A simple inexpensive four herb tea that cures cancer? Even AIDS maybe? This has been a critical concern since Essiac tea was introduced in Canada during the early 1920’s. For over 50 years, a humble nurse, Rene Caisse (pronounced Reen Case), used the tea successfully with many terminal cancer patients from her clinic in the tiny Canadian village of Bracebridge, north of Toronto.
At first, she accepted whatever anyone could easily afford, even eggs and produce, for her services. She turned no one down. After 1937, she charged no fees! She didn’t make money off the tea though she successfully treated many hundreds. Her rewards were harassment by the Canadian Health Ministry, and betrayal by a private corporation she had hoped would help make Essiac tea a legal cancer cure.
Though the name of the tea, Essiac, was derived from spelling Rene’s surname Caisse backwards, she was not the original formulator. The ingredients and recipe came originally from an Ojibway Native American medicine man in remote northern Canada.
Essiac’s Origin
Rene Caisse was an RN in a Canadian hospital in 1922 when she came upon an elderly patient who had survived breast cancer 30 years earlier. At that time, the woman was living in remote northern Canadian mining camp with her husband. She was admitted to a hospital for breast cancer and told her breasts would have to be removed.
She decided against surgery and went back to the mining camp. In the camp area, she had earlier come upon an Ojibway medicine man who claimed he could cure her cancer. Upon her return, he showed her which herbs to use, how to pick and culture them, and how to prepare the tea. She followed his instructions and within several months was completely cured. She lived in good health for another 30 years.
Since Rene had an aunt and step father with cancer at the time, she was interested in the herbs and how to prepare the tea. So that elderly woman conveyed the Ojbway medicine’s ingredients and recipe to nurse Caisse, who in turn treated her cancer stricken family members. Regarding her stepfather: “It took some time, said Rene, but eventually he was cured.”
From then, she continued with so much success that in 1933 the small town of Bracebridge allowed her to use the defunct British Lion Hotel as a clinic for virtually no rent, one dollar per month. She continued her work in the clinic from 1934 to 1942. Hundreds of Cancer patients were treated successfully, while she charged little or nothing. She cultivated the herbs, brewed the tea in the kitchen, and administered it both orally and by injection.
Of course, during that time and after, Rene Caisse was the center of controversy and harassment from Canadian authorities. She has stated that the only reason she was not imprisoned was because of popular support from Bracebridge’s Town Council, several prestigious doctors, and of course her many cured patients. One of whom was cured of both cancer and diabetes.
The diabetes cure surprised even Rene! Due to this support, from 1937 on, Nurse Caisse was permitted to treat cancer under the strict conditions of 1) treating only terminally ill patients, 2) using an established medical doctor for prognosis and diagnosis, and 3) not accepting any fees for her services. She agreed to those terms and continued.
Regarding her over 50 years of harassment, Rene lamented, “I never dreamed of the opposition and the persecution that would be my lot in trying to help suffering humanity with no thought of personal gain.”
Essiac Makes It’s Way to the USA
Despite so many successfully treated cancer patients’ testimonies, the general public was kept in the dark about Essiac Tea. Caisse made an effort to get the Essiac out into the public light in 1977, a year before her death. She made a deal with a company called Resperin, whom she thought had the clout to legalize her Essiac tea. But Caisse was told she was no longer needed after the agreement.
Resperin was actually in the pocket of the Canadian government and medical authorities. So that project vaporized, and the formula seemed destined to obscurity. Then along came a successful California chiropractor who specialized in treating world class athletes of all types, Dr. Gary Glum. He had heard about Essiac’s healing qualities and started his search for the formula and recipe.
He eventually came upon someone in Detroit, who chooses to remain anonymous, who was cured with Essiac of what was diagnosed as incurable cervical cancer. She had the original formula, and Gary bought it from her. Then Gary went to Canada to interview Mary McPhearson, a close personal friend and assistant to Nurse Caisse before Rene passed on in 1978.
There Dr. Glum also confirmed the authenticity of the formula he had purchased, and uncovered enough information about Rene Caisse and her work to begin writing his book,Calling of an Angel. In that book, Dr. Glum told the story of Rene Caisse, and he told how and where to get the formula, which since has been disseminated all over the western world.
Gary Glum had to self publish the book because it was so threatening to the cancer industry, and there was the danger of slam dunk wrongful death lawsuits on publishers since Essiac was not FDA approved. So no one would risk publishing it. That book and his second, Full Disclosure, which reveals the true source of AIDS as man made and the depopulation agenda, put Glum in harm’s way for some time.
He was harassed by US Marshals and almost completely financially ruined by bogus IRS claims, and a Naval Intelligence operative later threatened his life and the lives of his family if he continued publishing his two books. Only a few of Gary’s books are still available, but there are summarized pdf versions available free on line.
Here’s what Dr. Glum had to say about Essiac for AIDS in an interview circa 1990: “I also worked with the AIDS Project Los Angeles . . . . They had sent 179 patients home to die. They all had pneumocystis carinii and histoplasmosis. Their weight was down to about 100 pounds. Their T-4 cell counts were less than ten.”
“The Project gave me five of these patients. I took them off the AZT and the DDI and put them on Essiac three times a day. Those are the only ones alive today. The other 174 are dead. But this information is not being disseminated either, because AIDS is on the horizon as another big moneymaker.
