Calling of an Angl: Rene Caisse and Essiac Tea--12by Dr. Gary L. Glum |
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CHAPTER TWELVEIn the transcript of the 1939 Royal Cancer Commission hearings is the testimony of a woman named Eliza Veitch. Sworn to oath almost 50 years ago, she told her own story under interrogation by doctors and lawyers. She'd been operated on in 1935 for cancer of the bladder. "So then I went home and months went on and I began to get worse, gradually going down and getting off my feet. I could not stand on my feet. That was where my pain was. When I would stand I would have this terrible pain." She went for an examination. The doctor told her that one spot had started to grow again. "So I didn't know what to do. I didn't think there was any use going back. I had my mind made up. I was going to die with it. There is no use going back and being tortured again." She got worse. She lost weight. She couldn't sleep. When she'd finally given up all hope, she went to Nurse Caisse. That was in May, 1938. "I began to see the neighbors around. My next neighbor was getting cured, and one here and one over there, and I talked to them. People came to see me and told me and this one and that one told me and I thought, `Well, there is something in it. I'll go in: I didn't have faith at first." For eight treatments she didn't notice any change. Then she had a bad reaction. "I thought I was done for sure then but that was the turning point. Then I began to improve and I improved fast." When she testified, Eliza Veitch said she was at her normal weight of 143 pounds. "I am not saying I am cured yet, but I can tell you in percentage that I am 75% better today. I have cabins on Three Mile Lake, and I look after my cabins and my guests, and last year, I could not hardly walk to the place." She finished: "I owe my life to Miss Caisse. I would have been dead and in my grave months ago." Months before my trip to Bracebridge in October, 1987, I had read the hundreds of pages of transcript from those hearings. I'd read Eliza Veitch's testimony and been moved by it. But most of the names of Rene's witnesses had long since faded to the back of my mind. They were voices from the past, people who were all probably dead now, their stories-except for the passages in this obscure transcript-buried with them. On my second day in town, I went to the Bracebridge City Hall to ask for an interview with the municipal clerk, a man, Mary told me, who dabbled in the history of Bracebridge and knew something about Rene's story. Mary believed he had accumulated some of the documents from Rene's era. When she mentioned him, I thought I heard his name as Ken Beech. The best I was hoping for was that he might be willing to share his documents and tell me a little bit about what he knew But knowing the skepticism-even nervousness and paranoia-of the locals who were familiar with Rene Caisse, and guessing that a public official would dodge controversy about her, especially with a stranger who just showed up at his office without an introduction, I was ready to be turned away. The Bracebridge City Hall is a large, two-story building just down the street from Rene's old clinic. Inside, it is clean and well cared for, with a large open area where a dozen or so men and women keep the tax roles and manage the business of the city. I waited in a short line until it was my turn. The woman behind the counter seemed surprised to hear that I was from Los Angeles, had no appointment, and wanted to speak to Ken about someone named Rene Caisse. But she said just a moment and walked to the rear of the building and went into an office with a closed door. A few moments later, she came out and asked if 2:00-right after lunch-would be okay I think I was as surprised as she was by the answer, and I told her I'd see her then. When I returned at 2:00, Ken came out immediately to greet me. He looked to be in his 40s, a nice-looking man wearing a well-tailored suit, someone who appeared as though he would be just as comfortable doing the same job in a much larger city. I was impressed and glad that he seemed happy to see me. But I was surprised. His reaction didn't fit my image of how a city of ficial would react to an outsider asking about Rene Caisse. He escorted me into the office and we sat down at a large conference table that sat in front of a desk. Ken showed none of the reserve I expected to encounter. All I had to say was that I was writing a book about Rene Caisse and that I believed in her work, and he was all smiles and enthusiasm. He opened up instantly. He said he d already been to his home at lunch and brought back some of the old documents-newspaper stories, the town ordinance granting her use of the hotel for her clinic, and so on-and he was passionate, he said, that the truth be known about Rene Caisse. "She treated a lot of people," he said. "I can't tell you who was cured or who wasn't cured, but my family had faith in it. I don't know what she had, but she had something that made people feel better. She had something that saved a lot of suffering. There are people using