possible that many of the twenty-two patients were in the very late stages o f cancer. Also, a number of the patients may have failed to take their medicine or to stay on the recommended diet.  "The outcome -- 8 out of 22 5-year survivors-suggests that the results were better than chance, especially since one of the 8 had late-stage melanoma and another had lung cancer," says Austin. "I was a skeptic about the Hoxsey program. Initially, it felt pretty hokey to me. But Mildred Nelson told me, 'Everything is open here. Go out there and talk to any of the patients.

They all know somebody who has been cured by the treatment.' When I mingled with the patients and spoke to them, Mildred's statement turned out to be true, though our results certainly do not suggest a substantial benefit in 80 percent."

Mildred Nelson has said that if she cannot find a health professional whom she feels she can entrust to run the clinic and fill her shoes, the Hoxsey therapy may one day die with her. That would be a tragic end to the Hoxsey saga. Meanwhile, cancer patients who are interested in Hoxsey's methods but cannot afford the trip to Mexico can avail themselves of at least part of the regimen. Three herbal distributors sell products that are apparently identical to the Hoxsey internal tonic formula, or very nearly so. The herbal capsules sold by one of these distributors reportedly requires only supplemental potassium iodide; the other two distributors' products-one, a blend of herbal tinctures-are said to be virtually identical to the Hoxsey tonic formula.

It should be emphasized that none of these distributors is in any way connected with the Bio-Medical Center, and none claims that its product is useful in treating cancer. The quality of these Hoxsey-like herbal mixtures and the results for people who use them are unknown. Furthermore, taking only the herbal component of the therapy and neglecting the other aspects of the program could weaken the overall effect. If a cancer patient wishes to pursue a Hoxsey-like protocol without a trip to Mexico, it is strongly recommended that he or she do so under the direction of a qualified physician or holistic practitioner. For more information about resources for these herbal products or for practitioner referrals, contact the Center for Advancement in Cancer Education (see page xvi for the address and phone number).

Resources
1. Ken Ausubel, "The Troubling Case of Harry Hoxsey," New Age Journal, July-August 1988, p. 79.
2. Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics, vol. 114, 1962, pp. 25-30; and see Walter H. Lewis and Memory P.F. Elvin-Lewis, Medical Botany: Plants Affecting Man's Health (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1977).
3. F.E. Mohs, "Chemosurgery: A Microscopically Controlled Method of Cancer Excision," Archives of Surgery, vol. 42, 1941, pp. 279295, cited in Patricia Spain Ward, "History of Hoxsey Treatment," contract report submitted to U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, May 1988, pp. 2-3.
4. Ward, op. cit., p. 8.
5. Kazuyoshi Morita, Tsuneo Kada, and Mitsuo Namiki, "A Desmutagenic Factor Isolated From Burdock (Arctium Lappa Linne)," Mutation Research, vol.129, 1984, pp. 25-31, cited in Ward, op. cit., p. 7.6. Harry Hoxsey, You Don't Have to Die (New York: Milestone Books, 1956), pp.44-48.7. Ibid., p. 59.

Resources

Bio-Medical Center P.O. Box 727 615 General Ferreira Colonia Juarez Tijuana, Mexico 22000 Phone: 011 52 66-84-9011 01152 66-84-9081
01152 66-849082 01152 66-849376 For further information on Hoxsey therapy and details on treatment.

Reading Material

You Don't Have to Die, by Harry Hoxsey, Milestone Books (New York), 1956.
Out of print; check your local library.

The Cancer Survivors and How They Did It, by Judith Glassman (see Appendix A for description).  "Does Mildred Nelson Have an Herbal Cure for Cancer?- by Peter Barry Chowka, Whole Life Times, January-February 1984.