Calling of an Angel: Rene Caisse and Essiac Tea

Dedicated to
JOYCE E. THOMAS

There are no words to thank you.
Such power is held by few.
Such gentleness is held by only the very powerful.
To have both traits is rare.
So rare they are recognized by only a few.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER EIGHT

On October 5, 1983, E. Bruce Hendrick, the chief of neurosurgery at the University of Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, wrote to the Canadian Minister of Health and Welfare saying that Dr. Hendrick supported a scientific clinical trial of the cancer treatment compound known as "Essiac."

Dr. Hendrick stated that after they started on Essiac, eight of ten patients with surgically treated tumors of the central nervous system had "escaped from the conventional methods of therapy including both radiation and chemotherapy."

Dr. Hendrick wrote that he was "most impressed with the effectiveness of the treatment and its lack of side effects." He closed with this: "I feel that this method of treatment should be given serious consideration and would benefit from a scientific clinical trial."

With that letter Dr. Hendrick joined a long list of physicians dating back more than 60 years who have spoken in favor of Essiac as a cancer treatment.
Yet Essiac today remains unavailable - almost impossible to get - for nearly all cancer patients.

How could something like this happen?

INTRODUCTION

This is the story of a woman named Rene Caisse. For more than 50 years, until her death in 1978 at the age of 90, she treated thousands of cancer patients, most of them written off by doctors as terminally ill, with her own secret herbal formula. She called it Essiac - Caisse spelled backwards - and she brewed the tea herself, alone in her kitchen.

Her patients swore by her. They were devoted. Men and women who believed she cured them of cancer told their friends and families, wrote letters to doctors and politicians, swore affidavits, testified before the Canadian parliament and pleaded with Rene Caisse to supply them with more Essiac when they needed it. Some husbands and wives of patients who died wrote Rene letters thanking her profoundly for making life easier - free of pain - and longer for their loved ones. Her funeral in the village of Bracebridge, about 170 kilometers north of Toronto, was attended by hundreds of people, including former patients Rene had treated for terminal cancer as far back as the 1930s and who were still on their feet to bury her and tell their stories.

I'm convinced that Essiac works. It has potent healing -- and preventive -- power. It is a gift from nature. I've seen a small part of the evidence with my own eyes, and I've experienced Essiac's power as a healthful tonic in my own life. I suffered from chronic bronchitis until a few years ago when I first heard of Essiac and tried it myself. Within days my cough disappeared and it hasn't returned. I still drink the Essiac. It tastes like what it is, an herbal tea. About as plain and mild as any of the other herbal teas from around the world you can buy in any supermarket. I've never felt better. All through Canada and in parts of the United States today there are people of all ages who are absolutely convinced that Essiac saved their lives or the lives of friends and loved ones. But you can't buy it in any supermarket.

Claims have been made - since about 1925, in fact - that Essiac is an effective treatment for cancer. So the governments of North America have classified it as a "drug." The Canadian government almost legalized its use by Rene in 1939, and has gone through fits and starts ever since in deciding how to handle the situation. The policy has ranged from threatening to arrest Rene if she didn't close her clinic to promising her publicly - on the record, in the press that she wouldn't be arrested if she would agree to keep her clinic open, thus quieting the public clamor that arose after the government threatened to shut her down.In the last decade, the Canadian government has classified Essiac as an "experimental drug," and then an "experimental drug" that had failed to show promise, and today - as Dr. Hendrick's letter shows - the internal battles are still going on in Canada over the future of Essiac.

In the U.S., a 1978 class action suit in federal court in Detroit seeking to authorize the importation of Essiac for cancer treatment was defeated by the government. Other than that, the U.S. government hasn't faced much pressure about Essiac. There are probably high level officials in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration - and the National Cancer Institute - who make life and death decisions about cancer drugs who could honestly say they've never heard of Essiac. I hope they'll take the time to read this book.

I don't claim that Essiac is a miraculous panacea, capable of curing all cancers in all people, nor do I believe that. Rene Caisse didn't even believe that. She didn't claim Essiac as a "cure for cancer." Her former patients were the ones who put forward that claim, strenuously and over many decades. What Rene maintained was that Essiac caused regression in some cancerous tumors, the total destruction of others, prolonged life in most cases and - in virtually every case - significantly diminished the pain and suffering of cancer patients.

If the testimonials of Rene's former patients, including those sworn under oath, have any credibility at all - and when I present them, I think you'll agree they do - then Essiac's powers as a pain reliever in cancer patients are nothing short of phenomenal. In sixty years of personal accounts, the easing of agony and an increased sense of well-being - often to the point of getting through the day without narcotics - is one of the predominant themes. You hear it over and over again, and always told with a deep sense of gratitude.

Rene fought almost her whole adult life against overwhelming odds and under incredible pressures, some of them self imposed, to establish those simple facts as accepted wisdom. She never gave up her fight. But for one woman many years ago to persuade the medical and legal institutions of North America that a natural treatment for cancer - based on herbs that grow wild - might make more sense than the accepted means of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy...she might as well have been telling them in an earlier century that the earth is round.

Remember: Rene was fighting cancer with a natural treatment in an era when the conventional wisdom of the medical establishment denied even that diet might be a factor in causing cancer. It's hard to believe, knowing what we know now - and what has become the conventional wisdom - but for generations those doctors who preached dietary causes of cancer were dismissed by most physicians as quacks. So what was the medical establishment to make of this woman - who wasn't even a licensed doctor - who preached that a cancer treatment was to be found in plants that grow wild?

My goal in this book is simple: I want to tell the story of this ordinary woman's extraordinary Life and share the knowledge of Essiac so that people can make their own informed decisions about what it's future should be. I don't pretend to have all the answers about how and why Essiac works, or the final scientific proof that it does. There are large gaps, as I'll explain, in my own knowledge of this story. Much of it remains a mystery to me, raising deeply intriguing questions which I would love to see answered.

But I do know that there is already enough evidence that Essiac has benefited cancer patients in the last 60 years to warrant those controlled clinical studies that some physicians - such as Dr. Hendrick - have advocated for decades.

The risk to the public would certainly appear to be minimal. There seems to be universal agreement among the doctors and scientists who have done investigations of Essiac - and the patients who have used it - that Essiac is non-toxic and without harmful side effects. Rene Caisse drank it every day for half a century and some of her family and close friends always made sure they had their daily cup. Not even Rene Caisse's worst enemies ever put forward the argument that people were hurt by drinking the tea.

This nontoxic nature of Essiac is an important consideration in making it a treatment worthy of serious investigation. Many of the conventionally accepted chemotherapy drugs actually come with toxic warning labels. One of the commonly administered cancer drugs is the chemical Fluorouracil {5 FU). Note this warning on the manufacturer's brochure: "Precautions: Fluorouracil is a highly toxic drug with a narrow margin of safety. Therefore, patients should be carefully supervised since therapeutic response is unlikely to occur without some evidence of toxicity...Severe hematological toxicity, gastrointestinal hemorrhage and even death may result from the fluorouracil despite meticulous selection of patients and careful adjustment of dosage."

As if that weren't bad enough, the officially accepted "experimental drugs," on which the government and the drug companies lavish huge sums of developmental funds, can be even worse. According to a 1981 Washington Post story, a major American drug company spent significant amounts of money and years of research on a weed from India they hoped would have a beneficial effect on certain forms of leukemia - even though it was known in advance that the weed caused severe liver damage in livestock. And sure enough, when the weed was synthesized into a chemical and given to cancer patients, there were reports that it was helping some people - and killing others.

But there was nothing unusual in that. "We knew from the beginning that this caused toxicity in animals," the Post quoted a U.S. Food and Drug Administration official as saying. "Almost all investigational cancer drugs are highly toxic." As you read this story and wonder - as I did many, many times while I was researching it - if an herbal compound developed by one woman could possibly - even possibly - be safer and more effective than the best of what medical science is already bringing us, please keep this quote in mind from that same 1981 series of Washington Post articles:

"Over The last decade, more than 150 experimental drugs have been given to tens of thousands of cancer patients under the sponsorship of the US Federal Government's National Cancer Institute. Many of these drugs have come from a list of highly toxic industrial chemicals, including pesticides, herbicides and dyes...While all anti-cancer drugs can cause side effects among some of those who take them, the experimental drugs - along with leading to hundreds of deaths - have elicited a nightmarish list of serious adverse reactions, including kidney failure, liver failure, heart failure, respiratory distress, destruction of bone marrow so the body can no longer make blood, brain damage, paralysis, seizure, coma, and visual hallucinations.

"So little is known about many of these chemicals that doctors have found these ironic results: In some cases the experimental drug actually stimulated tumor growth rather than stopped the cancer - and in other tests, doctors and researchers found that the experimental drug itself caused cancer."

Rene Caisse wouldn't have been surprised to read that. Her own feelings about the use of these toxic drugs, after a lifetime spent fighting cancer, were blunt and nasty: "Chemotherapy should be a criminal offense," she told one reporter.

