Cancer and Diet
. BY J. ELLIS BARKER.
[Mr. Ellis Barker's views on cancer have been endorsed by many incdical men. He does not himself claim any credit for the cures he has effected through the fleshless and flshless diet that he recom- mends, for he says that many cures of cancer are spontaneous ; but there is no doubt that he has alleviated the sufferings of many patients, and we believe that the general principles he advocates are sound.—ED. Spectator.] .FROM time immemorial the common people have expressed the opinion that " cancer has something to do with our food." Medical men and scientists should not disdain the medical ideas of the common people which are often based on age-old tradition and centuries of observation. We have learned much from folk medicine. Many of the most valuable remedies and scientific pro- cesses were discovered by observant primitive men. About 20,000 years ago men of the Stone Age successfully performed trepanation, taking a disc out of the skull. Anaesthetics and antiseptics were used in primitive times and vaccination and inoculation were practised thousands of years ago in India, China and Africa. Vaccination against smallpox was not discovered by Jenner, but by illiterate herdsmen. Mesmerism was practised two thousand years before Mesmer, and Hippocrates used sun baths, massage, open-air treatment for consumption, &c. Scientists often claim wrongfully to have initiated important medical innovations.
The civilized and the uncivilized die of two entirely different sets of diseases. Primitive men lead healthy lives and die quickly of exposure, want, violence, and dirt diseases, such as typhoid, cholera, &c., which we have largely eliminated. Civilized men die slowly of long lasting diseases after years of invalidism unknown to the primitive folk. Even tuberculosis is a disease of civiliza- tion. Primitive races are ravaged by tuberculosis, measles, syphilis, &c., after having been infected by the civilized.
Cancer is purely a disease of civilization and unnatural living. It was well known to Hippocrates two thousand three hundred years ago. If it were an inevitable disease, as we are told, it should, in the course of centuries, have spread all over the earth. However, hundreds of eminent and reliable medical men practising among primitive races have told us that they have hardly ever seen cancer among the uncivilized. Scores of doctors and surgeons practising in the African interior have never treated a cancer case, except among the white men living among the blacks. However, the ,primitive cancer-free negroes become exceedingly liable to cancer if they adopt the methods of living and the diet of the civilized. - - If we study the cancer statistics of the world' we find that the cancer mortality is greatest where civilization is most advanced, where methods of living are • most artificial. In all countries the cancer mortality is far greater in the towns than in the country, and it is greatest in those parts where men live chiefly on heating and denaturalized foods. The cancer mortality is lowest among farmers and agricultural labourers and among the clergy who lead simple, natural lives. It is highest among the workers in the public house and restaurant business, butchers and sailors. Men engaged in these three occupations eat unduly large quantities of meat and of preserved and heating foods.
In my books I have endeavoured to show that cancer is a disease of chronic poisoning and of vitamin starvation. In the causation of cancer diet seems a most important factor. Animals and primitive men do not take de. vitaminized foods, They also do not touch over-hot food and drink, Their Instinct protects them against it, Stomach cancer is practically unknown among them, In this country 10,000 people die every_year of cancer of the stomach. I have investigated hundreds of cancer cases and have found that in every case of cancer of the stomach the sufferer took food and drink at -the most extreme temperature. The stomach and the tube which leads from the mouth to the stomach have no pain nerves. Boiling hot drink slips so quickly over the tongue that it cannot hurt it, and constantly repeated scalding of the stomach is apt to lead to cancer.
Animals and primitive races do not suffer from con- stipation. The soft, clogging and devitaminized food of civilization makes constipation universal. Sir Arbuthnot Lane and many other eminent surgeons have told us that bowel cancer is found practically only among the chronically constipated. The bowel poisons are exceed- ingly virulent, and the powerful purgatives habitually used weaken the bowel walls so that these poisons are absorbed into the system.
Arsenic, aniline, tar and petroleum are among the most dangerous cancer-creating poisons. By painting experimental animals with arsenic, aniline, tar and petroleum we can produce cancer in them. Modern civiliza- tion is based on arsenic, aniline, tar and petrol. We dye our wall paper, carpets, clothes and foodstuffs with aniline. We spray with arsenic our fruit trees, and sheep are dipped in arsenic with the result that the wool of our clothes contains arsenic in minute doses. Arsenic absorption is also frequent, because arsenic is found in 0:11. The air of the towns is polluted with emanations from tarred roads and motor cars, and to the poisonous exhaust gases of motor cars lead is now added. We cannot wonder that primary lung cancer has frightfully increased during the last decade or two.
If an artificial diet is liable to cause cancer, it stands to reason that 'a wisely chosen natural diet should reduce the ever-increasing mortality and might be curative of cancer. Diabetes was considered a mystery disease and scientists doubted whether it was due to the over- consumption of sugar. During the War the diabetes death rate declined with the decline in sugar consumption, and in Germany it was reduced to half. In the treatment of diabetes diet is infinitely more potent than insulin. In the treatment of cancer diet may prove far more potent than the knife and radium. During the last twenty years of intensified surgical treatment, the relative cancer death rate has exactly doubled. Surgery has utterly failed, has disgracefully failed. That preven- tion is 'better than cure applies to both diabetes and cancer.
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