it today." Ken told me one recent story around town that he'd seen with his own eyes. "A fellow I know had cancer and was on his deathbed, and I know this because I saw him. He was skin and bones and had terminal cancer and he was on his way out. He started taking Essiac and, I kid you not, I saw him a few weeks later and he was driving his car. Now, he still died. He was just too far gone. But when I saw him driving his car, he didn't look bad. He looked sort of full in the face. I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe it. But he felt all right. I heard that from his daughter. She told me he really felt good." Growing up in Bracebridge, Ken said, he heard the stories about Rene Caisse. He wasn't paying much attention at the time. But what he heard did convince him that Rene Caisse's treatment was for real. "She had something," he said. "There are people of high witness for that. It eased their suffering, and by God, what the hell's wrong with that? If you meet my uncle, he'll tell you all that, where he saw people come into her clinic in desperate shape, jaws exposed, just awful stuff, hideous stuff. A few months later, they'd walk away happy and healthy. I could go on for hours." The whole history, he admitted, had left him with "a hatred for a system that causes this. But I don't know what to do about it. It's pretty hopeless. It boggles my mind." After we'd been talking about a half hour, I happened to mention the 1939 Cancer Commission hearings. "I think I've read them," Ken said. "I can't say I read every word of them, but I know that it all took place. My grandmother was one of them, Eliza Veitch. She had cancer of the uterus. She was 89 when she died in 1966 or 1967." Chills went up my spine. Suddenly I understood why this city official was so friendly to a stranger asking questions about Rene Caisse. He was the grandson of the woman whose words I had read and been moved by. I felt a personal connection to Eliza Veitch that I hadn't felt before. I told Ken that I'd read his grandmother's testimony and hadn't expected to meet someone in her family. "My dad and my uncle can really tell you the first-hand account of the whole thing," he said. "I tell you, I'd love for you to meet them. You can put into words what they can only in their own modest way try to tell you. They're not particularly educated people, but their sincerity will blow you away." What did Ken personally remember about what his grandmother said about Rene Caisse? "Well, Rene was like a hero worship to my grandmother, because she knew she was cured. A few of the little things she told me, I can still recall. In every case, she said that after taking it for a certain period of time, there was a sickness, a sort of a weak spell, and my grandmother told me she collapsed out in one of our parks here. My father or my uncle was with her, and they took her right straight back to the clinic. It was after one of her treatments, and Rene Caisse said to her that it was a good sign. That was an indication that something was working, that the treatment was taking effect, and from that time on she started to revive. What else did his grandmother tell him about Rene? "Well, there was frustration, a little bit of distrust of the doctors because they fought her so hard. One of the doctors that opposed her so vociferously in those years in the 30s died himself of cancer, and the story goes-I wasrit there to hear it, but my grandmother told me-that he pleaded with Rene to treat him for cancer and she wouldn't do it." He laughed. "I don't know whether it's true of not. That's the story. But Rene was always very kind, very nice. She had visitors galore. People traveled from all over the country to plead with her to treat their husband or wife. I guess a lot of the cancer treatment is the hope that people feel when they get on the cure. Psychologically, I think that's a factor. But there's no doubt in my mind either that these herbs somehow purify the blood. So if it's not a cure for cancer, then why isn't it a tonic, an herbal tonic, available for $ 1.00 to everyone in the country? "I think maybe one of the problems was that it was called a drug. I don't think it's a drug. It's a tonic. You buy vitamins every day in the health food stores and drugstores all across the world. What's wrong with it being used as a tonic? Perhaps that's the approach. "It's confusing, to say the least, how these things happen. I don't know what the process is where people can get some things on the shelves-here, take this. It's a puzzle. But an herbal recipe, how wrong can it be? What harm can it cause? Why should an association that wants it proven first that it's a cure hold back that kind of relief from people who are dying every year of cancer? What's wrong with making them feel better? I don't understand that. "My grandmother told me, and I believe this, that Rene Caisse would never have had any problem saving people's lives, saving their suffering, if the local doctors had left her alone. And I have to believe that. My grandmother was a god-fearing woman. The doctors harassed Rene about her