Though the medical establishment has not yet recognized Rene Caisse's herbal treatment for cancer as legitimate, there is more than ample precedent for the approach she was taking. According to a 1987 NOVA documentary on "The Hidden Power of Plants " , aired on the Public Broadcasting System: "Indeed, the history of medicine has been largely the story of plants and the potent chemicals they produce. Around the world, traditional healers, using plant medications, provide health care to eighty percent of the human population - over four billion people."

Since the 1950s doctors have been using an alkaloid called vincristine - which comes from an evergreen plant known as the periwinkle - in the treatment of childhood leukemia and other cancers. Digitalis, which comes from the leaves of the foxglove plant, is an important heart medication. According to the NOVA documentary, "Over 25 Percent of the drugs prescribed in the U.S. still contain plant materials as their principal active ingredients."

Throughout history there are countless examples of people discovering the healing properties of nature before science could understand them - or even believe that they existed. South American Indians treated fevers, especially malarial fevers, with an herbal tea made from cinchona bark. Scientists eventually discovered that cinchona bark is nature's source of quinine.

Science didn't discover that Vitamin C prevented scurvy. English sailors discovered that without even knowing it. All they knew was that they'd better take some citrus fruits - lemons, limes along with them on long ocean voyages. That's why the English came to be called "limeys." Science didn't discover Vitamin C until 1932.

For centuries, American Indians treated various aches and pains with an herbal tea made from white willow bark. It must have seemed terribly primitive to the doctors who first heard of it. They were trusting their science; the Indians were trusting nature. But eventually science caught up. Today, synthesized and refined white willow bark is the basis for what we call aspirin.

Always, in all cultures, there was what might be called "living proof - medicinal value of plants long before there was scientific proof - and acceptance. Living proof, of course, is not acceptable to the scientific community. Not even the testimony of ordinary individuals, sworn to oath, meets the rigorous standards of scientific proof. But no matter what happens in the scientific world, living proof will be what passes from person to person and prevents Essiac from dying out altogether in the modern world.

Rene Caisse's files are filled with letters from people all over North America testifying to lifesaving experiences with Essiac. Almost 404 people showed up at the Canadian Cancer Commission hearings in 1939 prepared to be sworn to oath and state that Essiac saved their lives.

Today, all over Canada and in parts of the U.S., there are thousands of people who may not know the first thing about scientific proof, but who know that Essiac benefited or even saved them or someone they love. For science to deny that there is a cause and effect relationship between Essiac and the relief of pain and the regression of cancerous tumors is almost Like saying, "well, we can see aIl those great huge billowing clouds of smoke, but we haven't been able to determine with certainty that there is a fire."

While most Americans have never heard of Essiac, the controversy it inspires has raged in Canada since the 1920s, every few years in the public glare of the press, and frequently involving the highest medical, legal and political circles in Canada. But always that controversy centered on this one woman who lived, most of the time, in the tiny village of Bracebridge, Ontario, population 9,000 or so.

Rene Caisse was an unlikely public figure. She was a skilled nurse who didn't crave attention or money. "I never had $100 I could call my own," she used to laugh with her friends. She didn't charge a fee for her services. She accepted only voluntary contributions in the form of fruits, vegetables or eggs, as often as not - from those who could afford to offer them, and she didn't turn away people who couldn't make any payment at all.

One man, Ted Hale, was so grateful watching his wife recover from cancer using Essiac that he slipped a $50 bill under a book on a shelf when he came to pick up another bottle from Rene. The next time he arrived at her front door, he says, she grabbed him by his shirt collar, pulled him inside and gave him a piece of her mind. How dare he leave her that much money? She didn't like it one bit. He apologized and asked her if she would accept it as his way of donating for the next people who needed her Essiac and couldn't afford to leave anything at all. She finally relented on those grounds and kept the money, but Ted Hale still laughs at his own embarrassment when he tells the story ten years later.

Rene Caisse lived her whole life in modest circumstances while rejecting offers of vast sums of money to reveal her formula. She refused to reveal her formula to people who wanted to help her; she refused to reveal her formula to powerful institutions that demanded it before they would consider legitimizing Essiac. What Rene Caisse wanted was to heal the ill and guarantee the legalization of Essiac for all, yet her intransigent refusal to budge from secrecy about the formula cost her - and us - dearly.

She refused to reveal the formula to the Canadian government, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York - the world's largest private cancer research center - and the National Cancer Institute, just to name some of the institutions that wanted the formula at one time or another. She wouldn't give them the formula until they would admit that Essiac had merit as a treatment for cancer. They refused to admit any merit until she gave them the formula.

There were legitimate arguments made on both sides. Rene was fearful that the medical establishment would either exploit Essiac, charging exorbitant prices to make a fortune and placing it beyond the means of the poor, or discredit it and bury it. The doctors and politicians argued that they couldn't very well accept the legitimacy of a cancer treatment if they didn't even know what was in it. The result was a tragic standoff.

We have lost decades of precious research. With hindsight, it can be argued that Rene Caisse should have given the formula to anyone, anywhere, at any time, who wanted to have it for any reason, on the grounds that the more people who have it, the better chance that the truth will out. That certainly will be the position taken in this book.

I am going to release to the public, for the first time, the formula and the procedure for preparing Essiac. I will explain in detail at the end of this book how I will do that, and how anyone who wants that information may have it.

I believe that information should be in the hands of the public. People should have the right to make their own decisions about whether or not they will drink the Essiac tea. People can make it themselves, if they wish, just the way Rene did. There is no mystery about the preparation. It must be done carefully and accurately - as I will explain - but it finally comes down to: Put in so much of this herb, so much of that herb, brew it and drink the tea.

The herbs themselves grow in many regions. Rene used to say that enough of the herbs grow in Ontario to supply the whole world. But in revealing the formula, I share one of Rene's deep fears that played an important role in her refusal to release the formula until after the governing bodies of medicine and law would admit that it had merit: Namely, that once the herbs are publicly identified, these inexpensive and widely available plants will be placed on the federal "controlled substances" roster - like some dangerous drug - suddenly become very difficult - and illegal - to acquire.

But there's nothing I can do about that. As always, those decisions are up to the governments. But my decision is to tell the story of how I came into possession of the formula, place it before the public and let people make up their own minds about what they want to do with it. At least once the formula is in the public domain, the old argument that was used for so long against Rene - we can't do proper scientific studies until we know the formula - will no longer have any validity at all. Sloan-Kettering, for instance, was telling Rene Caisse at least as late as 1975 that they would perform more clinical studies on Essiac, if only they had the formula. Well, now they'll have it. And so will anyone who wants it.

Rene Caisse was a sweet woman who gave her best and saw the worst. She was surrounded most of her life with the pain and suffering of others. She lived under siege much of the time, with a legion of supporters who saw her as a saint and powerful enemies who wanted her arrested for practicing medicine without a license. She became so fearful and paranoid about arrest that she sometimes had to turn away dying people who were pleading with her to help them. But more often, she found ways to help the people who came to her, even total strangers who had nothing to offer her. She said once about her situation: "I was always just one jump ahead of a policeman. We were right across the street from the town jail and the keeper used to joke that he was saving a cell for me."

The blessing of Essiac brought a curse for Rene Caisse: Her life was never her own.

CHAPTER SEVEN

In May, 1959, Rene flew to Boston and was met by Ralph Daigh. She was given a comfortable apartment in the Commander Hotel in Cambridge, not far from the Brusch Medical Center. At the clinic, three rooms-a waiting room, a dispensary and a treatment room-were made available for Rene's use. Her treatments were to be supervised by Dr. Brusch's director of research, Dr. Charles McClure. Dr. McClure would personally maintain the case history files.

One of the first patients treated was a 40 year old woman named Lena Burcell. Four years after surgery to remove a cancerous breast, the cancer had reoccurred in her lung. X-rays showed her to be terminally ill. She received her first treatment from Rene Caisse on May 26, 1959. Almost immediately, her ability to breathe improved markedly. Prior to treatment with Essiac, Mrs. Burcell had complained of severe joint pains. These pains lessened noticeably, she told the doctors. She lived for three months.

Exploratory surgery-followed by biopsy-on a 37-year-old man named John Cronin confirmed that he was terminally ill with inoperable cancer of the right lung. An alcoholic, Cronin was known as a difficult and unreliable patient.

When he started treatments with Rene Caisse, he was too weak to climb one flight of stairs comfortably. He was suffering severe pains in the area of his chest incision and was being given narcotic painkillers.

Cronin had seven weekly treatments, each consisting of one ounce of Essiac orally and one ounce by intramuscular injection. He told doctors that the pain in his chest had disappeared, and he was not as short of breath. He could climb several flights of stairs without discomfort and had taken up his old hobby of swimming.

A drinking binge landed him in the V A. Hospital, where he was threatened with loss of his veteran's medical benefits if he continued non-V A. treatment. When he got out of the V A. hospital, Cronin went back to the Brusch Medical Center saying he would gladly sacrifice his veteran's medical care in favor of the relief he was receiving from Essiac.

The file merely notes that under the circumstances, no further treatment was given by Rene Caisse.

A 58-year-old man named Wilbur Dymond was suffering from prostate cancer. After two months of treatments, all hardness in the prostate had vanished, except for one small nodule. He reported to doctors that he no longer suffered excruciating pain during urination.

