What are Cancer Salves?

Chemical and Herbal Salves and Pastes

There are two basic types of cancer salves or pastes, those in which the action depends on toxic minerals or acids and those that are herbal. Arsenic paste was mentioned in the great Hindu epic, the Ramayana, 2500 years ago, and was probably used until about the 1930s, even in mainstream cancer hospitals in the U.S. Despite the centuries of controversy surrounding such pastes, my investigations suggest that the treatments, when skillfully employed, were highly successful.

Arsenic trisulfide is a component of Hoxsey's yellow powder; and both he and Frederic Mohs combined bloodroot with antimony in their primary escharotics. In other words, even if there are arguments against the use of such minerals, forms of arsenic as well as stibnite are found in many of the most highly studied pastes, pastes that are used both in the Hoxsey treatment and Mohs microsurgery methods as well as by some Ayurvedic practitioners who claim that the arsenic can be rendered nontoxic.

Were it not for their continued use, these mineral pastes as well as nitric acid and similar chemical preparations would be noted simply for the sake of connecting the dots. However, much as modern science has attempted to relegate such treatments to the list of quaint but no longer relevant historic treatments, the pastes are not obsolete. They are in use at such prestigious places as Harvard Medical School and other institutions where Mohs microsurgery is considered the treatment of choice for basal cell carcinomas. Nevertheless, the pastes are officially regarded as archaic, not as ineffective, not as belonging to the domain of quacks, not as useless, merely "not modern." In other words, conventionally trained doctors can dismiss cancer pastes because they practice modern medicine, not archaic methods only covered in their medical history curriculum.

Herbal Salves and Suppression of Information

Herbal preparations also have ancient roots. The famous twelfth century German mystic, Hildegard of Bingen, used a salve made of crushed violets, billy goat tallow, and olive oil. Relying on her clairvoyance, she said that the "vermes" (usually translated viruses) died when they licked her salve.

The Inquisition, 1231-1834, played an enormous role in Western history. It nearly eradicated the practice of midwifery as well as most botanical methods of treating illness. We learned in school that people came to the New World in search of religious freedom, and though we heard a little about witches, most of us were not told that witches were usually women with a gift for healing that competed with male dominated Medieval medicine.

Through the propaganda machine of the Middle Ages, salves and ointments came to be associated with quackery, a word whose etymology referred to boastful claims rather than fraud. Quacksalver were salves, probably containing mercury, that were widely sold in Western Europe by people whose claims originated outside the walls of academia. The original word, like so many others in our language, only referred to a product, not an ethical judgment much less pseudoscience. The aspersions cast on the products arose as a result of the enterprise of opponents of an entirely different medical tradition.

Then came the Age of Exploration and colonization of the Americas and with this the reliance on herbs from the New World that were not only the means for survival but also important export commodities. Knowledge of botanical medicine was nearly extinct in Europe so the use of the new American herbs, such as Phytolacca americana, was learned from Native American medicine men who gave to the white race the keys to survival in a foreign land. More importantly, the transfer of wisdom in this manner was not unique; it had been ongoing for centuries if not since the beginning of Time.

 

Herbal Ingredients in Native American Cancer Salves

The variety of botanical ingredients used in external cancer treatments reflects distinct tribal traditions as well as the wide geographic distribution of the tribes and the flora of their territories. What the various plant preparations have in common is that they all rely on herbal alkaloids that react with malignant tissues in such a way as to destroy the neoplasms through chemical reactions and/or heat. Though bloodroot is by far the most common ingredient of the pastes (or salves), variations include everything from the humble red onion to ecologically fragile goldenseal.

$

 

 

Historic Salves