business and it was they who took her to task as she was treating people and she wasn't a doctor. God forbid. I expect Rene was taking some of their customers away. If they'd kept their mouths shut...it was awful." By now, we'd been talking for almost an hour. I was concerned that I might be taking too much time out of Ken's afternoon schedule. When I suggested that perhaps I should let him go, he said, no way. Anybody who came all the way to Bracebridge from Los Angeles to learn about Rene Caisse was welcome to as much of his time as was needed. He said he had a videotape of a Canadian television show he wanted me to see-the one that aired after the Homemaker's article appeared-and he wanted rne to meet Mayor Lang. "The mayor, he knew Rene, and he believes, too, that she had something. He knows it helped ease people's suffering and made them feel good, and he'll tell you his own story because he was a personal friend of Rene's, even though he's my age." Ken took me upstairs to a conference room with a television and went to get the tape. A few minutes after he returned, the mayor walked in. Jim Lang is a tall, lanky man with the hearty look of an outdoorsman. He was dressed casually and wearing cowboy boots. He gave me a friendly greeting, said he was happy that someone was looking into the story of Rene Caisse, and got to the point as quickly as Ken had: "A fellow who used to be a neighbor of mine, he died a couple of years ago, I guess he was 77 years old. But his mother used to run a boarding house here in town. He didn't marry until his 50s, so he was living at home at the time Rene had her clinic going. He used to tell me of dozens and dozens of people who came and stayed at his mother's boarding house while they took treatments. They were from all over the place, from Timmons and Sault. Ste. Marie and down in the states-just all over the place-and they'd stay there maybe two, three, four months, depending on the length of treatments required. "He used to tell me of some of them. When they first came in there, you'd wonder how they could even get around, they were in such terrible shape with either tumors exposed on their face or because they were so thin and weak, and he said that when they left his mother's place they were cured, they were just like new persons, you wouldn't recognize them as the same people, when they came and when they left." The mayor had organized Rene's 90th birthday party, a few months before she died. More than 600 people were there, from all over Canada-and some from the U.S. "A lot of people," the mayor said, "just voluntarily wanted to say something because they had been treated by her for cancer. That sort of thing went on for hours. If you'd been here and heard some of the tributes that were paid by her former patients, it would bring tears to your eyes. "You know, I often wonder if the treatments that have been performed by research doctors when they test the stuff were done in the same manner that Rene did it. That's the other thing nobody knows, because she certainly had results. She cured people that were given up on by doctors-totally given up on. They said, `You're going to die and there's nothing we can do about it: And they went to Rene and 20 years later they were still walking. I know that for a fact because I knew Rene for probably 25 years." As a young man, Jim Lang had helped Rene out doing odd jobs around her house. "I can remember working in her home in the 50s and 60s. I used to look after all of Rene's stuff. And people were coming into her home for treatment then. Her patient load was down because she had to be careful about what she did, but there were people that she knew and for some reason, she looked after them. They'd come to her house." I mentioned that the worst thing I'd ever heard about Rene was that she was stubborn. The mayor laughed. "I wouldn't have cast her as being stubborn. She was certainly set in her ways, but I would say more determined than stubborn. She was very determined. If you were having a discussion with Rene, you'd certainly know that you were in an argument before you were finished, and most times you'd probably be convinced that she was right. No, I wouldn't say she was stubborn. She was a very kindly person, very compassionate and very dedicated. She really believed in what she was doing, really believed it. I think if the truth were known, there are probably a good number of treatments that she never got paid for." After a few more minutes, the mayor said he had to leave. He offered any help he could give, and said: "The stupid part is that we've got nothing to lose (by giving it a try) and everything to gain. But how do we get the right people to listen? It's a shame, you know, every year that goes by, Rene's story is getting buried deeper and deeper. Pretty soon there wori t be any of these old people left to tell it." Ken said that he was going to make certain that I had the opportunity to hear it from his uncle Elmer, Eliza Veitch's son. Ken wanted to make sure that I heard about Essiac from three generations of the same family. "My uncle had personal experience