Russell McCassey was suffering from a basal cell carcinoma of the right cheek, proven by biopsy. The open lesion had been present for months. He had not had X-ray or radiation treatments. After four treatments-both orally and intramuscular injections-in two weeks, the color of the lesion changed from red to pale pink. The lesion reduced in size. The central ulcer crater was disappearing.

After three more weeks of treatments, the lesion was healed, leaving only a small white mark where the biopsy incision was made. The file notes that this case appeared to be cured.

Those are typical examples. The supervisor, Dr. McClure, wrote about his experiences with Rene and Essiac: "After having personally observed Miss Caisse administer her remedy' for cancer on known cases of malignancy for about three months, and the results of such administration, I am certain the remedy is ef ficacious. It is to be regretted that the patient sample is so small, although small as the sample was, her gratifying results on all cases are indisputable.

"The sense of well-being engendered in the patients is heartening and easily noticed. The return of strength and will to do, obvious. The relief from pain is possibly the most dramatic change. In those cases of cutaneous cancer the evidence of quick healing and regeneration visible and positive."

To supplement her treatment of patients, Rene agreed-at Dr. Brusch's urging-to perform experiments on mice inoculated with human cancer. Initially the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York agreed to provide the mice.

The first group of mice treated with Essiac was returned to Sloan-Kettering in mid June, 1959. According to Dr. Brusch's records, Dr. Philip C. Merker of Sloan-Kettering called to say that Sloan-Kettering was very interested in what it was seeing: namely, a physiological change in the cancer growth characterized as "a tendency of the cancer cells to amalgamate and localize."

But then Sloan-Kettering said that it would have to have the formula in order to continue any further studies. Dr. Brusch and others seriously considered that possibility, but Rene remained adamant that she would not release the formula until she had some guarantee that it would not be "bottled up in the laboratory" or permanently shelved as worthless.

It was the same old Catch-22: Admit its merit and I'll release the formula; we can't admit merit until we know what's in it. The experiments would have to continue without the cooperation of Sloan-Kettering.

A prominent Boston surgeon who was familiar with the work being done at the Brusch Medical Center suggested that the National Cancer Institute might be helpful in future animal experimentation. Ralph Daigh contacted the NCI. They were interested, but placed the same demand as Sloan-Kettering: the formula first.

So the experiments on mice continued without the involvement of the huge cancer research centers. Here is what Dr. Charles McClure and Dr. Charles Brusch later wrote of those experiments: "On mice it (Essiac) has been shown to cause a decided recession of the mass, and a definite change in cell formation."

On the treatments of patients, their final report concluded: "Clinically, on patients suffering from pathologically proven cancer, it reduces pain and causes a recession in the growth; patients have gained weight and shown an improvement in their general health.

"This, after only three months' tests and the proof Miss Caisse has to show of the many patients she has benefited in the past 25 years, has convinced the doctors at the Brusch Medical Center that Essiac has merit in the treatment of cancer. The doctors do not say that Essiac is a cure, but they do say it is of benefit. It is non-toxic, and is administered both orally and by intramuscular injection."

During the time Rene spent at the Brusch Medical Center, Dr. Charles McClure mailed questionnaires to some of Rene's former patients. He received back several testimonials from people

treated as long as 31 years earlier, including some who had testified for Rene at the 1939 Royal Cancer Commission hearings:

Clara Thornbury-treated 22 years previously. Alive and well at 75. (She eventually died in 1975 at the age of 91.)

Nellie McVittie-treated 23 years previously. Alive and well and still in touch with Rene in 1959.

Wilson Hammell-treated 31 years previously. Eliza Veitch-treated in 1938. Age 76 in 1959.

After about a year, with only a limited number of patients available for treatment-due to American Medical Association restrictions on remedies of unknown substances-and laboratories increasingly reluctant to supply mice inoculated with human cancer, Rene returned home to Bracebridge. She was convinced that the labs were under pressure to stop cooperating with her. Once again, she was pessimistic about Essiac ever gaining recognition and acceptance.

But she had made a friend and believer out of Dr. Charles Brusch. They remained on good terms, in communication and cooperating with each other about the future of Essiac for the rest of Rene's life. To this day, as I write this, almost 30 years after Rene's work in Cambridge, Dr. Brusch remains an outspoken advocate of Essiac as a valuable treatment for cancer patlents.

CHAPTER EIGHT

As the 1960s began, Rene remained active. She was supplying Essiac to Dr. Brusch. She was secretly treating patients out of her home in Bracebridge. But now she was also trying to interest large institutions in the idea of exploring Essiac's capabilities.

In March, 1960, she wrote to the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas, telling them what she had. She received back a polite note, dated March 22, 1960, from a Research Scientist named Alfred Taylor: "We are interested in checking various plant products for their effects on cancer growth from the standpoint of laboratory tests with animals bearing cancers. ... We are always glad to check materials which can be used in our testing programs."

But nothing came of it. She tried to interest Merck & Co., the huge pharmaceutical manufacturer. Merck's Office of General Counsel responded in legalese saying basically that they would have to have the formula, and then they would make up their own minds in their own way in their own time. It was not a response designed to encourage Rene to put her hopes in themor to indicate that they knew of or had any interest in this opportunity to get to the truth about Essiac.

A physician in Arcadia, California came to believe in Essiac. In October, 1960, he wrote a long letter to Rene offering his strategy for a new crusade for Essiac: Find a "few trusted physicians" to run "pilot studies." Then offer the results of these new pilot studies to the profession. "It seems advantageous to offer the results of a new testing program which has not already been assigned a `thumbs down' position by a legislative body," he wrote. And then they should present "an improved, tested chemotherapy called Essiac."

But he counseled great patience. The testing program "would take a minimum of one and one fourth years before the date of product availability. This may be much too short a time because of the nature of the disease. The diagnosis of a Cure is arbitrarily based on a five year period."

There was a lot of wishful thinking of that sort going on all through the 1960s. But there wasn't the organization or the money or the political clout to bring any of it together into a major political movement or to persuade the big institutions to negotiate a research arrangement with Rene. And with Rene well into her 70s by now, she was no longer strong enough to fight the same kind of publicized political fight she had waged three decades earlier.

Essiac remained alive through word of mouth. People from all over North America found Rene when they needed it. Shed get phone calls in the middle of the night from people in Europe who wanted to get some. In her spare time, Rene produced a pamphlet: "I was Canada s Cancer Nurse." She wrote more warnings about our food and our environment. In one, she railed against poisoned additives, chemical processing of flours, oils and fats, and chemical aging of such foods as cheese.

She urged people to take four steps:

"1. Do NOT eat these foods if alternatives are available.

2. Urge our governments to take action against these conditions.

3. Read the labels (especially the small print) on everything you buy to eat or drink.

4. Patronize the manufacturers who produce foods without added colors and other additives, and who are growing foods in soil not contaminated with chemicals and where they do not use poisonous sprays."

Even now some of her former patients from as far back as the 1930s stayed in touch with her, offering encouragements. May Henderson, who had testified so powerfully at the Royal Cancer Commission hearings in 1939, was still alive and well and corresponding with Rene.

In 1971, when President Richard Nixon declared his "War On Cancer," May Henderson wrote to Rene: "I guess you read the headlines in our papers recently. `Nixon prepared to spend billions to find a cure: I guess that and the fact that a dear old friend had to undergo surgery and have a breast removed recently has kept me wondering what is going on-if anything-with your wonderful work and formula."

May Henderson noted that she was now 75 years old and experiencing "usually good health." A year later she sent a copy of Rene's "I Was Canada s Cancer Nurse" brochure to her Member of Parliament, asking him to get involved in a new crusade. She received back a polite thanks, but no thanks note.

In 1973, when she was 85 years old, Rene decided to make one last try with the medical establishment. She contacted Sloan-Kettering and asked them if they wanted to renew the encouraging tests they had done in 1959. Dr. Chester Stock, a vice president and associate director for administrative and academic affairs, said they would be willing to run tests on mice if Rene would send them some Essiac.

Rene agreed. Sloan-Kettering was interested in tumor regression, so she began supplying them with one of the Essiac herbs. In her experiments with mice at the Christie Street Hospital in Toronto in the early 1930s, she had determined that this was the herb that caused the regressions. (The others acted as blood purifiers.) She gave Sloan-Kettering detailed instructions on how to prepare the herb as an injectible solution.

It will probably never be known outside of Sloan-Kettering what actually happened in their experiments with the Essiac herb. But the tests do seem to have gone on for an extended period and there is at least one piece of documentary evidence that Sloan-Kettering was getting some positive results.

On June 10, 1975, on the letterhead of the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in Rye, New York, Dr. Chester Stock wrote to Rene: "Enclosed are test data in two experiments indicating some regressions in sarcoma 180 of mice treated with Essiac. With these results we will wish to test enough more that I should ask if you can send more material. If you have questions about the data, please don't hestitate to ask them."

"Two experiments indicating some regressions in sarcoma 180 of mice treated zvith Essiac. " That one sentence alone written by a top Sloan-Kettering official in 1975 should be cause for even the most skeptical to agree that Essiac should be taken seriously by today's medical and scientific communities. (Sarcoma 180, incidentally, is a type of cancerous tumor often used in medical research.)

