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OF COURSE, there is none! The heading is used because I am asked frequently, often reproachfully, by physicians about it.
The harmony in the metabolism of all internal organs and systems must be maintained; it reflects the eternal mystery of life, expressed in our health and continuance. "Each form of life is a biologic entity. Each has only one purpose: to grow and reproduce with the aid of the food to its disposal."2 The onset of metabolic disturbance constitutes the beginning of disease.
"The Eternal Life has been developed over millions of years", Kollath said, "and it will continue to develop endlessly. Each of its parts is important. None is privileged, for the internal equilibrium may not be disturbed."3
Following historical analysis, we see in Kollath's presentation that it was mainly science and technology which have brought about the evil, a part of it is "oversimplification".
"Symptomatic treatment is harmful wherever in nature it is applied to the soil, plants, animals or human beings, or in medicine."
"Each part is important, but the whole in its infinitely fine order is more important."4
History shows that, from time to time, men are swayed too easily by new thoughts and theories and by new developments in technology and chemistry, which they use as their bases in medical practice.5 This leads them too far away from nature. Therefore, it becomes necessary from time to time to bring medical doctrine back nearer to nature. (See Chapter 7 on Paracelsus.)
Seeking an explanation for the negative attitude of the majority of physicians toward the idea of an effective cancer treatment, I have come to several conclusions. First, we are all trained to believe that cancer is an incurable disease. Secondly, several previous attempts to introduce a new cancer treatment, including theories and promises, have failed. The great fallacy lies in the manner in which dietary tests are proposed and made, that is, by the use of one special substance at a time, observing its effect on the body, followed by another substance, and so forth.
A long time ago, I worked along the same lines. The result was a failure. Thereupon I started to use almost the same dietary regime developed through years of experience, which I had previously applied in my work in tuberculosis. (Diättherapie der Lungentuberkulose, 1934). To observe externally the reactions of the diet and its changes I chose skin tuberculosis, so-called lupus vulgaris. Later I used the same procedure in cancer patients by observing the reactions of the diet and its changes in involvements of the skin. These observations showed the treatment inadequate for malignancies of the intestinal tract; these need more intensive treatment. The medication for the tuberculosis treatment and that for cancer treatment were developed in a similar manner, but they are not the same.
From the beginning, the fundamental idea was and still is the following: A normal body has the capacity to keep all cells functioning properly. It prevents any abnormal transformation and growth. Therefore, the natural task of a cancer therapy is to bring the body back to that normal physiology, or as near to it as is possible. The next task is to keep the physiology of the metabolism in that natural equilibrium.
A normal body also has additional reserves to suppress and destroy malignancies. It does not act in that manner in cancer patients, where the cancer grew from the smallest cellular unit freely, without encountering any resistance. What forces can suppress such a development? My answer is that this can be accomplished by the oxidizing enzymes and the conditions which maintain their activity. The best known oxidizing enzymes are: arginase, catalase, xantine dehydrogenase, esterase, the urea oxidizing systems, cystine-desulfurase, cytochrome-c, cytochrome oxidase and amino acid oxidase and flavin. All these are lower in activity in both fetal liver and hepatoma than in normal or regenerating liver. Otto Warburg6 was the first who found the metabolic deviations of malignant tissue from normal tissue and formulated it by the co-efficient [(anaerobic glycolysis)/(cell respiration)]
On the contrary, alkaline phosphatases and the deaminases are higher in activity in fetal liver and hepatoma than in normal and regenerating liver. The very frequently expressed view is that fetal and neoplastic hepatic tissue show a similar oxidizing pattern to embryonic, more primitive, and less differentiated tissue.
It is known that in primitive forms of life the energy of the cells is derived almost entirely from anaerobic conditions or through fermentation. In higher animals, the lower fermentative anaerobic systems are mixed with oxidation systems, whereby more and more molecular oxygen is utilized, transported from the respiration of the lungs. The malignancies in human beings continuously fall back deeper and deeper into fermentation. The major general part of the body becomes more poisoned and more reduced in its defense and healing power.
The ideal task of cancer therapy is to restore the function of the oxidizing systems in the entire organism. This, of course, is difficult to accomplish. It involves the following: 1) detoxication of the whole body, 2) providing the essential mineral contents of the potassium group, 3) adding oxidizing enzymes continuously as long as they are not reactivated and built in the body (in the form of green leaf juice and fresh calf's liver juice7). This will create a near normal condition of the oxidizing system in the body, to which malignant cells with the fermentation system cannot adapt.