going to Rene Caisse's clinic for months while he took my grandmother in for treatment. To hear his story with the sights he saw and the people he saw come at one stage and leave walking and happy months later is just absolutely phenomenal. He's not going to kid you. These aren't people who are going to lie to you. They're going to tell you the truth. My uncle has a very good memory. He's a great memorizer of poems and stuff like that." The next day at 10 a.m., I pulled up to park on the street not far from the city hall, and just as I was turning off my engine, I saw an old man struggling up the front steps. He was carrying a cane and he was having difficulty making the short climb to the front door. One leg was completely bowed, as if from severe arthritis. He was slightly hunched over. He was wearing old work clothes. I learned later that he is 75 years old. A nice-looking, gray-haired woman, dressed up as if on her way to church, had him by one arm and was helping him. I thought: I'll bet that's Ken's uncle Elmer and his aunt Edra, and I was touched that someone who knew Rene so many years ago would take the time and trouble to come to town and climb those stairs to talk to a stranger about her. I waited until they were through the front door and had enough time to get settled, and then I entered the building. The lady at the front desk told me to go right on in. Once in the office, it turned out I was right. The old man struggling up the stairs was Ken's Uncle Elmer. But up close and comfortably seated, Elmer appeared differently, not a vulnerable, crippled-up old man at all. He had thick, muscular arms and strong hands and a powerful grip. As he greeted me with a big smile, I felt the warmth of his personality His eyes sparkled, and he was handsome in the craggy way of those old ranchers and woodsmen. He was totally alert, with a quick wit and a booming voice and a loud and hearty laugh that came from deep within. His wife Edra was a formidable presence in her own right, obviously a woman of radiant good health. The thought actually crossed my mind that even though she was in her late 60s, she looked like one of those people who'd never had a sick day in her life. After a few minutes of getting to know each other, I turned on my tape recorder and asked Elmer to tell me about his mother, Eliza Veitch, and Rene Caisse. In that strong, deep voice, and every once in a while pounding the table for emphasis, Elmer spoke without interruptions or questions for several minutes. Like everyone I met in northern Canada, he has the endearing habit of occasionally punctuating his sentences with an "eh?" Pronounced like a long "A" with a question mark. Before I got out of town, I heard myself starting to do it, too. It's catchy. What follows in the next few pages is a verbatim transcript of Elmer's impassioned opening account. This man can speak for himself: Elmer Veitch: This is getting on 50 years ago, and my mother had been diagnosed as having cancer. So she got wise to Miss Caisse's clinic here. Of course, it was going all over in those days, it was quite famous. So every week that was Miss Caisse's wish-that you come every week for treatments. At that time, she administered the treatment by hypodermic needle. As a result, I took my mother down and we started these treatments every week. I had an old Model A Ford and I was a young fellow in those days. But I'll never regret it-and I'll never forget it either, because some of the sights I saw over here on this corner. . . horrible. The people were from all over North America. A lot of people from your country came over here. My mother had the statement saying she had cancer, otherwise they wouldn't allow Miss Caisse to treat her. So every week I brought her down and Miss Caisse told her, "Now sooner or later, and probably sooner, you'll have a reaction with this stuff." It didn't happen for a couple of weeks, but then it happened right here in the clinic. She sort of went into a kind of a fever and chills, you know, but it didn't last long, not long enough to worry too much about. I took her home. She was all right. So these treatments went on for, well, as I remember, must have been six months, I guess. She kept taking these treatments and feeling better all the time. So at the end of about six months, Miss Caisse thought she'd had enough, which was probably right. Now mother lived to be 83. That's 30 years after this happened ,eh? Mother lived to be 83 and died a natural death, as natural as anybody would, and the cancer evidently was blocked tight-it never got nowhere. But yours truly was coming down here every week to this clinic. You'd have to wait a couple of hours to get your turn. It was a big building and the bottom floor was all taken out and seats put all around the big room, and every time I'd come in there, it was on a Saturday, they'd be all sitting around there. Heavens, you thought they'd been there all week. So having nothing better to do, I went around and I talked to these people. They were very nice people and some of them had half a face, you could see their teeth. Some of them, you