But unfortunately-despite those encouraging test results in 1975-the Sloan-Kettering tests came to a halt the next year. Other test results were coming out negative, so Rene looked into the situation. On August 22, 1975, Dr. Stock wrote her: "I will check to determine whether our laboratory group is not adequately informed on making up the Essiac from the material you supplied. I will see that the next test is above reproach."

But when Rene received an explanation of how Sloan-Kettering was preparing the injectible solution, she was horrified. They had ignored her instructions. They weren't boiling the herb. They were freezing it, then thawing it. As far as she was concerned, they were making one mistake after another. In an angry scrawl, she wrote on Sloan-Kettering's explanation: "All wrong. Rene M. Caisse."

Her reaction was cold fury. She terminated the agreement with Sloan-Kettering and stopped providing them with the material. (Two years later, in 1978, a group in Detroit filed a class action suit against the U. S. government, seeking to legalize the importation of Essiac for cancer treatment. In his sworn affidavit in that case, Dr. Stock stated: "We have tested Essiac in a very limited way against sarcoma 180 in the mouse. We have not seen any consistent activity." But he admitted: "After our testing was done we were informed that we should have had two preparations for test and also that we made improperly the injection solution from the dried material supplied to us. We were never provided full information about the nature of Essiac. ")

But even with Sloan-Kettering out of the picture and Rene almost 90 years old, Rene and Essiac were about to burst, once again, into the public spotlight.

CHAPTER NINE

In 1977, the editors of Homemaker's, a nationally distributed Canadian magazine based in Toronto, heard an awesome story: An 88-year-old nurse from Bracebridge had been successfully treating terminally ill cancer patients for 50 years with her secret herbal formula.

By its own account, the magazine assigned a team of very skeptical reporters to investigate. What those reporters discovered over the next six months caused a profound transformation in their attitude.

In the Summer, 1977 issue of Homemaker's, the magazine reported: "Essentially, Rene's story was true. She had been getting remarkable results against many kinds of cancer with Essiac, and she had been prevented from carrying on treatment unless she revealed the formula. Whether it would have been swept under the rug by a jealous medical hierarchy, as she feared, or hailed by a grateful profession that heaped honors at her door, is a question that no one can answer, since Essiac never stood the test of controlled clinical studies."

Until the last moment, the editor of Homemaker's wrote, the staff had "real reservations about publishing a story that would give false hope to cancer patients. The knowledge that our decision would possibly cause traffic jams in Bracebridge as the public beat a pathway to an old lady's door didn't help, either. But the consequences of the alternative-not to publish-were too ghastly to contemplate. There were too many if's: What if Essiac works? Even if Essiac only relieves suffering, it must be tested. Clearly, the possibility for good far outweighed the negatives."

The editor mentioned their initial skepticism about Essiac and wrote that the staff members had asked each other when it had crumbled. "When asked this question individually, we all had the same answer. Shearer (the magazine s executive vice president) was the last person I queried: `It was the day I realized that if I was told I had cancer, I would visit Rene. It wouldn't be the only thing I'd do. Hell, I'd try anything-the works, conventional and otherwise-but I'd go see Rene first: That's a pretty strong indication of our feelings."

The Homemaker's article then outlined at great length the entire saga of Rene Caisse and Essiac, going all the way back to the day in the 1920s when Rene was told by the old woman with the scarred breast about the Indian who gave her the herbal formula that cured her breast cancer.

The article described the political battle of the 1930s "that reached right to the floor of the Ontario legislature, and made headlines all over the continent."

Rene was vividly described by the journalists who had come to know her: "Though Rene was wary, extremely sensitive to doubt, and frightened that at any moment `they' (the arm of the medical profession that she felt had squelched her in the past) would stifle or subvert us, she had a brilliantly sharp mind and almost total recall of names, events and personalities.

"Each time we visited her over the next few months, she would be sitting in her favorite easy chair, resplendent in a vivid flowered dress, the winter sun glinting off masses of costume jewelry, her hair hidden under a jaunty sable wig. She was always ready to produce more documents, newspaper clippings, letters from supportive doctors, and case histories as well as before-and-after photographs of cancer patients plucked from drawers or cardboard boxes stashed under her bed. And when we allayed her suspicions by setting up her own tape recorder as backup, she talked into our recorder about her experiences. She had lived many years with the possibility of fines and arrest hanging over her, and trust did not come easily.

"She resented our insistence on the need to verify every fact. Insomniac, discouraged and impatient, she often expressed the fear that she would not live to see Essiac recognized. In modest circumstances, she seemed genuinely disinterested in reaping any financial rewards, and was determined that Essiac should never fall into hands that would exploit it for unseemly profit."

The Homemaker's reporters wrote of interviews they conducted with some of Rene's former patients who had testified at the Royal Cancer Commission hearings in 1939 and were still alive in 1977.

One of the witnesses in 1939 was a railroad engine watchman named Tony Baziuk. His lip cancer was so severe that it disfigured his whole face and forced him to give up his job. Six months after he started Essiac treatments, he was working again and could, as he told Homemaker's almost 40 years later: "Eat for one man, work for three, and sleep like a little baby."

The magazine quoted May Henderson at 81 reminiscing about Rene's clinic in the 1930s: "We liked to get an early start," Mrs. Henderson told Homemaker's, "because the clinic was always fllled. We tried to get our treatment before lunch, have a bite to eat in Bracebridge, and then drive back. It only took a minute to get the injection and drink the tea, and the patients used to exchange progress reports while we waited."

May Henderson said that she was still healthy in 1977 and had never suffered any recurrence of her cancer.

The Homemaker's reporters interviewed Dr. Chester Stock at Sloan-Kettering. He claimed that their tests with Essiac were not encouraging, but he "doesrit rule out the possibility that Essiac could be effective against human cancer."

About their interview with Dr. Stock, Homemaker's reported: "The material Rene sent him was 25 years old, and only one herb-the injectable one-was used on the mice. Rene never did send him either the complete formula or all the materials."

According to Homemaker's, Dr. Stock told them that he would agree to conduct further tests if Rene would give him the formula for Essiac so that Sloan-Kettering could administer both the injections and the oral treatment.

Attempting to play the role of mediator, Homemaker's passed that offer on to Rene. "Her refusal was instantaneous, and failed to yield over the next weeks in spite of our urging. She felt it was futile to go on testing on animal cancer; she wanted Essiac used on patients, or at the very least, on human cancer in animals. Furthermore, she did not believe that Sloan-Kettering would prepare the material properly.

"`Last time, they froze it,' she claimed. `They might as well have been injecting distilled water:"

The magazine also talked to Dr. Charles Brusch. He praised Essiac and told them about his recent treatment of a man named Patrick McGrail for cancer of the esophagus with herbs supplied by Rene Caisse.

The article went to press only 14 weeks after McGrail's treatment with Essiac began. McGrail was reported to have gained 11 pounds and was "feeling a heck of a lot better." (When Dr. Brusch chose McGrail as an example, he had no way of knowing that McGrail would still be alive and well ten years later.)

At the end of their research, the management of Homemaker's believed enough in what they had learned that they made an of ficial proposal to Rene. As it was described in the magazine: "In the hope that we might speed Essiac on its way through the bureaucratic maze with no more loss of time, we offered to set up a trust to represent her in any dealings she might have with the government, Cancer Institute or any interested pharmaceutical companies."

Much to their disappointment, Rene turned them down. At the end of their story, Homemaker's concluded: "There s a tragic and shameful irony in the Essiac tale. In the beginning, a simple herbal recipe was freely shared by an Indian who understood that the blessings of the Creator belong to all.

"In the hands of more sophisticated (and allegedly more `civilized') healers, it was made the focus of an ugly struggle for ownership and power.

"Perhaps our cure for cancer lies back in the past, with our discarded humility and innocence. Perhaps the Indians will some day revive an old man's wisdom, and share it once again. Perhaps this story will be the catalyst; if so, our efforts will not have been in vain."

The Homemaker's article caused an immediate sensation in the Canadian media. Newspapers picked up the story. Television crews arrived in Bracebridge-one of them to prepare an hourlong documentary about Rene and the history of Essiac that was later aired on Canadian television.

Rene Caisse's two phones were ringing practically around the clock. People besieged her home, pleading for treatment. She received threats from people saying they would take action if she didn't turn the formula over to them. She finally had to unlist her phone and-for a while-accept police protection.

Rene received a flood of letters after the article appeared. "My husband, Yves, has been doing just wonderfully well, with your blessed Essiac," one woman wrote. "Your formula has been a miracle for Yves and God willing-we so want him to continue with it."

"I thought of you many times over the years," a woman named Annie Goynt wrote. "I hope you remember me. I came to you for treatment thirty years ago and I have seen many pass away with cancer and always thought of you and what a shame you could do nothing. But at last from what I have read in the paper and an exclusive report in the Homemaker's Magazine your cure has at long last been accepted. I only hope it is used as it should be used."

