Nurse Rene (“Reen”) Caisse cured cancer for thousands of people who came to her in Canada. She lived from 1888 to 1978 and worked her entire adult life healing people – first as a hospital nurse then self-employed. I feel a lot of empathy for this woman and I’ll call her Rene.
One of her hospital patients, an elderly woman, revealed to her a herbal formula for curing cancer that she had been given by an elderly Ojibwa Indian man. At the time, Rene put it aside thinking to use it in the future if she needed to. But shortly after this, her aunt was given 6 months to live, diagnosed with stomach cancer. It turned out that Rene knew the doctor quite well, having nursed many of his patients, and he gave permission for her to try the herbal formula on her aunt. For 2 months she made that tea for her aunt and gradually the patient grew stronger and ended up living for another 21 years.
The doctor was astounded and converted and he and Rene both used the tea for the next ten years or so. She did not share the formula but brewed it each night in her kitchen using four herbs. Wanting to understand the formula better, she set up a laboratory in her mother’s basement and spent her evenings testing it on mice. She concluded that one herb inhibited tumor growth and the others cleaned the blood of dead tissue and infections. She then discovered that the first herb was most effective when injected into muscle and the others could be given orally.
Eventually, she named the formula with her own last name spelled backwards, resigned from her hospital job and began treating people at her home, up to 30 or so each evening. Her neighbors complained about all this coming and going so she moved to Peterborough, near Toronto.
The Opposition Moves
No sooner was she in full swing at her new home when an official sent by the Canadian College of Physicians and Surgeons pounded on her door early one morning, come to arrest her for malpractice. She invited him in, explained that she took only terminal cancer cases sent by doctors who had given up on them, and that she took no payment for her treatments. Instead of arresting her, he returned to his boss to explain the situation.
This incident, not the first or last time she narrowly escaped jail, pushed her into some counter-action. With 12 patients and five supportive doctors, she went to see the Minister of Health, one Dr. Robb. After listening to them, Dr. Robb said she could continue as long as all her patients brought a written cancer diagnosis with them and as long as she continued not charging them.
Good Progress
Rene was happy with this and kept treating whoever came to her. She did accept donations and those with little money gave her vegetables they’d grown or eggs from their farm. Each patient was treated multiple times, usually for months, until they and Rene were satisfied with the results. The goal was to strengthen the patient’s immune system to the point where it completely routed the cancer cells.
After a while, she obtained a clinic, a small abandoned hotel arranged for her by some supportive doctors. It had two stories with a large open waiting room downstairs, always crowded with very ill patients and their family members, and several treatment rooms upstairs. People came from distant areas now, not just local, even from America and Europe. Each night she brewed a new pot of Essiac for the next day. She had one assistant some of the time, a close friend named Mary.
In 1932, the Toronto Star blared a headline: Bracebridge Girl Makes Notable Discovery Against Cancer. Now, at age 44, overworked, overweight, and chronically anxious about being arrested, this “girl” was in the public eye. And despite all her success with patients entirely recovering from their advanced cancers or living for years longer than their doctors had predicted, she was continually opposed and criticized in newspapers, in government sessions, and among Canadian doctors.
Give Us the Formula!
This demand was one of the ongoing problems she faced – people wanting her formula, despite all the claims that it was worthless. She repeatedly refused, not wanting it to be (a) buried, (b) wrongly made, (c) offered at an expensive price, or (d) fraudulently claimed as the discovery of someone else. She repeatedly asked that Essiac be established as having merit, based on all her work and her patients’ testimonials.
One phone call she received was from somebody who threatened to beat the formula out of her if she wouldn’t divulge it. But she was a feisty woman and answered,
“If you do that, you’ll never find a thing. Just remember, it’s not written down!”
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Please watch this site for Part 2 of this narrative, coming up in about a week.
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