Canada's Cancer Nurse!

by Rene M. Caisse

In the mid-twenties I was head nurse at the Sisters of Providence Hospital in a northern Ontario town. One day one of my nurses was bathing an elderly lady patient. I noticed that one breast was a mass of scar tissue, and asked about it.

"I came out from England nearly 30 years ago," she told me "I joined my husband, who was prospecting in the wilds of Northern Ontario.  My right breast became sore and swollen, and very painful.  My husband brought me to Toronto, and the doctors told me I had advanced cancer and my breast must be removed at once.  Before we left camp a very old Indian medicine man had told me I had cancer, but he could cure it. I decided I'd just as soon try his remedy as to have my breast removed.  One of my friends had died from breast surgery. Besides we had no money."

She and her husband returned to the mining camp, and the old Indian showed her certain herbs growing in the area, told her to make a tea from these herbs, and to drink it every day. She was nearly 80 years old when I saw her, and there had been no recurrence of cancer.

I was much interested and wrote down the names of the herbs she had used. I knew that doctors threw up their hands when cancer was discovered in a patient; it was the same as a death sentence, jut about. I decided that if I should ever develop cancer, I would use this herb tea.

About a year later, I was visiting an aged retired doctor, whom I knew well.  We were walking slowly about his garden when he took his cane and lifted a weed.

"Nurse Caisse," he told me,"if people would use this weed, there would be little or no cancer in the world." He told me the name of the plant. It was one of the herbs my patient had named as an ingredient of the Indian medicine man's tea! A few months later, I received word that my mother's only sister had been operated on in Brockville, Ontario.  The doctors had found she had cancer of the stomach with a liver involvement, and gave her, at the most, six months to live.

I hastened to her, and talked to her doctor. He was Dr R.O. Fisher of Toronto, whom I knew well, for I'd nursed patients for him many times.  I told him about the herb tea and asked his permission to try it under his observation, since there apparently was nothing more medical science could do for my aunt.  He consented quickly. I obtained the neccessary herbs, with some difficulty, and made the tea. My aunt lived for 21 years, after being given up by the medical profession.  There was no recurrence of cancer.

Dr. Fisher was so impressed that he asked me to use my treatment on some of his other hopeless cancer cases.  Other doctors heard about me from Dr. Fisher, and asked me to treat patients for them after everything medical science had to offer had been used and failed.  They, too, were impressed with the results.

Several of these doctors asked me if I would be willing to use the treament on an old man whose face was eaten away, and who was bleeding so badly that the doctors said he could not live more than ten days. "We will not expect a miracle." they told me. "But if your treatment can help this man in this stage of cancer, we will know that you have discovered something the whole world needs desperately, a successful remedy for cancer.

My treamtment stopped the bleeding in less than 24 hours. The man's face healed. He lived for six months, with very little discomfort. On the strength of what those doctors saw with their own eyes, eight of them signed a petition to the Department of National Health and Welfare in Ottawa, asking that I be given facilities to do independent research of my discovery.

Their petition, dated Toronto on October 27, 1926 reads as follows:

 I was joyful beyond words at this expression of confidence by such outstanding doctors regarding the benefits derived from my treatment. My joy was short-lived.  Soon after receiving this petition, the Department of Health and Welfare sent two doctors from Ottawa to have me arrested for "practicing medicine without a license."

This was the beginning of nearly 30 years of persecution by those in authority, from the government to the medical profession, that I endured in trying to help those afflicted with cancer.

However, when these two doctors sent from Ottawa found that I was working with nine of the most eminent physicians in Toronto, and was giving my treatment only at their request, and under their observation, they did not arrest me.

Dr. W.C. Arnold, one of the investigating doctors, became so interested in my treatment that he arranged to have me work on mice at the Christie Street Hospital Laboratories, with Doctor Norich and Doctor Lockhead. I did so, from 1928 through 1930. These mice were innoculated with Rous Sarcoma.  I kept the mice alive 52 days, longer than anyone else had been able to do, and in a later experiment with two other doctors, I kept mice alive for 72 days with Essiac.  

NOTE:

After extensive research a vaccine was produced in conjunction with the oral medicine. Miss Caisse gave up nursing for research. Treating about 30 patients a day at her apartment.

She made an appointment with Dr Frederick Banting of the Banting Institute, Department of Medical Research, Univeristy of Toronto, world famous for his discovery of Insulin.

After reading the case notes and examining the pictures of the man with the face cancer before and after treatment, and ex-rays of other cancer she had treated, he sat quietly for a few minutes, staring into space. "Miss Caisse," he finally said, turning to look me straight in the eyes, "I will not say you have a cure for cancer. But you have more evidence of a beneficial treatment for cancer than anyone in the world."

Further notes on the the preparation of essiac tea appear on the next page.