"We read of your treatment `Essiac' in the Homemaker's Magazine," another woman wrote. "I would like to tell you how pleased we are with the progress of my brother who has been on your treatment for a few weeks."

The Essiac was acquired with the help of their family physician, she wrote. "There was improvement from the start. Now, about 8 weeks later he is certainly much better." He had gone from too weak to do anything for himself to driving his own car and looking after his show horses. "His case was considered terminal with only a short time to carry on. Please accept our thanks and wishes for continued recognition of this great discovery and also for better health for you."

One physician from Coldwater, Ontario had the courage to write to Rene saying that one of his patients had improved over the last three weeks on Essiac. "Both appetite and strength are better," he wrote under his official letterhead. "She is anxious to get home and is being discharged from the hospital on Monday Thanks once again for your help."

Rene wasn't surprised. She took all the fuss in stride, and even continued to treat certain patients who were able by one means or another to work their way through all the defenses she had built up around herself.

But the most significant breakthrough of Rene's defenses-perhaps in her whole life-was made by Dr. David Fingard. A handsome and well-dressed man of about 70 who could really turn on the charm when he wanted to, Fingard was a vice president of the Resperin Corporation, a Canadian company that had interests in the pharmaceutical field.

Resperin had physicians on its board of directors, including Dr. Matthew Dymond, who had once been the Ontario Minister of Health-the official Rene had complained to about government harassment in the late 1950s. Fingard himself was a research chemist who was credited with involvement in the discovery of a drug that was effective in treating tuberculosis.

After reading the Homemaker's article, Dr. Fingard met with Rene and did his own research and came out of it wildly enthusiastic about Essiac. He shared that enthusiasm with Rene.

Finally, in the fall of 1977, Rene was persuaded to turn over to Resperin the formula for Essiac. Her contract with Resperin granted her $1.00 upon signing, and $250 a week for the six months Resperin agreed to conduct tests of Essiac.

At 89, Rene had tired of battling the medical establishment. She believed that Resperin was big enough and powerful enough to prove Essiac's legitimacy.

Once again the story was alive in the Canadian press. Resperin's top executives began giving enthusiastic interviews. After the Canadian Federal Department of Health and Welfare approved Resperin's plan to test Essiac on humans, Dr. P B. Rynard-the Resperin chairman and a Canadian M.P -was quoted in one newspaper as saying: "They looked carefully at all the facts and reviewed case histories which were very helpful. And one thing they discovered is that it wasn't toxic in any way....There is no doubt that it (Essiac) is effective for some types of cancer."

David Fingard went so far as to tell one reporter that Essiac was "one of the greatest discoveries in modern science." He told the Orillia Journal: "We have found certified cases of cancer ranging over a period of 25 to 30 years which have been cured by Essiac." He quoted the 1975 memo from Dr. Chester Stock at Sloan-Kettering saying that they had seen regressions in tumors in mice.

On November 25, 1977, the Ottowa Journal reported on two cancer patients who said they were feeling better after treatment with Essiac. Their doctors claimed there was no improvement in the condition of their tumors. But one of the patients-a 22-yearold Toronto Star employee who was not identified, at her request-was suffering from cancer in her pelvic bone that had spread to her lungs. She was quoted: "I received radiation and chemotherapy, and I swore I would die before I would go back for any more chemotherapy. I'm taking Essiac now and I feel all right. I come and go just as any normal person and do a day's work."

The paper also quoted a surgeon named Dr. John Barker who said he hadn't seen evidence of tumor regression in patients using Essiac. But their appetites had improved and they experienced less pain. In Dr. Barker's own words: "It's quite possible that there is something in the Essiac formula which stimulates appetite and decreases nausea and also relieves pain."

There it was again: The theme of Essiac as a pain reliever in cancer patients. Spoken over several decades, by patients and doctors alike. In 1978, it looked at long last as though Essiac were finally going to receive the controlled scientific scrutiny it had so long deserved.

In the spring there were several newspaper stories reporting that Resperin, with the approval of the Federal Department of Health and Welfare in Ottowa, was launching its tests of Essiac on human cancer patients. Resperin's chairman, Dr. P B. Rynard, cautioned readers that it would be some time before the results would be known. "The complexity involved in a study of this kind is mind-boggling," he said.

Resperin left no doubt about their own optimism. One of the physicians working with Resperin, Dr. H. D. Wilson, was quoted as saying: "We know it's going to be scientifically proven by the best minds in the country."

But somehow Resperin's study went awry. Within months , Rene Caisse complained publicly: "I think I was able to accomplish more myself." She charged Resperin with carelessness in their studies. Resperin denied that, but the study dragged on.

On August 11, 1978, Rene Caisse celebrated her 90th birthday The Mayor of Bracebridge, Jim Lang, an old friend of Rene's, personally organized a party for her. Friends and former patients came-some of them by the bus load-from all over Canada and the U. S. to share the day with Rene.

One newspaper reporter described the scene as the guests arrived: "They lined up to greet the guest of honor, who sat beaming in an easy chair. Miss Caisse is short, somewhat overweight, and looks years younger than her age. Her faculties are very much intact. She instantly recognized patients she hadri t seen for 35 years-and remembered their names."

There were speeches. Rene spent the day laughing and crying as she listened to the heartfelt tributes from men and women who credited her with literally saving their lives, some of them more than forty years earlier. The newspaper reporter wrote: "Scores of those present told the Muskoka Free Press that their only claim to life had been the administration of Essiac, when all other treatments had failed."

A couple of months after her birthday party, Rene was asleep in her den when the phone rang in her bedroom. In a hurry to reach the phone, she slipped and fell and broke her hip.

In excruciating pain, she managed to drag herself to the phone and call her old friend Mary McPherson. Even in that moment she didn't lose her sense of humor. She made a smart crack at her own expense about how clumsy she was and asked Mary to please hurry over.

When she arrived, Mary couldn't get in. Rene had the screen door latched shut from inside. Mary could hear Rene moaning in pain. The ambulance arrived and the attendants had to tear the screen door off its hinges.

Rene was so heavy that they had a terrible time lifting her onto a stretcher and negotiating their way through the house and out the door. They took Rene all the way to a hospital in Toronto for surgery. Some days after the operation on her hip, Rene was brought home. But her friends say that the medication had left her weak and groggy and that she was never herself again. She died on December 26, 1978, at the age of 90.

She was buried in a cemetery near Bracebridge. Several hundred people attended her funeral on a cold day in the snow At her memorial service, they listened quietly as Father James Grennan eulogized Rene as a person who "manifested love and concern for humanity," and who wanted only to "further the wellbeing and health of her fellow man."
He added: "History may have further to say about her work someday."

CHAPTER TEN

I don't know all the details of what happened with the tests by the Resperin Corporation. But what was initially supposed to be a six-month study dragged on for a few years. As late as 1981, David Fingard was quoted in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record as saying, "Speaking loosely, we already have evidence of (Essiac) cures, but the evidence is not sufficient to convince the scientific world. But we are getting excellent results."

That same newspaper story announced that the results of the government-approved test were expected to be released shortly. "Fingard says he is confident that Essiac does cure, or at least control, cancer in patients, depending on how early in the diagnosis it is given," the newspaper reported. "He also has confidence in it as a preventive. He and his wife have been taking weekly two-ounce doses (twice as much as usually recommended) for the past two years."

An accompanying article told the story of a cancer patient, Murray Braun of Kitchener, who was convinced that "he is alive and well today because he refused conventional follow-up cancer treatment three years ago in favor of Essiac, an Indian herbal remedy."

After surgery for testicle cancer in 1978, tests revealed "cancer markers" in Braun's blood. He was told at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto that he would have to have four weeks of radiation treatments. "If I had gone through all that, could you imagine what would be left of me now?" Braun told the newspaper. "I'd probably be dead by now "

Instead he got accepted into the Essiac test program. After ten days of Essiac, he said, the color returned to his face. After three weeks, the warmth returned to his body. "On Essiac I started feeling really good," Braun said. So good that he took up skiing again.

But despite cases like Murray Braun, in 1982 the Canadian government shut down Resperin's tests, calling them "flawed," and accusing Resperin of poor quality control in its experiments. The director of the Canadian Health and Welfare Department's bureau of prescription drugs admitted that there was no concern about Essiac's safety. It was safe, all right. But he was quoted as saying that they "cannot say this is an effective treatment."

Patients who were already using Essiac would be allowed to continue using it, in the government's words, "purely on humanitarian grounds." On those same grounds, future patients who could fight their way through the bureaucracy might also be allowed to use Essiac legally.

On December 8, 1982, a man named Ed Zalesky of Surrey, B.C., one of the cancer patients who had been treated with Essiac provided by Resperin, expressed his outrage at all the obstacles placed in the way of people who needed Essiac. In a letter to the editor of an Orillia newspaper, he wrote: "My life expectancy in 1977 was from six months to two years maximum. The fact that I'm `clean' (according to our over-worked staff at the Vancouver cancer clinic) and still very much alive I owe in great part to Essiac. I was fortunate enough to be one of the people involved in an Essiac test program conducted by Resperin Corporation."