could see their ribs. Sights like this haunted me for a long time, you know, and I talked to these people. They talked to me, a good many of them. The pain they went through was something awful. They'd suffered, and I could see that, you know, but they said since we've been taking Miss Caisse s treatment, thank her and the Lord, we've got no pain. No pain after suffering for months with desperate pains. She stopped the pain. Now, I don't know, I don't know Mind you, she couldn't put back flesh that was gone off your ribs or jaws that are gone off your face, and some of them-oh, God, it was horrible, I'll tell you. I can still remember this. It used to haunt me for quite a while. But that impressed me very much when they told me what they were suffering, and now they had no pain. "Oh, Miss Caisse is an angel," they'd say. I guess she seemed like that to them. I don't know about a lot of the terminal cases, they probably...but a lot of them got better. Now I couldn't tell you their names. Never did know their names. But I talked to them every week and invariably they all told me the same story: We have no more pain. And they were quite emphatic about that. You can well understand it, too. My mother, oh, she was a great friend of Miss Caisse. Now about this time there was a neighbor of ours just across the lake from us. His name was Wilson Hammell. He was one of the old-timers in this country here, one of the old pioneers, if you will, and then up towards Bracebridge a little further was another fellow, Burt Rossen. He was born and raised in Muskoka, so I knew these guys all my life, both of them, eh?
They both had trouble and they went to Toronto, to the big hospitals, and
they both had cancer of the rectum. They stayed down there for a while and
the powers that be told them that they might as well go home. Same thing
happened to both of them. They're only going to live a month-you can't
possibly live more than a month. I remember all this quite vividly. They each came home with the fact that they could only live a month. So, you know, a drowning man will grasp at a straw, and then Miss Caisse was treating `em, boy. They just went for her like that, eh? They started out with these needles in the arm, eh? With the Essiac. I can't remember how long they took the treatment, but it was for quite a length of time, maybe six months, eh? Or thereabouts. I'll tell you what happened. Now this was common knowledge all over. They passed that big black cancer that was in the rectum, both of them, it came away, and those men lived for 35 years after that, both of them, and died a natural death as old men. Now I'll lay this on a stack of Bibles, and I'm not given to lying, I hate anybody that does, but that is actually what happened. Now, well, everybody around here was completely sold on this deal, eh? So she tried to get the medical profession to recognize her, and I'll have to tell you there was a couple of doctors in this town, they're dead and gone long ago, but they would a killed her if they could of. They said she's only a quack, and the one fella said, I wouldn't take that stuff, I'd die first-and die he did, with cancer. Now this was the general feeling of the medical profession all over the country I don't know why. I can't imagine why anybody that could help anybody, God, I don't know why it knocked em, eh? There was people from your country, all over the states. They came to this clinic, and I'll tell you, I witnessed quite a few of them. They were there every day. I only came on Saturdays, but when they told me about their suffering and the fact that after the treatment started their pain vanished-could you blame them for standing up on their hind legs and screaming about it? I didn't. My mother died, as I say, a natural death, she lived for 30 years after that. She died an old lady in the hospital here in Bracebridge. That was the end of Elmer's uninterrupted story. When he was imished with what he had to say, I asked him if his mother had gone for surgery or other treatment besides Essiac. "No," he said. "She wouldn't go for the surgery." Then the conversation wandered for a few minutes. Edra hadn't said a word since I'd turned on the tape recorder. Finally, out of nowhere, she said: "I had cancer, too." "You did?" I blurted out. I'm sure the surprise showed on my face. "Three years ago," she said. And Edra, the picture of health, told her own story. She had gone into the hospital in Perry Sound for a simple hysterectomy. But they found a malignant growth on her left ovary. "They took the uterus, they took everything, and they sent it away and found that it was fairly aggressive - that was the term they used. They said I'd have to have further treatment. I said, what does this entail? The surgeon said radiation, and I said, oh, Lord. I felt as if my whole world had fallen apart. "When he said radiation, I thought, well, Lord, this is the end, or the beginning of the end, and I think I'd better come to terms with it. I had so much experience with the rest of my family, on my mother's side. She had seven sisters and five of them died of cancer.
