Essiac : A Native Herbal Cancer Remedy

Essiac: A Native Herbal Cancer Remedy - Introduction

By Cynthia Olsen

I first met Jeni at a yard sale that was being held at a nearby campground. She had arrived in our peaceful mountain town the week before... Jeni had fled Sedona, Arizona after a major rainstorm had caused the waters of Oak Creek to rise and flood many homes close by. Jeni was house sitting at a home that was situated very near the creek. She managed to grab some of her belongings, but in the process, had lost many of her art pieces and weavings that were part of her livelihood. It was July 4th when we first met. I was on my way to a picnic, when I spotted a ‘campground sale' sign which caught my eye. I swung into the parking area.

Walking down the line of tables, I stepped in front of one which had spiritual music, linens, candles and some clothes. I recall her standing there. She was rather tall and slim with shortly cropped blonde hair. Her smile was contagious and her talk animated. For sometime we conversed, and then she invited me to sit in one of the folding chairs next to her. She proceeded to tell me how she arrived in town and came across the campground where she was temporarily staying until she could find more permanent housing. One thing led to another, and I invited Jeni to come live with me for awhile until she found her own place.

During the next five years of our mutually fulfilling friendship, Jeni and I talked about her challenges fighting her breast cancer. She had been diagnosed with the illness for about 3 years at that time. She elected not to seek mainstream (allopathic) medical care or expose her body to destructive treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy or radiation. Instead she was convinced she could cure herself using natural ways which included herbs, juices, eliminating red meat, receiving bodywork and other complementary modalities. Her mother also had breast cancer and decided to be treated with the traditional method of chemotherapy and radiation. Jeni had witnessed the pain her mother had gone through and so when she was diagnosed with breast cancer as well, she decided not to choose the same path her mother had taken. Jeni had also shared with me that perhaps the most important part of her therapy involved her emotional well being. She recognized the impact of early childhood feelings of rejection and felt that her complete healing may well depend upon accepting all her feelings and loving herself for the perfect being that she is and always has been. I began to get a feeling of what it must have been like for Rene Caisse to devotedly brew up thousands of mixtures over a fifty year period while observing Jeni in my kitchen cooking the herbs in large pots. The room would fill with the steam and smells of a mixture that may have originated with the Ojibwa (Chippewa) Indians of the Lake Country in Canada. I tried it myself and found the taste quite soothing, especially before retiring in the evening. Jeni took the tea twice daily, and it really seemed to keep her stamina high and ward off illnesses.

As I became more and more intrigued with Jeni's quest, I decided to research the information on this formula. I discovered that although the clinical data was sketchy to say the least, the volume of positive testimony is impressive. The many articles and stories about Essiac also attest to Rene Caisse's devotion and effort, as well as her success. She administered the treatment completely free of charge to thousands of patients.

I learned that there is considerable mystery surrounding the Essiac formula. A full blooded Ojibwa (Sault St. Marie Chippewa) who is a professor of Native American Studies at a western university, informed me that the tribal medicine society, which calls itself the Midewiwin, is extremely secretive. Maybe the formula Rene Caisse learned of was a specific remedy for a particular patient. The Midewiwin no doubt use herbs that are indigenous to their region and call upon their spirit guides and intuition as well as their training and experience to assist them in deciding which particular plants would benefit each person being treated. Caisse herself was secretive about the formula. She knew it worked and was apparently concerned that it be made available immediately and inexpensively to any who needed it.

As you will learn in Chapter 1, she struggled for years against a medical establishment intensely jealous of its lucrative turf as well as a governmental bureaucracy intent on their red-tape-riddled procedures. It seems that her only desire was that the people who need help would get it. It's been reported that Nurse Caisse experienced a recovery rate of over 80%. How much of this was due to the positive and nurturing atmosphere at her clinic is anybody's guess. Those were simpler times. In this day and age, stress, skepticism, and our increasingly toxic environment all conspire against our quest for the complete cure.

In the last year of her life, Rene finally sold the formula to the Resperin Corporation of Ontario, Canada, for $1.00. You will find instructions for the preparation of the Essiac formula in Chapter 5. Although this is the most economical approach, it is time consuming.

I met Christopher Gussa who is the founder of the Desert Dragon Healing Center in Tucson, Arizona. He is a Clinical Herbalist and Chinese Practitioner. Chris has used fresh whole herbs and combined them with his own pills, extracts, syrups and other formulas. In chapter eight, Gussa discusses his experience with the Ojibwa herbs and the use of Blood Root. I believe the readers will find this chapter enlightening and inspiring.

Please read the information in this book with a discerning eye. Educate yourself so that you can discover the direction which most closely ‘resonates' with you for your particular condition. In other words, follow your own heart - your own intuition.

Cynthia Olsen
Pagosa Springs, Colorado

Essiac: A Native Herbal Cancer Remedy
By Cynthia Olsen, 144 pages, $12.50