The cure of advanced cancer by diet therapy: a summary of 30 years of
clinical experimentation

Max Gerson, M.D.
Gerson Institute, Box 535, Imperial Beach, California 92032

(1978 Publisher's Note. This is a lecture given by Dr. Gerson in
Escondido, California, in 1956. Dr. Gerson died in 1959. More complete
information on his therapy for advanced cancer may be found in his book
A Cancer Therapy: Results of 50 Cases, by Max Gerson, 3rd edition,
1977, Totality Books, Del Mar, CA or from his daughter Mrs. Charlotte
Gerson Straus at the Gerson Institute, Box 535, Imperial Beach, CA
92032. Socioeconomic and political perspectives are discussed in the
book Has Dr. Max Gerson a True Cancer Cure? by S. J. Haught, 1976,
Major Books, 21335, Roscoe Blvd., Canoga Park, CA 91304.)

Abstract:

Thirty years of clinical experimentation has led to a successful
therapy for advanced cancer. This therapy is based on the concepts (1)
that cancer patients have low immuno-reactivity and generalized tissue
damage, especially of the liver, and (2) that when the cancer is
destroyed, toxic degradation products appear in the bloodstream which
lead to coma and death from liver failure. The therapy consists of high
potassium, low sodium diet, with no fats or oils, and minimal animal
proteins. Juices of raw fruits and vegetables and of raw liver provide
active oxidizing enzymes which facilitate rehabilitation of the liver.
Iodine and niacin supplementation is used. Caffeine enemas cause
dilation of bile ducts, which facilitates excretion of toxic cancer
breakdown products by the liver and dialysis of toxic products from
blood across the colonic wall. The therapy must be used as an
integrated whole. Parts of the therapy used in isolation will not be
successful. This therapy has cured many cases of advanced cancer.

Ladies and Gentlemen:
I came here on vacation; I didn't come here for a lecture. I didn't
bring anything. So, I wrote down some things since I was asked to tell
you first how I arrived at the cancer treatment. It is a funny story.

When I was a physician for internal diseases in Bielefeld [Germany) in
1928, one day I was called to see a lady. I asked her what was wrong
with her but on the telephone she didn't want to tell me. So I went
there, a little outside of town. Then I asked her "What's wrong?"
She told me she was operated on in a big clinic nearby and they found a
cancer of the bile duct. I saw the operation scar. She was running a
high fever, was jaundiced. I told her, "Sorry, I can do nothing for
you. I don't know how to treat cancer. I have not seen results,
especially in such an advanced case where there is no longer the
possibility of operation." So, she said, "No, doctor, I called
because I saw the results in your treatment of tuberculosis and
arthritis in various cases. Now, here is a pad and you write down a
treatment. On that table over there, there is a book, and in that book,
you will be good enough to read to me aloud the chapter called The
Healing of Cancer."

It was a big book of about 1,200 pages on folk medicine and in the
middle there was that chapter. I started to read. That book was edited
by three schoolteachers and one physician. None of them practiced
medicine. So they put together that book. I read that chapter. In it
there was something about Hippocrates who gave these patients a special
soup. I should like to tell you, we use that soup at the present time!
That soup from that book, out of the practice of Hippocrates - 550
years before Christ! He was the greatest physician at that time, and I
even think the greatest physician of all time. He had the idea that the
patient has to be detoxified with the soup and with some enemas and so
on.

I read and read but finally I told the lady, "Look, because of my
tuberculosis treatment physicians are opposed to me. Therefore I'd like
not to treat you." Again she insisted, "I'll give you in writing
that you are not responsible for the outcome of the treatment and that
I insisted that you do so." So with that signed statement, I thought,
all right, let's try. I wrote down the treatment. It was almost the
same which I used for tuberculosis patients (1-7) which I had worked
out and used at the University Clinic in Munich with Prof. Sauerbruch.
After the work at the University Clinic the treatment had been
established and had been found effective. (8, 9). I thought that maybe
it will be effective in cancer too. It is always written in scientific
books that tuberculosis and cancer are both degenerative diseases where
the body has to be detoxified. But this latter thought was written only
by Hippocrates.

I tried - and the patient was cured! Six months later she was up and
around in the best condition. Then she sent me two other cancer cases.
One of her family with a stomach cancer where it had been found during
an attempted operation that there were metastasized glands around the
stomach-also cured! And I had to cure then, against my will, a third
case. I expected to have still more opposition from the medical
profession. The third case was also a stomach cancer. It was also
cured. Three cases were tried and all three cases were cured!

I have to tell you that up to this day, I don't know how this happened,
how I stumbled into that, how this was achieved. At that time I always
said that I didn't know why they were cured. I didn't know enough about
cancer and it was such a difficult problem to go into. But once it was
in my head and in my hands and in my heart, I could no longer separate
myself from that problem.

Some time later I was in Vienna. I had left Germany due to the
political upheaval at the time of Hitler. There in Vienna I tried six
cases, and in all six cases, no results-all failures. That was
shocking. The sanatorium where I treated my patients was not so well
organized for dietary treatments. They treated other diseases by other
methods and didn't pay much attention to diet. So, I attributed the
failures to that.