Nutrition is generally an exogenous factor, but the intake of food, slightly toxic, below the level of a stimulant, brings about a disposition in the organism, which may be regarded as premorbid. "Diet, however, appeared to have no influence on liver tumors in rats produced by 2-acetylamino-fluorene. The manner in which diet produces procarcinogenic or anticarcinogenic effect is unknown. Chemical differences between mitochondria of normal liver and mouse liver hepatoma have been reported by Hogeboom and Schneider."
"Some interesting observations in regard to the influence of diet on the development of spontaneous hepatomas in inbred C3H mice were made by Tannenbaum and Silverstone. These investigators have shown that increase of fat in the diet from two per cent to 20 per cent increased the rate of hepatoma formation from 37 per cent to 53 per cent. Low riboflavin intake resulted in a decrease of hepatoma formation. This can be attributed to the reduced caloric intake, which has been shown to inhibit growth of hepatomas in this species. It has likewise been shown that, contrary to the experiences with induced hepatomas in rats, the spontaneous tumors in mice are not accelerated by a rice diet but on the contrary are accelerated by increased casein content. Methionine has likewise been shown to accelerate the development of these tumors in mice. The conclusion is drawn that the sulphur-containing amino acids, which are necessary for normal growth, are also necessary for growth and development of these neoplasms. Again a startling indication of the similarity between physiologic growth and neoplasia!"8
Our modern civilization brings about a premorbid disposition in almost all human beings, differing only in degree. It may be regarded (in some of us) as a pre-neoplastic condition: According to govemment statistics, this applies to one out of six. The percentage has accelerated in the last 25 years; carcinomas and undefined cancers in mankind are increasing yearly.
Before I was ready to demonstrate my tuberculosis results in the Medical Society of Berlin, H. Zondek asked me to discuss the diet and its effects with the best known nutritional biologist, Professor E. Abderhalden, University Halle a/S ... After a short discussion his advice was: "It is impossible to explore one or another substance alone. We need, as you did, a simple nutritional groundwork. On this basis you can work out the therapy by adding or subtracting one or another substance and observe the effect. Having such results I would not change anything. The same thing is true for medication. Most of it we cannot explain, the result is decisive."
"Nutrition is primarily an exogenous factor, but a constantly changed unnatural nutrition brings about in our organism that internal premorbid disposition."9 I may add: It is a slowly progressive internal adaptation which the body performs, as each daily poisonous irritation level is most probably too low to cause a defensive reaction until a tumor can grow while the body is undefended and poisons continue to accumulate.10
After my second lecture at the International Cancer Congress in Germany in October, 1952, Professor Werner Kollath handed me his latest book Die Ordnung Unserer Nahrung (The Order of Our Nutrition, 1952) with the inscription: "With gratitude for your Doctrine: INCURABLE IS CURABLE."
The secret of my treatment is that the nutritional problem is not well enough understood in view of the knowledge and information on hand at present. Abderhalden's and other scientists' advice helped a great deal to solve the problem in clinical practice. I think the medication is a little more subject to medical argumentation. Both may be two other unsolved problems in medicine; our task is to acknowledge this and to present the favorable results of the treatment.
In a normal body all is alive, especially the basic substances built by the minerals, they have ionized or activated potassium and minerals of the potassium group with positive electrical potentials.
In a sick body - mainly in cancer - potassium is inactive, sodium and minerals of the sodium group are ionized with negative potentials. On this basis all other abnormal processes develop as consequences. For healing purposes the body must be detoxified - activated with ionized minerals, natural food so that the essential organs can function again.
For healing the body brings about a kind of inflammation. That is a tremendous transformative reaction. This renders the body hypersensitive or allergic to a high degree against abnormal or strange substances (including bacilli, cancer cells, scars, etc.). Consequently the more malignant the cells are the more effective is the treatment. I think this is "the end effect or secret of the treatment." The school of von Bergmann did reveal some of the features of the allergic reaction.11
A mechanical method and several types of stimulation could not accomplish such a purpose. The attempts of August Bier,12 H. Lampert, Germany and O. Selawry, Buffalo13 and others did not succeed in helping degenerative diseases or cancer.