He went on: "I had a terrible time convincing my doctor to submit the short reports required by Resperin to compile test results, let alone to make any commitments. It seems that many doctors refuse to complete the forms, or conveniently `forget' or make them so vague as to be useless.

"That Essiac gives relief from suffering in many cases and prolongs life there is no doubt. Why can't the people who administer the cancer funds give it a fair trial? It isn't going to hurt anyone. The medical profession should stop playing 'God' and allow us cancer patients to use the treatment of our choice."

He concluded: "I am now three years past my final death sentence, well, working full time and then some, and enjoying life, thanks to this `unproven' compound." (Ed Zalesky was still alive and well five years later in 1987.)

When the government was criticizing Resperin's tests, David Fingard told the press that Resperin could even sell Essiac as an herbal tea if they didn't make any claims for its curative powers. But Resperin, he said, wanted Essiac to be officially accepted as a cure. "We don't want to sell it as a tea through stores," he was quoted as saying. "The only way we want to sell it is as a cure."

Resperin didn't give up after the government shut down their tests-and apparently Sloan-Kettering remained interested. On May 12, 1983, David Fingard sent a telegram to Dr. Charles Young at Sloan-Kettering, thanking him "for your interest in ascertaining the possibility of Essiac curing cancer. We naturally feel optimistic based on present results. Also delighted with your offer to come to Toronto for a meeting."

Five months later, on October 5, 1983, E. Bruce Hendrick, the chief of neurosurgery at The University of Toronto's Hospital For Sick Children, wrote his letter to the Canadian Minister of Health-quoted as the epigraph to this book-saying that Essiac appeared to have benefited children under his care sufficiently to warrant serious scientific testing.

Once again, after the latest round of controversy over Essiac, this time sparked by the Homemaker's article in 1977, the authorities did everything in their power to discredit and dismiss Essiac-and yet Essiac just would not disappear and die. Cancer patients continued to speak out in its support. Some physicians who had worked with it were willing to risk censure to push for more research.

That's been the story of Essiac for more than sixty years now, ever since those eight physicians signed that first petition to the Canadian government in the 1920s. Rene Caisse could never have dreamed when those first doctors showed up at her front door to arrest her, and then refused to do it after they heard what she had to say, that she had just experienced the perfect metaphor for the next sixty years of Essiac.

And so the battle continues. In my case, I had never even heard of Essiac until 1985. When I did first hear of it, I certainly wasn't looking to commit my life to an uphill struggle, any more than Rene Caisse was when she casually asked that woman what had happened to her breast.

In 1985, I was devoting all my attention to my thriving chiropractic practice in Los Angeles, where I treat a large roster of patients who include some of the most successful professional athletes in the world. Among my patients are track stars, worldclass weight lifters, both men and women, and members of NFL teams.

Previously I had spent five years developing a new technique that offers my patients important benefits in the healing of injured muscles and the relief of pain. I was contracted, for instance, by the Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, one of the largest orthopedic hospitals in southern America, to instruct them in how to implement that technique into the programs of their pain control unit.

I was-and am-proud of that work, and happy to be helping people to heal themselves. I feel that I am a success in my chosen career, respected in my field, with a long list of present and former patients who will vouch for my integrity and sincerity in anything I undertake.

One day in 1985 a friend of mine introduced me to a woman who was striking in how private she was about herself.

My memories of this woman are fresh. Certain phrases and words remain indelibly with me, along with her tones and expressions. She gave the impression of great fragility. Small and raw-boned, she had obviously lost weight. Her appearance was one of delicate survival, a balance between life and disappearance from life.

As we got to know each other and she came to trust me and respond to my curiosity, she began to tell me the story of Rene Caisse and Essiac. She had met Rene many years earlier when she had gone to Rene for treatment of her cancer. She had been in remission ever since. She regarded it as a miracle.

She and Rene had become close friends. She told me of the life and death struggles Rene had lived through for so long. She talked easily and willingly of Rene Caisse, but of the formula for Essiac, she spoke sparingly and with difficulty. Always, a silent dialog within her seemed to be in progress.

Eventually she admitted to me that Rene had left her a copy of the formula. As gently as possible I began trying to persuade her to trust me with it. Rene had freely given it to this woman, who had guarded it with complete inflexibility for years, and now here was someone else, once again, asking that the formula for Essiac be released.

I realized that for this woman to pass on the formula was an ultimate act of trust, and also her acknowledgment that she had, in some way, finally made her choice and passed on her role in what would happen to Essiac. It was an agonizing time for all concerned as doubts, suspicions and fears came and went and came again.

Our conversations, interrupted by days or weeks of withdrawal and silence by this woman, stretched over almost a year. It was a humbling experience. I learned patience. I learned how to wait.

The break came during one of those difficult periods of hiatus. This was the third or fourth time I had been put on hold, and I was braced for the worst. But when the break came, there was no ceremony. Merely an indistinct message on the tape of my answering machine saying: "Come now " I flew to the city where she lives, then anxiously waited in my hotel room for several hours. I had a contract drawn up that defined our responsibilities to each other, and to Rene and her formula, in great detail. But none of that turned out to be wanted or necessary.

When I arrived at her home, there was a soft silence for some time. She stirred in her chair and said, "Well, all in God's good time." Then another long silence. Then her eyes, normally a faded blue, were burning. She said, "Gary, there are things better learned by you only when they happen to you." And she handed me a sheet of paper with a list of herbs, typed out, and the instructions for brewing the tea.

She didn't feel like visiting, so I rose and left and returned to Los Angeles, with a formula and my belief that what this woman had told me was true. But I had no proof.

The first thing I did was brew a batch of Essiac for myself. This woman had told me that its preventive powers were awesome; that Rene had drunk the tea every day of her life. And sure enough, within two days I felt fitter than I had felt before. I had been suffering from chronic bronchitis. The bronchitis disappeared. I have been taking the Essiac ever since. It has done me nothing but good.

But that still wouldn't be proof to anyone else. To begin finding that proof, I had only one solid lead: the name of Rene's closest friend, a woman who lived and worked alongside Rene off and on for many years, ever since Rene had cured this woman's mother of cancer in the 1930s.

Rene's friend's name was Mary McPherson and she was a native of northern Ontario. That was all I knew I finally tracked down her phone number, and when I did it was in-why was I surprised? -Bracebridge.

I called and told her about my conversations with Rene's other friend-though not that I had the formula-and asked if I could meet with Mary in Bracebridge. I could tell that she was suspicious, wary of this stranger, but she agreed to see me.

I flew to Toronto and drove the 170 kilometers to Bracebridge in a blizzard. The snow was so thick and heavy that I could barely see the road in front of me. I don't recall seeing another vehicle for the whole journey.

As I pulled into Bracebridge for the first time, it was hard to believe that this little country town, surrounded by wooded hills and carpeted in snow, had been the center of such controversy for so many decades. Built near the banks of the Muskoka River, it's a lovely town, clean and well-tended, with rows of victorian houses and big front yards. The population is about 9, 300-with thousands more who visit in the summer to enjoy the area s water sports and outdoors life.

The rustic buildings on the main street are occupied with shops and stores. There is one movie theater that shows the latest releases. Bracebridge has the appearance of a solid community that is thriving economically.

I drove down Dominion Street, and there was the red brick building, the old British Lion Hotel, where sick people could line up for treatment only if they had a written statement from a doctor stating that they were sure to die-and so were now free to do as they wished.

I knew that here in this town were Rene's records, in Mary's care, long secured in boxes and waiting for someone to come for them once more. I knew that Rene had kept every piece of paper-the diagnoses from doctors, correspondence with SloanKettering, with Premier Hepburn, with her thousands of patients, all the newspaper clippings, the parliamentary testimony. Everything. There were said to be records of everyone she had treated, written in copperplate scrawls on yellowed paper.

I desperately wanted to see it all. I was consumed with the idea that I wanted the whole truth from Mary. I had to "know it all." At the beginning of our first meeting on that bright, crisp, snowy morning, Mary seemed disillusioned and cynical. She had the same guarded manner I had encountered with Rene's other friend. If I had known then what hell Rene and they had lived through for most of their lives, I would have expected her to turn me away at the door.

Mary later told me that there had been so many doctors, lawyers and corporations pursuing the formula that she couldn't take much more of the pressure. She said that she had made a promise to Rene-when Rene was on her death bed-that she would never reveal the formula to anyone, and she said she would never break that promise.

I think that was probably Mary's polite way of saying that if getting the formula was what I had in mind, I might as well forget it, just pack up and go home and leave her alone.

I promised her that I would not ask her to give me the formula, and she seemed to relax a little. As we talked she told me her own story: At different times in the twenty years or so after Rene cured Mary's mother of cancer, Mary and her husband Cliff had each had cancer, and Rene had cured them both with Essiac. With what she'd seen, there was absolutely no doubt in Mary's mind about the value of Essiac.

After Mary became Rene's best friend, she watched Rene go through the hell of threatened arrests, promises of millions of dollars, even death threats from desperate people she had to turn away for lack of proper documentation-and all because Rene wanted to cure a deadly disease and not charge for doing it.