Dr. Glum also had success with a few cancer patients that came his way. For example, he was involved with treating one young boy with a virulent form of terminal leukemia. The boy recovered completely with Essiac Tea, only to die later from heart failure. The damage to his heart that caused the failure was traced to his earlier chemotherapy treatments!
While researching for his book, Gary Glum came across Dr. Charles A. Brusch, who was a personal physician for the late President John F. Kennedy. Dr. Brusch also ran a cancer clinic in Boston, MA. He had Rene Caise work there with him from 1959 to 1962. Dr. Brusch treated both his own cancer and Ted Kennedy’s son’s incurable cancer successfully with Essiac. Unfortunately, he was hit with a gag order and told to keep quiet or wind up in prison for the rest of his life.
Of course, Dr. Charles Brusch chose to remain silent publicly. However, Dr. Glum, in his bookCalling of an Angel, had this quote from Dr. Brusch, “The results we obtained with thousands of patients of various races, sexes and ages, with all types of cancer, definitely prove Essiac to be a cure for cancer. All studies done in four laboratories in the United States and one more in Canada fortify this claim.”
Immediately after Rene Caisse’s death, authorities ransacked her home and burned Nurse Caisse’s records. But her friend Mary McPherson had saved some, and a series of autobiographical articles by Nurse Caisse had become public record. The few privy to the treatment’s ingredients and protocol kept a low profile to avoid harassment.
But thanks to Dr. Glum’s investigative journalism, the secret is out, albeit among the scattered few, and without the caveats that should be known widely among those scattered few. First the ingredients, then the caveats.
Essiac Ingredients
Despite the development of 6 and 8 herb Essiac teas recently, the 4 herb version remains as a staple. It has a proven record of cured patients since the late 1920’s. Brewing your own Essiac tea is favored by most upon ordering the herbs, which are sometimes packaged individually, or pre-mixed into one bag.
* 6 1/2 cups of burdock root (cut)
* 1 pound of sheep sorrel herb (powdered)
* 1/4 pound of slippery elm bark (powdered)
* 1 ounce of Turkish rhubarb root (powdered)
These amounts of ingredients combine to make 8 quarts or 2 gallons of the tea. Cutting each amount in half makes one gallon at a time. Some instructions say to mix all the ingredients well before placing them in water, store the dry herbal mix in a glass jar in a dark dry place, and take out one ounce per 32 ounces of water (one quart) at a time.
Which ever way you wish to parse it out, the herbs are boiled hard without a lid for 10 minutes, some say 20; then, cover with a lid and steep over night on the stove. In the morning, heat it up to steaming hot (not boiling), then let it settle and pour into glass or ceramic containers. Use stainless steel or cast iron pots for boiling, and glass or ceramic containers for storing. Keep the containers or container with the tea capped in a dark cool place until first used. After opening, it must be refrigerated.
The dosage depends on the condition. For immune tonic use or very mild ailments, 2 ounces once daily. Increase the frequency up to 3 times daily with up to 3 ounces each time according to the severity of the ailment, which is usually cancer. The refrigerated tea can be added to hot water or warmed up for consumption. Cancer patients undergoing other treatments, even with allopathic drugs, have used the tea as well.
However, cancer or AIDS should be treated holistically by abstaining as much as possible from toxic medicines, toxic foods, toxic household and cosmetic items, and toxic thinking. The cancer patient should also have a meatless diet of organic food and get as much sunshine and Vitamin D and C supplementation as possible. Using Essiac tea while indulging in old life style habits that probably started the cancer or any other disease is not the best way to heal.
Essiac Caveats
The quality of the ingredients is the most important aspect of beneficial Essiac. There are too many watered down versions out there. Dr. Glum has stated that some providers are using irradiated herbs and even replacing sheep sorrel herbs, a common weed declared as illegal for use in Canada, with curly dock, a weed similar to red sorrel. This is critical since it has been laboratory tested and proven that sheep sorrel is the actual cancer cell killer in Essiac Tea.
The other ingredients combine for a synergistic immune booster and blood purifier. Even as important is the fact that Rene Caisse used the whole sheep sorrel weed, roots and all. She discovered the roots to be very critical for sheep sorrel’s efficacy. Most Essiac herbal or ready made tea providers use only the leaves of sheep sorrel even if they do use the weed. It’s easier and cheaper to harvest the leaves from the weeds while leaving the roots intact to grow more leaves.
To avoid irradiation, order via commercial overland courier services, such as UPS and FedEx, not the postal service, which is required to irradiate herbs. Even if flown in by a commercial service, there is a strong chance of irradiation, especially if coming from another country. This is a problem with Turkish rhubarb root, which is not naturally indigenous to America.
However, there is a possibility of getting Turkish rhubarb root cultivated in North America, as well as the powdered sheep sorrel complete with roots. There are many people who have survived cancer, and a few have used Essiac to cure AIDS as well. Many have improved their overall health by using Essiac Tea as a tonic. Yet there are some who complain about little or no effect from Essiac.
This discrepancy points at least partially to the herb quality issue. The proper high quality 4 herb mixture has been effective on cancer, AIDS, and diabetic patients. Rene Caisse never compromised on the ingredients, and she could be stubborn about mixing protocols as well! It’s important that anyone using Essiac have the best ingredients the way Nurse Caisse did.