The Essiac Story and Essiac – the follow-up
by Su Palmer-Jones
‘The Essiac Story’ appeared in the Green Handbook for South West Scotland, Summer 1998. The sequel, ‘Essiac – the follow-up’, appeared in Summer 2000. Although both articles predate this website, I thought people who missed them at the time might be interested to read them.
The Essiac Story
In the spring of 1998, I read an extraordinary book called The Essiac Report. If someone set out to write a melodrama about the establishment (with the usual few glowing exceptions) trying to suppress any form of medicine that doesn’t fit their parameters, no writer would come up with anything as extreme as this. But this really happened.
In 1902, an Englishwoman went out to Canada to join her husband who was working there as a prospector, camping in an area inhabited by Ojibwa Indians. When a hard mass developed on her breast, the local Ojibwa medicine man reassured her. He had a remedy given by the ancestors, ‘a holy drink that would purify her body and place it back in balance with the great spirit.’
The Edwardian lady politely declined. Then she was diagnosed as having breast cancer – and her husband did not have the money to pay for surgery. She went back to the medicine-man, who taught her how to make a herbal tea and told her to drink it twice daily.
Twenty years later, still alive and with two breasts, she told her story to Rene Caisse, the head nurse of an Ontario hospital. Rene wrote down the herbal recipe and tried it on her aunt, who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer of the stomach and liver. The aunt drank the tea twice daily for two moths and recovered. (She lived for another 20 years).
The doctor in charge of the case was impressed and allowed Rene to give the tea to other terminal cases, whose condition improved dramatically. More doctors sent Rene their ‘hopeless’ cases, who were healed. (The tea was now named ‘Essiac’ – Rene’s surname spelled backwards.) Seeing their ‘terminal’ cases making miraculous recoveries, a group of doctors sent a petition to the Department of Health and Welfare asking that Rene should be allowed research facilities.
In response, the Department sent two investigators to have Rene arrested for malpractice.
Her only defence was that she did not charge for her treatment.
Rene lived in poverty, treating people without charge, until she died (aged 90) in 1978. During that time, pharmaceutical companies wooed her with offers of huge salaries and luxurious modern clinics where she could treat thousands of people – provided she gave her recipe to the company. She would not. The medical establishment similarly wooed her with offers of marvellous research facilities provided she gave them the formula – and threatened her with court proceedings when she would not. Petitions were circulated on her behalf, one with 55,000 signatures from grateful patients and converted doctors. Bills were put before parliament and were defeated because Rene would not give away her formula. At one trial, nearly 400 ‘terminal’ patients arrived, alive and kicking when officially they should have been dead, to give evidence for Rene. Only 49 were called to the witness box and their evidence was ignored.
After years of persecution, during which Rene continued to treat patients without charge, she found a champion in Dr Brusch, personal physician to J. F. Kennedy. Convinced by the results he saw from Essiac, he began working in partnership with Rene. She was now 70 years old but still tireless in her wish to help suffering humanity with this remedy, which she saw as God’s gift. She refused to give the formula to any company who might use it for profit or to the medical establishment which might suppress it.
Fortunately for future generations, she did entrust it to Dr Brusch. After her death, he continued to research Essiac with thousands of patients and in 1984 he used it to cure his own cancer of the lower bowel. In a radio interview that year, he said, ‘Essiac is a cure for cancer. I’ve seen it reverse and eliminate cancers at such a progressed state that nothing medical science currently has could have accomplished similar results. I wouldn’t have believed it myself had I not seen it with my own eyes. I feel very strongly that Essiac is the single most beneficial treatment for cancer today.’
Phone lines to the radio station were jammed with calls. The interviewer, Elaine Alexander, was inundated with letters. She gave up her job in broadcasting to take up Rene’s torch, working to get Essiac to the people who needed it.
Elaine decided there was no point in trying to persuade the establishment to accept and legitimize a remedy given by a native medicine-man to a backwoods housewife. Instead, she would spread it in the form of a simple herbal tea. As such it could not legally be advertised as a cure for cancer – but word would get around. She found a herbal company with the right ethics: they grew herbs organically in the purest conditions and treated their workforce well. Thus Essiac became available to a wider public.
‘A holy drink that would purify your body and place it back in balance with the great spirit.’ What more could we want?
Essiac – the follow up
Harlee Watson was diagnosed as having cancer in 1997. Three months after her diagnosis, she heard about Essiac. She took it for nine months. Since then she’s had no symptoms, hasn’t been back to the doctor and feels well and healthy.
While she was taking Essiac, she decided to become a distributor. At that time she was living in Moniaive, Dumfriesshire. She found an ethical supplier and set to work brewing up Essiac tea for anyone who asked for it. Following Rene Caisse’s ideals, Harlee charged only for the cost of the ingredients and postage. She didn’t make a profit on the tea because she felt that giving it freely was an important part of the medicine.
‘To begin with, everyone who came was through the Green Handbook,’ Harlee told me. ‘It reached people in England, people came from Ayr and Glasgow. Local people came too. Word got around.’
Harlee was put in touch with Melanie Klein, who runs The Clouds Trust. This is a charitable trust which gives information to the terminally ill on all the options open to them. Research into Essiac is part of the Trust’s work.
Melanie co-authored a book with Shiela Snow, a former colleague of Rene Caisse. The book, Essiac Essentials, gives detailed descriptions of the herbs used in the recipe, with instructions on how to prepare the decoction and take the tea. It also relates the history of Essiac and provides case-studies from all over the UK.
One GP who recommended some of his patients to try Essiac told me: ‘I read the book [Essiac Essentials] and I was impressed. I thought this was potentially useful. I have recommended it to a few people, in certain cases. If somebody has been given a diagnosis and told they can’t have conventional treatment; if they’ve had conventional treatment and it isn’t working; or if they are having it and they can try Essiac as well. One case was a chap who had terminal cancer; he went for a scan and was told, “You’ve had your dose of radiation, you can’t have any more Xray treatment.” I thought this might be an ideal person to try Essiac. He tried it; and three to four months later he was doing very well – which was a surprise. He went for another scan and the cancer was in complete remission. That was quite amazing. That’s the only “miracle cure” I’ve seen; the other patients are just trundling along. Unfortunately, that chap wasn’t compliant with treatment; he took Essiac for several months and then decided to stop. Then he had a recurrence of the cancer and died.
'As an allopathically trained physician, I have to offer my patients conventional treatment. But Essiac has far fewer side-effects than the conventional treatment for cancer. With conventional treatment, many patients spend the last few months of their lives in misery. When they take Essiac, they need less conventional treatment and the quality of their life improves.’
Harlee confirmed this from observing the people who came to her for Essiac. ‘There was a man in his 60s who looked as if he was at death’s door. His doctor had given him six months to live. After he’d been taking Essiac for two or three months, he looked so much better. He lived for 11 months, never had to have his medication increased and died at home in bed. His biggest fear had been of dying in hospital.’
What of the other people who came to her? ‘Two people who were pronounced inoperable were later given the all-clear; someone given a month to live was still here a few months later. People are coming back for more and seem happy. Some people are making it themselves now, which is great because it’s so easy to do. Nowadays I put a lot of people in touch with the Clouds Trust directly, to encourage them to make Essiac for themselves.’
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