CANCER.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIX, Issue 11540, 29 March 1898, Page 3

CANCER.

TO THE EDITOR. Sie, —Surely tlie President o£ the Medical Congress should speak for himself, and not try to throw his own' ignorance and want of’ original thought upon the world-, at large when he implied that no one knew whence the above-named disease emanated. After much reading of the books of Hippocrates and studying of statistics, and noting the various diseases mentioned in the Bible, he comes to the marvellous conclusion that cancer must be a new disease. Now, if that gentleman would only take the trouble to consult the works of Dr Johnson who, after many years of allophatic work, threw it up in disgust and turned hydropath, and of Louis Kuhne, the eminent but self-made hydropath of Leipsig, Germany, who has cured patients by the score, fruitlessly and oft times detrimentally attended by the most eminent members of the so-called medical profession, and of other practical men too numerous to mention here, he would, perhops, find that the disease is new only in form, being built up from old, unoured, drug-suppressed, and, in many cases, inherited disease. If to these evils ho would add the state-of the present system of high living and the medicine which is administered by doctors to their patients, he would not fall far short of the cause of its development. But perhaps ho may say these men are more water curers, and sternly denounced by the fraternity ‘as quacks. Now, let us take one example and attempt to show how the cancerous growth develops. A patient, addicted to high living and suffering from such an ailment as indigestion, is attended by a doctor. He is given such a medicine as mercury, arsenic, morphia, opium, or some other virulent poison, not one containing an ounce of pure nutrition, nor one which in any way can build up the broken or diseased tissues of the body. Now, what is the result? For the time the pain is deadened and the patient thinks he is cured, so does the doctor, and so the medicine is continued. The poison, neither food nor drink, is not thrown off by the deadened organs, but remains in the system as foreign matter, and together with other morbid matter which the inert organs are not able to throw off, begins to collect and ultimately develops into a cancer. Then the doctor pronounces it a new disease, the patient is told not on any account to go to a quack, but that the cancer, whose roots radiate in all directions, must be cut out. Now, I maintain that if these lesser diseases were taken in time, were treated in accordance with the simplest laws of Nature, namely, by the frequent application of hot and cold 1 water, ■ steam baths, massage, <fcc., and not by suppressing the ailments with evil poisons, we would in time eradicate this terrible and fell disease, —I am, &c. AQUA PURA IN iETERNUM.