We talked for eight hours. I think Mary could see how sincere my interest was. As she reminisced about Rene, she seemed to enjoy herself. Her spirits picked up. "She saw it all," Mary said. "She even had quite a joke with the jailer right across the street from the clinic. Because she was so big, he used to say, `Don't worry, Rene, I'll reenforce the floor. I know you're going to be with me one of these days."

Once when some official showed up with a warrant to arrest her, Rene went and put her coat on, then asked him what the charge was. He told her it was giving unauthorized medicine for cancer. "Rene said, `Well, if it's an offense in our great land of Canada to save lives, then I guess I'm guilty and I'm ready to go: And the official tore up the warrant and left. They never did arrest her."

The years of the clinic were Rene's happiest years, Mary said. "She was a happy person when she had the clinic. She helped a lot of people and that was always her aim in life: to help people. A lot of our local doctors thought the world of her. They'd drive their own patients in their own cars to be treated by Rene. Dr. Bastedo drove his patients to the clinic. But he got too loud about it, I guess, and the medical association stepped on him. They told him he couldn't do that any more. What was the man to do, eh? That was his life. So he stopped."

Mary told me a story about Rene when she was a young nurse that sort of summed it all up for me. "She was attending an expectant mother who was going to give birth in her home. The doctors came and made their examination and left. They said they'd be back at a certain time. This was before most people had telephones. They left Rene in charge and before they came back, the mother's labor quickened. Rene saw that the baby was in the wrong position. The baby had to be turned to save the mother's life. So Rene did it.

"Mother and child were resting comfortably when the doctors returned. The doctors were horrified at what she'd done. One of them said, `Don't you know you could have been sued if things had not turned out well?' Rene said, `Yes, but if I hadn't done anything, the girl would have died. Then what?' That's just the way Rene was all her life. She used to laugh about that story and say that everything had a funny side. She said the expressions on those doctors faces were priceless."

That night I took Mary to dinner, and I will never forget the look on her face when I recited to her the list of herbs that make up Essiac. She was shocked. Her eyes went the size of silver dollars. For a moment I thought she was going to be outraged.

"How did you get that?" she snapped at me.

But then she collected herself and sighed, a deep sigh, as if she were relieved, glad that someone she trusted finally had it without her breaking any promises.

Later that evening she opened up completely, smiled a lot, confirmed the accuracy of the formula, and finally she said: "I don't know why I'm going to do this, but I trust you and I'm going to let you have the documents that no one has seen since Rene gave them to me."

Mary was as good as her word. Over the next few months, I made two more trips to Bracebridge, becoming closer to Mary each time, hearing more of the story, and returning with large suitcases filled with papers.

It took me two weeks just to read all those papers. By the time I was finished reading, I knew I had more research to do, but I was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Essiac was effective-at the very least for its pain relief qualities-as a treatment for cancer. I was certain that my initial faith was backed up with cold, hard fact. Reading those papers the first time was, for instance, how I learned of Rene's work with Dr. Charles Brusch.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When I first learned of Rene Caisse's work with Dr. Charles Brusch three decades ago, I thought it would be too good to be true that I might be able to locate him and persuade him to talk with a stranger about his use of a cancer remedy that was not accepted by the American Medical Association-and that might make him a source of controversy.

How wrong I was. The Brusch Medical Center is still in operation and still one of the largest medical clinics in Massachusetts. It has a staff of about 40, most of them specialists, and Dr. Brusch-now in his late 70s-is still involved on a part-time basis.

Dr. Brusch took my first long-distance phone call. When he was actually on the other end of the line and I began to explain who I was and what I wanted to ask him about, I was expecting the same kind of guarded-even fearful-response that Ralph Daigh and Paul Murphy had gotten from the three doctors in Bracebridge.

But the moment I mentioned Rene Caisse, Dr. Brusch reacted with enthusiasm. It was as if I'd said the magic word. He was thrilled that after all these years someone was finally going to tell her story-and present to the public the available information about Essiac.

In my first phone call to him, we talked for an hour and a half. He was happy to reminisce about Rene Caisse. "She was just a young women when she started and she died at 90," he said. "That three-story clinic of hers was jammed. In this little town , she picked up 55,000 signatures. People raised such a fuss that they had to give her permission to treat cancer."

I asked what she was like as a person. "She was a kind, gentle, stocky woman," he said. "She was remarkable, a real saint." When she arrived in Cambridge, he said, she was still relying primarily on intramuscular injections of Essiac in her treatment. But he worked with her to refine the formula so that the injections would no longer be necessary. They could rely on the oral treatment, merely drinking the tea. "We worked it out," Dr. Brusch said, "and found out that there was too much by injection. You couldn't give it as often as you should, so we changed it over to sticking mostly with the liquid form."

I couldn't believe how outspoken he was on the subject of Essiac. At one point, he said to me without any hesitation in his voice: "I know Essiac has curing potential. It can lessen the condition of the individual, control it, and it can cure it."

As far as Dr. Brusch is concerned, after being involved with Essiac since 1959, that is a well-established matter of fact. That the cancer establishment has ignored Essiac and still does not include it on their list of accepted cancer treatments doesn't change that fact one bit for Dr. Brusch.

I asked him about the tests on mice conducted by Sloan-Kettering in 1959. He remembered them, quoting from their memo that he had received: "Enclosed are test data in two experiments indicating some regressions in 180 sarcoma of mice treated with

Essiac. With these results, we will wish to test enough more that I should ask if you can send more material."
But Sloan-Kettering, Dr. Brusch said, wanted the formula as part of the deal. "They said to her, `You'd better send us more material and the formula:"

I asked Dr. Brusch: Why, after all these years and all these cases, have the governments and pharmaceutical corporations and cancer research institutions failed to give Essiac the serious research-and application-it so obviously deserves?

Dr. Brusch was reluctant to draw conclusions. It was the one moment in our 90-minute talk when he hesitated, when I got the feeling that he was holding back. I could tell Dr. Brusch was wrestling with himself as he spoke, his cryptic remarks an attempt to communicate without really saying what he believed.

But even with his best attempt to be polite and avoid criticizing anyone, here is what Dr. Brusch had to say: "The trouble is....all these centers that have gotten a tremendous amount of grants and done tremendous amounts of work, you dorit seem to see much difference....These other companies, I can't understand.... Sloan-Kettering, they tell you there's a recession in the growth of the carcinoma and keep wanting medicine, well, there's some merit to it.

"You've got to wonder. Is it for mercenary acts? A lot of reports have been written about cancer and all and always a hope of getting close to it, but....we don't get anywhere.

"The medications you can buy now-well, the action of that medication, a lot of it, isn't good....But they're making a great penny on it. Why should they go ahead and-I don't know It surprises me....But now-I don't know A lot of people are getting large sums."

But as soon as the conversation returned to the blessing of Essiac, Dr. Brusch's enthusiasm and openness returned. "I know:

the stuff works," he said to me. "It's very inexpensive. You can get a gallon of the stuff for about $40, transportation and all. Just try and get radiation and chemotherapy-and see what it'll cost you.

"And it (Essiac) works! If it doesn't cure them, it will help them. There are no side effects. They're just herbs. There's no addition of preservatives or anything at all. You can continue using your other medications-heart, blood pressure, anything you want. There doesn't seem to be any reaction at all.

"If they (the patients) can go 11 or 12 years when they're told they're going to get two years, and the lymphs clear up and they do fine and gain weight-why don't they give it a try?

"Rene's the one who carried the tradition over from the Indians to us, and it's worked better than all the (other) traditions that have been handed over. It helps. It helps."

Dr. Brusch encouraged me to continue my research and said that whenever I could get to Boston, he would be happy to meet with me and share some of the case histories of people he has treated with Essiac over the years. There were a few, in particular, that he was proud of and who had given him permission to discuss their cases publicly. They, too, wanted to do what they could to help by waiving the confidentiality of their medical records.

Then he mentioned that he included himself in that group. In 1973, Dr. Brusch said, he had had cancer. He had three operations. "I had the Essiac," he said, "and so I was able to take it and I'm still taking it now And I had a test done a few months ago, and I've been negative." He said he was convinced that Essiac had played an important role in keeping him free of cancer.

Not long after our phone conversation, I called Dr. Brusch and asked if this would be a good time for me to see him in Cambridge. He said yes, and invited me to spend a Saturday afternoon with him at his home. He would have his files ready for me. I think he was as excited about the opportunity to tell his story as I was about the opportunity to hear it.

On a lovely New England autumn day, I drove along the Charles River, then through Harvard Square, which was bustling with activity, as always, and past the colonial homes with their rich history. A plaque in front of one identified it as the home of the poet Longfellow

A few blocks away, on a quiet, tree-lined street of two-story houses that date from the l9th century was Dr. Brusch's home of the last many years.

Dr. Brusch and his wife, Jane, greeted me at the front door. They're a handsome couple. Jane is probably in her 40s, a warm and gracious woman. Dr. Brusch is distinguished looking, with a full head of gray hair, a warm smile and an alert twinkle in his eyes. On a Saturday afternoon he was wearing a well-tailored dark suit and tie. I smiled at that. I was charmed that the doctor would dress formally to greet someone who'd just arrived from southern California.