"I nursed my aunt, my mother's younger sister, for a year. She had cancer
of the bone. Her arms broke off here, her legs broke off between her hips.
She was just like a rag doll, and there was nothing left of her but a hank
of hair and these broken bones. She didn't weigh 35 pounds when she died,
and she was only 32 years old. "It started out a little, wee growth in her
left breast no bigger than a peanut, but it was on the breast bone, and
she had suf fered with a lame hip. She had a little girl who was less than
two years old, and after she had that little girl she could hardly walk,
you know, for a long, long time, and then she noticed this little lump in
her breast, so she went and they did a total mastectomy, just cleaned her
right out down to the rib cage, you know "It was dreadful, and all the
nodes under her arm and everything, and then it came back in her hip,
that's where it came first, and her ribs let go from her spine-they were
crossed over each other. You never saw such a pathetic and heartbreaking
sight in your life, and I will never forget her. "It was a horrible death. I witnessed it," Elmer said. "And my mother had cancer-both her ovaries. She had a four pound tumor on one and five or six pounds on the other, and she swelled up like a woman in the last stages of pregnancy That was in 1948. But at that time, Nurse Caisse's treatment wasn't available." "You couldn't get it," Elmer said. "No way. They banned the whole works." "We couldn't get it for mother," Edra said. "It was no longer available." "Miss Caisse was under pain of imprisonment. She had to quit " , Elmer said. I asked Edra how she felt about that in 1948. "Oh, I was very bitter about that. I was very angry with the doctors in this town, in particular, for blackballing her the way they did. They really did blackball her. I am not so familiar with it as my husband and my mother-in-law, but my mother-in-law was the closest thing to a saint." Elmer perked up. "That's why I'm so good!" We all laughed. I asked Edra how she had felt after her radiation treatments. "Oh, sick!," she said. "Nauseous, diarrhea, shaky. I would sit and my stomach would go like that-you could see it jumping. It didn't just quiver inside. You could see it jumping with the nerves, you know Oh, burn, oh! They don't prepare you, you know, for what that radiation is like. "I had one every morning at 9:30. Well, I was so sick I could hardly get to the hospital. That's the dread I had. After about 17 or 18 treatments, I couldn't even go to the dining room because of the smell of food. I was like someone in the first stages of pregnancy. I couldn't stand the smell of the dining room." I asked her what kept her going. "Well, I knew I had 30 treatments to go and I just thought , well, that's one less. Tomorrow I'll have another one and that will be one less, and I took it one day at a time. It was the only hope I had at that point. The last three weeks, I was just too ill to drive the 125 miles to get home and back. I was too ill to even come home. "In the meantime, he's got this in motion to get me the Essiac. This is what I was looking forward to. I thought if I could just get that, I'm going to get better." I asked Elmer how he went about getting the Essiac. He explained about getting a doctor to provide a certificate, then getting it cleared through somebody's office in Ottowa, then getting the Resperin Corporation to send the Essiac. A lot of paperwork and red tape, was what it was. "Then the Resperin Corporation sends it to you, eh?" he said. "For about six months they never charged us a cent. Miss Caisse left a legacy for people, and how much funding I don't know, but we got it for six months and it never cost a penny. Now we pay what for three or four bottles-$40? That's $10 a bottle. You can't measure money against Essiac." But the first step in the process was written documentation that Edra did have cancer. "I can't really say what kind it was," she said. Some medical term she doesn't recall. "But it was carcinoma." Weeks had gone by after Elmer wrote the health officials in Ottowa asking for approval to get the Essiac. Nothing happened. So he contacted their member of parliament. "Boy, Elmer rattled their chain," Edra laughed. "I'll tell you, he went right after