Essiac Essentials

eighteen years and died in 1948, aged ninety.
    Early in 1934, two Bracebridge town councillors, one a doctor, were so impressed with Rene’s treatment that they encouraged the town council to allocate her the old British Lion Hotel in the middle of the town to house her clinic. The rent was fixed at twelve dollars a year, including heating and a caretaker.
    Rene opened the clinic in Bracebridge in August 1935. She was forty-seven years old. For a while she was treating an average of four hundred patients who attended the clinic regularly once a week, lining up for their single dose of Essiac. There was no designated time for when they took it; they got it when they got there, regardless of whether they had just eaten or not.
    As she testified to the Commissioners who visited the clinic in February 1939:
    The Bracebridge Clinic
     
    “7 have the patients come in and they register, and then they come into the desk and they give their history in their own words. They were asked to go to their doctor and get their diagnosis from him before giving treatment. In some cases they cannot get it, and the doctor absolutely refuses, and if the patients have been sent home to die anyway, I treat them on the off chance that I can help, but I have very few of those patients. You cannot turn them away when it is their only hope, in the majority of my cases I have the doctor’s permission to treat, and the diagnosis.
    “Then I have them sent to the treatment room, and I inject the Essiac * into their arm or leg or hip muscles, and I give them a glass of medicine, which is a blood purifier, and where there are open sores, I give them a local application. If there is haemorrhage, I give them a solution for irrigation to stop the haemorrhage. In cases where it is mouth and throat, I give them a gargle of my own making, and a mouth wash to cleanse. I would rather they use this than use any of the patented mouth washes; it is more healing I believe.
    “There are a good number of the patients who do not need anything but the hypodermic injection. If their general condition is fairly good, it is unnecessary for them to take anything else or to use anything else, but there is little or no reaction. Occasionally, I believe, the treatment actually hits the seat oftrouble or contacts the seat of trouble, there is a severe reaction, because there are chills and a slight temperature. I say ‘severe’ because there are chills and a slight temperature, but not enough to be dangerous, but for possibly a half an hour or so, and it seems that after that happens the patient begins to feel a decided improvement. I find that in almost every case. ”
    She had her sister and her niece helping her in the clinic. Other relatives were harvesting the Sheep sorrel. She was buying the three remaining herbs and making up the formula every evening ready for the next day. The Bracebridge clinic was open over the weekend for three days every week and she would be on the train going south to Toronto once a week to treat the patients there. For six months during the winter of 1936 to 1937 she was on the train again once every second week to make another overnight stay in Chicago to treat twelve patients involved in a clinical trial at the Northwestern University Tumour Clinic. Overworked and under tremendous pressure, she collapsed with exhaustion and a suspected heart problem early in 1937. The doctors ordered her to rest for two months.
    She made one final trip to Chicago in early April before the study was terminated. Of the twelve patients, seven died during 1937. The remaining five were still alive at the beginning of 1938. To our knowledge there are no further reports relative to this trial.
     
     
    Rene Caisse's Clinic Under Threat
     
    By 1936, the Canadian Medical Association was intent on diverting increasing interest away from Rene Caisse and the Bracebridge Cancer Clinic. On July 23rd, 1936, Dr. Banting wrote to notify her that the Canadian Medical Association, under Dr. J.A. Faulkner, had ‘requested’ that he ask Rene to cooperate with him in setting up a new series of animal trials using the formula on mice inoculated with mouse sarcoma and chickens inoculated with Rous sarcoma. Clause four in the letter expressly stated that “you will not be asked to divulge any secret concerning the treatments.” His empathy for the nurse was revealed in the sixth clause: “If necessary, special arrangements will be made for the treatment of animals