But the formality was only in his clothes. I was quickly made to feel at home, a welcome guest. Dr. Brusch gave me a tour of his home and told me a bit of its history. Hanging on the wall in a hallway was a photograph of Jack and Jackie Kennedy with Dr. Brusch.

The dining room table was covered with files and papers that Dr. Brusch had collected from the Medical Center to go over with me. We sat at the table and Dr. Brusch told me a bit of his own history as a doctor. As a practicing MD for more than 50 years, he had long been interested in nature's ways of healing the ill.

Many years ago, as a supplement to standard medical techniques, Dr. Brusch had studied the curative powers of sea kelp and various herbs. He had also studied the value of nutrition in preventing and treating illness.

So he was not inherently hostile in 1959 when he first heard about Rene Caisse's cancer treatment that was based on an herbal formula. After seeing the results on the patients she treated, he knew that Essiac had value. No question about it.

After Rene returned to Bracebridge, Dr. Brusch continued to receive Essiac from her and give it to patients who had no other hope. He found that Essiac worked better on people who hadri t had radiation treatments. It did work on people who'd had radiation. Not as fast and not as well-but it helped.

Then we got into the specific case histories. Knowing that many in the medical establishment-of which Dr. Brusch himself is a respected member-scoff at personal testimonials, no matter how impassioned, and accounts of cures that can be dismissed as anecdotal, Dr. Brusch made it an important point that he wanted to read some of his own carefully documented cases into the record. He had with him the medical papers-the lab reports and such-that supported every statement he made.

There were two cases in particular that he regarded as difficult, if not impossible, to deny.

The first was the 1975 case of a man named Patrick "Sonny" McGrail-who had been mentioned in the Homemaker's article in 1977. Dr. Brusch had known him for years. "One day he called me up," Dr. Brusch said, "and he told me, `I've got something wrong with my stomach: I said, `Well, come on over, Sonny.' I found out he had a swelling and a lump in the lower part of the esophagus. I said, `Sonny, you're going to have to have a little surgical treatment here."'

McGrail was operated on at New England Baptist Hospital. The surgeon told Dr. Brusch that the diagnosis was esophageal cancer.

After the operation, McGrail was given radiation treatments. Reading from his case file, Dr. Brusch said that McGrail's weight dropped to 109 pounds.

"He called me up and said, `Will you please see me? I'm going to die. I can't eat. I can't sleep. I'm losing weight. I've got severe pain. I'll be dead in two years."'

Dr. Brusch told him to come on over. "I had the material all there, the Essiac, the powder and liquid we used to make it up. I kept giving him that, and I loaded him up with the vitamins and nutrition. He improved right along, went up to 125 pounds."

Years later, McGrail's surgeon wrote in his hospital report: "Mr. McGrail is doing well and essentially asymptomatic and looks better than he has over the past couple of years. He saw Dr. Brusch one week ago and everything was fine with his checkup. On examination, head and neck are negative. Lumps are nice and clear. Heart sounds are fine. Abdominal examination is unremarkable.. . We are delighted with his progress."

On February 15, 1979, Patrick McGrail wrote to Dr. Brusch: "This is a note to let you know what Essiac has done for me. I was operated on on February 2nd, 1975, for esophageal cancer. After about hve weeks my doctor that operated on me put me on radium treatments. I had 11 treatments in 11 days and I lost 12 1/2 pounds. I kept losing weight after that from 156 to 109. Lost my appetite, could not sleep and was very weak.

"Dr. Brusch gave me a bottle of Essiac to see what it would do for me. I was just using it one week when I started to improve and put on weight. I went from 109 to 130 pounds in six months, and the pain eased. That will be two years ago, February l9th.

"I used to take one ounce of it every night before going to bed. Last November the doctor could not get it, so when I stopped taking it, I started losing weight again. No energy If Dr. Brusch did not give it to me, I would not be alive today. I do hope that it will soon be available for cancer patients."

That note had been written eight years earlier. I asked Dr. Brusch what happened to Patrick McGrail after that. Dr. Brusch pulled out a letter McGrail had written to him just a few months earlier, on May 11, 1987: "I am still being treated by Dr. Brusch for my cancer of 11 years and am doing good. When I was operated on, they said I would not live two years. The Essiac worked wonders."

I asked Dr. Brusch for his own personal comments about the McGrail case. He said simply: "It was the Essiac that does the trick. That's one case."

The second case was much more recent-and even more dramatic. This one involved a man named Ross Nimchick. Along with Nimchick's case file-which contained all the supporting medical records-Dr. Brusch had a written account from Nimchick detailing every step of the way in his own words:

"June 15, 1986. I, Ross Nimchick, came down with a cold and loss of voice. My glands were swollen and I noticed a lump near my left collarbone and in the groin area.

"June 23rd: Appointment with Dr. Clinton. He examined the lump and gave me a prescription and had me go for blood tests. "June 25th: Blood tests taken at Holyoke Hospital.

"July 7th: Dr. Clinton recommends a biopsy "July 2lst: Biopsy completed at Holyoke Hospital.

"July 30th: I called Dr. Clinton's office for the biopsy report. Dr. Akers told me I had malignant lymphoma and to contact Dr. Ross.

"July 30th: Stitches taken out from biopsy operation. "August 6th, `86: Dr. Ross examined me in her office. She measured the nodes, took my height, weight, and had me go for more blood tests. Dr. Ross said I was in the third to fourth stage of lymphoma.

"August 8th: Bone marrow test done in Dr. Ross' office. "August l8th: CAT scan done at Holyoke Hospital.
"August 22nd: Dr. Ross gave me the results of all the tests. I do not have to return until October 2,`86, unless I feel my condition begin to deteriorate.

"August 28th: I discuss my condition with Dr. Brusch and we go over the vitamins and Mr. Croft's daily food intake program. "September 3rd: I begin to take my vitamins and start on the food program.

"September l2th: I begin to take Essiac. Two ounces mixed in two ounces of warm water. All water I am drinking is purified by reverse osmosis.

"October 2nd,`86: Dr. Ross examines me and she has a blood test done. I no longer notice any sweating and I feel stronger. I am still on my vitamins, food diet and Essiac.

"December 2nd: Dr. Ross examines me and I have blood tests completed. No treatment needed, although white blood count up to 25. l. Dr. Ross wants me to come in for blood tests January 3.

"End of December,`86: I caught a cold and felt weak. I have increased my vitamin C. The nodes under my armpits have grown slightly and the nodes near my groin have remained the same.

"January 3rd,`87: Went in for blood tests but no exam by Dr. Ross. Dr. Ross informs me over the phone that my white blood count has increased and that next time she may have to start me on medication. I have discontinued my diet and begun to eat pineapple, take vitamin B-6 and I increased my intake of broccoli.

"February 3rd,`87: Dr. Ross examines me and has blood tests done. I have gained two pounds. White blood count has dropped slightly. I have noticed my nodes have decreased in all areas. I have decreased my vitamin C to one gram, my vitamin B-6 to 100 milligrams per day. During February, I noticed my nodes going down about 50% . I feel in good health and I am no longer tired.

"March 2nd,`87: Dr. Ross examines me and has a blood test taken. White blood and red blood count are normal. Dr. Ross said they must have made a mistake and ordered another blood test taken. Same result. Nodes under my left armpit are no longer there. Nodes under my right armpit have gone down 95 % . Nodes on both my groins have decreased in size by about 95%. My neck has only one node left, and that is also decreased by about 95%. I feel in excellent health. I am continuing with my vitamins and two ounces of Essiac and two ounces of warm water."

Nimchick's statements are verified by the ofiicial hospital records in Dr. Brusch's file. Then Dr. Brusch read a letter he'd received from Nimchick, dated May 30, 1987:

"I just wanted to send you a brief note to say I am feeling great. I am continuing my vitamins, food program and two ounces of Essiac daily. As I look back to last fall of `86, I remember how tired and weak I used to feel. But today I am strong, full of energy and back to my old self prior to having lymphoma.

"I have enclosed a picture taken last December, which shows lumps under my chin. This is the only picture of myself. I have also enclosed my latest report from my blood test of April 27th. My next test is June 22nd,`87, which I will forward to you upon completion.

"In closing, Dr. Brusch, your program with Essiac has returned me to 100% health with no further lymph nodes and a normal life again. I look forward to talking to you soon after my next report. Sincerely, Ross Nimchick."

With cases like that in his files after almost 30 years of personal experience with Essiac, Dr. Brusch is frustrated and unhappy at the lack of attention it has received from medical authorities. But he has no plans to give up his public praise of Essiac.

Why? Because he's convinced that Essiac has too much value to humanity to allow it to disappear. "I don't say it cures everything," Dr. Brusch told me. "But it's the only thing I know so far that can do the work as well as this. That's why I feel so good about this stuff. I know: The stuff works!"

The day after my meeting with Dr. Brusch, I left to visit Bracebridge again. Mary wanted to introduce me to some of the people in town who had known Rene and had their own personal experiences with Essiac. I'll always be grateful for what those good and generous people in Bracebridge shared with me on that trip.

CHAPTER TWELVE

In 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 themEliza 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 administer