them." And, she says, the MP's secretary went after Dr. Sproul, the Minister of Health, and before long, they received their Essiac. Edra had been home from the hospital for about a month. She was totally beaten. "I would lay awake all night, my nerves were so bad," she said. "It was just like this." She shook her hands, imitating someone who's intensely jittery. "I couldn't sleep. You know, oh, it was dreadful, and then I'd get up and cry at the least little thing. My nerves were just-I was just shot. I hadn't taken the Essiac 10 days until I started to pick up." She was emphatic about it. "I was so sore from the radiation , you know, my bowels, my bladder, everything. I was so badly burned from the radiation. But I hadn't taken Essiac 10 days when I got up one morning and I said, `Gosh, I'm hungry for breakfast: Elmer looked at me, you know, because I hadn't said I was hungry for a long time. But I was really hungry for breakfast. I started to eat again and lose the nausea and the diarrhea and my general well-being-my outlook on life-seemed to improve. I seemed to feel better every day. I've never missed a meal since. I've never had a sick stomach. Mind you, my nerves were hot. I guess-poor father here-I was pretty hard to live with for a while." She looked over at Elmer and laughed. "That's when I took to drink," Elmer said. "I'll tell you," Edra said, "I've been taking it for two and a half years now, and quite truthfully I don't think I'd be here today if it weren't for Essiac. I feel sure. I think this Essiac is my insurance. That's the way I look at it. It's my insurance. I do all my own work. I help Dad whenever I can." "Dad don't do a hell of a lot, either," Elmer laughed. "And I'm involved with my church work a lot," Edra went on. "I keep busy. For an old lady of 67, I think I'm doing pretty good. I think I'm very, very lucky, you know My own doctor has taken blood test and blood test, bone marrow, liver, chest X-rays, bladder sample, you name it, he's taken it, blood sugar-everything is A-1. So praise God, I have a lot to be thankful for. "I think it was about the 6th of September when I had a checkup. The doctor says, `You know, you're incredible: I said, `No, I'm not. You know what's doing it, don't you?' He says, `Edra, I really believe it. I'm really beginning to have faith in this medication. You just keep it up: He's beginning to see that it has done me some good. You see, they're skeptical. They have to be. Whenever there's something new, you're skeptical until it's proven. Areri t you? Well, he sees me on a regular basis and he's beginning to believe that this is really working for me. The last time I was down there, they couldn't find anything. I feel fine." At this point Edra was finished telling her own story. So I asked Elmer to tell me more about the years of Rene's clinic. What was the mood in the clinic? "Well, it was subdued, to say the least. But these people knew they were going to get help. Having nothing to do and being a little snoopy, I went around and talked to some of the bad cases, and by God, I'm telling you, there was some god-awful looking sights, to put it mildly, and those people told me that they'd suffered the tortures of hell, for years some of them, eh? That's almost the identical words to what they told me. "But since they'd been coming here, oh, were they pleased. `We have no pain anymore, no pain,' they'd say. In big capital letters! So how the hell are you going to dispute something like that? Actual testimony from people with their jaws, their teeth, in sight, and some of their ribs in sight, holes eaten in different places, dirty old cancer, eh?" I asked how the people felt when the clinic was closed. "Despair," Edra said instantly. "Well, there was a lot of ill feeling going around this country at the time," Elmer said. "Damn near everybody you talked to was quite provoked at the medical association. They were so powerful that Miss Caisse was on the verge of being arrested, eh?" "Heavens, she was an angel of mercy," Edra said. "People reacted when they closed her down," Elmer said. "But they were more or less powerless. They couldn't battle the powers that be that were against her. It was like beating your head against the wall. But everybody was pretty mad