Then I came to Paris. In Paris, I tried seven cases and I had three
results. One of the cases was an older man. He had a cancer of the
cecum where the colon starts, 70 years old. Another case was a lady
from Armenia. This was a very interesting case. I had to work against
the whole family. There were many physicians in the family, and I had
plenty of trouble. But, anyway, I came through in that case. She had
cancer of the breast which regrew. Every time the family insisted that
she was "so much down." She weighed only 78 pounds. She was skin
and bones and they wanted me to give her egg yolks. I gave her small
amounts of egg yolks-the cancer regrew. Then they insisted that I give
her meat, raw chopped meat. I gave her this and the cancer regrew. The
third time, they wanted me to give her some oil. I gave her that oil
and the third time the cancer regrew. But, anyway, three times I could
eliminate the cancer again and cure. And still I had no idea what
cancer was. If somebody asked me about the theory, just what it was I
was doing, I had to answer, "I don't really know myself."

Some time later I came to this country. I couldn't get the cancer
problem and the cure of the first three cases out of my mind. I kept
thinking "It must be possible, it would a crime not to do it." But
it wasn't so easy. When I came here, I had no clinic. I didn't even
have a license to practice medicine. When I had taken the exams and
could take patients, I had to treat them at home and that was hard
work. The patients didn't like to obey the diet, to do it at home. They
were accustomed to save kitchen time and not to work hard to make all
the juices necessary for the treatment as it had been worked out.

Now the treatment for tuberculosis was a saltless diet, mostly fruit
and vegetables, vegetables cooked without added water, steamed in their
own juices, with a heavy pot, no aluminum. The cover had to be heavy
and fit well so that the steam could not escape. Then they had to have
most of the food raw, finely grated. They had to drink orange juice,
grapefruit juice, and apple and carrot juice. This had to be produced
in a special machine-a grinder and a separate press-because I found
that in centrifugal juicers or liquefiers, I couldn't obtain the kind
of juice which cured patients.

At first, I had thought that liquefiers would be the most wonderful
thing. All the material was there, nothing was lost. But it didn't
work. Then I found out through a physicist that in the liquefier, in
the center, there is positive electricity and in the fluid there is
negative electricity. This electricity kills the oxidizing enzymes. And
that is also true for the centrifugal juicer and the other apparatus.
The juice must therefore be made by a grinder and a separate press - if
possible, made of stainless steel. (Editor's note: a masticating
juicer, such as a Champion, might also work.)

The patients must drink a lot of those juices. They have to have the
Hippocrates soup. I can't go into all the details. The evening would
not be long enough for that. But very important for the detoxification
are enemas. I felt that the detoxification as suggested in the book of
Hippocrates was a most important part.

Finally, I had a clinic. The patients saw that also the more advanced
cases and even some terminal cases, very far advanced cases, could be
saved. They brought me more and more of these terminal cases. I was
forced into that. On the one side, the knife of the AMA was at my
throat and on my back. I had only terminal cases. If I had not saved
them, my clinic would have been a death house. Some of the cases were
brought on stretchers. They couldn't walk. They could no longer eat. It
was very, very difficult. So, I really had to work out a treatment that
could help these far advanced cases.(10,11) Again, I was forced into
it.

On the need of where to put the emphasis: reading all the literature, I
saw that all the scientists treat the symptoms. These, I thought, are
only symptoms. There must be something basic behind them. It has to be
impossible that there are symptoms in the brain, others in the lungs,
in the bones, it the abdomen and in the liver. There must be something
basic, or else this is impossible.

Already, through my work with tuberculosis, I learned that in
tuberculosis and in all other degenerative diseases, one must not treat
the symptoms. The body-the whole body-has to be treated. But that is
easily said. How will you do it? Little by little I came to the
conclusion that the most important part of our body is the digestive
tract. For all our intake to be properly digested, and for the other
organs of the digestive tract to function right and help in the
digestion to the end product-and at the same time eliminate all the
waste products-all the toxins and poisons which must be eliminated so
that nothing will accumulate in our system, I thought that this was the
most important thing in the tuberculosis treatment. It must be the same
in all the other degenerative diseases, too. And still, up to the
present, I am convinced that cancer does not need a "specific"
treatment.

Cancer is a so-called degenerative disease, and all the degenerative
diseases have to be treated so that the whole body at first is
detoxified. In my tuberculosis work again, I saw that the liver plays
the important role. It eliminates the toxins from the body, prepares
them so they can enter into the bile ducts, and can thus be eliminated
with the bile-that is not an easy job. In addition, the liver helps
to prepare the stomach juice with the help of the visceral nervous
system. The liver helps to prepare the pancreas, trypsin, pepsin,
lipase, the digestive enzymes-all that is regulated with the help of
the visceral nervous system. The liver has many, many more very
important functions. One of them is the reactivation of the oxidizing
enzymes as we know through Rudolf Schoenheimer. He did the work along
these lines. It would go too far to go into that at this time. It is
very important to note that oxidizing enzymes are at a low level of
function in cancer patients.

Michel,
It's a waste of time and money