at the time. Those people that were afflicted, they were pretty damn badly provoked to think that nobody else was going to get help, eh?" We talked for a few minutes about the old days in Bracebridge and some of the people Elmer had known who were helped by Rene's injections. Then I asked Edra how she takes the Essiac today. "I take one ounce in two ounces of hot water each night , preferably on an empty stomach. Take it on an empty stomach and it goes through all the organs, you know By itself. It's not mixed in with anything else and you get the full benefit of it. I don't mind taking it. I've rather acquired a taste for it. At first it was kind of, yech. But I hadn't taken it long before I got to like the herbal taste. It's all herbs, that's all it is." "The Indians knew all the herbs and the value of them," Elmer said. "Today we know nothing about most of them." "I'd like to see this made available to everyone that needs it ", Edra said. "For the medical profession to accept it and dispense it to their patients. If they have the authority to ban it, then they also have the authority to okay it and put it on the market. If they want to charge people $10 a bottle for it-if they've got to make money out of it, fine-but for God's sake give it to people and give them a chance at life! It's not synthetic. It's pure stuff." "Those Indians, they knew something," Elmer said. "I'll tell you, those herbs can help you. You know if you take the burdock root and black cherry bark, it'll straighten up any skin eruption. It's so damn powerful. You wouldn't believe it." I'd never heard of that, so I asked Elmer to tell me about it. "Just peel the black cherry bark off and boil it up and grind up the burdock roots and drink it," he said. "It's sure bitter," Edra said. "Well, they're basic elements in a lot of medicines, patent medicines today. It's used in cough medicines to a great extent. But you combine the two-burdock and black cherry bark-and it's the greatest thing there is for any skin eruption. Poison ivy. Shingles." Edra told the story about one of their daughters. Two years ago she was in tears from the shingles, the pain was so bad. All the doctor could do was prescribe pain pills. "Well, that poor child couldn't sleep for the pain. So Elmer said, `Well, I'll get something fixed up for her before you come home. I'll get some black cherry bark and some burdock: Sure enough, she took it for two or three days and the pain was gone and her leg was clearing up." "Don't doubt it, for Christ sake," Elmer said. "Because it's authentic." I asked Elmer how he brewed up his homemade herbal shingles cure. "It's very, very simple," he said. "You peel the bark off the black cherry tree, preferably the young trees with the softer and more aromatic bark. Some of those trees get so big that the bark is hard and tough, something like an old man, like myself. So you get the younger trees. Peel the limbs and you end up with a bunch of shavings. The inner part is green, very green. Get about five or six handfuls. "The burdock blood roots you can get at any health food store. They're cheap as hell, eh? And you put about a handful in the pot and boil it all. Don't hesitate to boil it plenty. It just looks like a very strong tea when it's made, but you taste it, it's great. But you've got to boil it good to get the essence out of the bark, and then like she says, drink a wine glass every day " "You have to strain it well," Edra said. At this point Mayor Lang came in to say hello to everyone. Elmer was calling him "young fella," and teasing him about this and that, and after a while as everyone was starting to leave, I thanked Elmer and Edra for coming to town to talk to me. "What we've told you is to the best of our ability," Elmer said.
"And it's all true. There's no fabrication-none whatsoever. I've witnessed
these people that were cured, and I'll tell you, it means something when
you witness it yourself. There's one sure way of selling anything. As they
say, the proof of the pudding is eating the damn stuff." Introduction I 1 I 2 I 3 I 4I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I 11 I 12 I 13 I 14 All of the events and characters depicted in this book are non-fictional
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