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Announcer: Welcome to the Gerson Tapes. These are a unique collection of lectures and testimonials based on the work and research of Dr. Max Gerson, his family and colleagues. So please, sit back and relax and enjoy the great health information you’re about to hear. Please remember, the information contained in this program is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified healthcare professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of the Gerson Institute and its affiliates. We encourage you to make your own healthcare decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified healthcare professional.
Norman: …is the daughter of Charlotte Gerson and granddaughter of Dr. Gerson. She has been living in London for quite a number of years and has been quite active and talking over there and helping people with the Gerson Therapy in a variety of ways. Peggy Strauss.
[Applause]
Peggy: Well, it really is a pleasure to be here. It was something that I’ve been looking forward to for many, many months, to celebrating my grandfather’s centenary. I should say I’ve actually been looking forward to it for about two years, thinking about it. I’d like to talk to you a little bit today about the situation of the Gerson Therapy and natural therapies in general. In England I think it will be of great interest to you to hear what sort of things are being done over there and how we are taking this message also to the public in England.
A few years ago in 1977 my mother came over to England to celebrate the first Festival for Mind and Body, which was really the coming-out of the Gerson Therapy in England, on a part of one of the members of the family. I will be mentioning, later, somebody who has been using the Gerson Therapy, or a version of the Gerson Therapy, over there from years before that. But this festival for Mind and Body was really the first time that somebody from the family got up and spoke in public about the Therapy. From there and the radio interviews that went along with it, we did generate quite a bit of interest for the book, for the therapy. I think things have been building gradually from then.
In the fall of 1979 there was a third forum for new approaches to cancer organized in England by Health for the New Age. At that meeting a new organization was started, which was called the Association for New Approaches to Cancer. This association so far has had rather a wide range of interests in the nutritional and spiritual and psychological field where cancer is concerned. But of course one of
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the therapies that is very much promoted by them and talked about them is the Gerson Therapy. We’re very pleased to have the director of the magazine of the association, Mr. Norman Eddy. Norman Eddy is the naturopath, I just mentioned before, who has been using the Gerson Therapy, or as I said, his modification of it, for about 10 to 12 years in Britain. This is the magazine that he publishes for the association. It’s called “Cancer Naturally.” In it there have been many articles about Dr. Gerson, by Dr. Gerson, explaining various aspects of the therapy. There was a piece by me about a visit that I made to the clinic in Mexico. We are happy to have Norman with us. He’s come all the way from England to attend this convention. Any of you who might want to speak to him about the situation in England, he is here and will identify himself later.
There’s an interesting situation in England, which is somewhat brighter than here because we don’t seem to have the massive opposition and persecution by the medical profession that is so disturbing in this country. There’s a long history of herbal medicine in England. The Queen’s doctor is a homeopath. The whole royal family is treated by a homeopath. This is well known. Homeopaths are quite respected physicians in Britain. I believe it was Henry the VIII who had a great interest in herbalism and for that reason natural medicine and herbal remedies are quite respectable. I think we’ll find also with the Gerson Therapy that the terrain is less rocky than in this country. As a matter of fact, the father of a recovered patient, a recovered Gerson patient in Britain, wrote so insistently to his member of parliament that the member of parliament contacted the minister for health and I was summoned, myself, before the chief medical officer of the department of health and social services, which is the chief body that has to do with the national health service in England. I was summoned before this man to explain the Gerson Therapy to him.
Now, such a meeting can be dangerous. It can have consequences that are negative for a therapy. But in this case, while he expressed interest and said that there was nothing much that he could do, there were no negative consequences that came out of the meeting. That was good. We didn’t feel that there was any organized opposition. That’s quite important. It was interesting, however, at the end of the meeting where I seemed to have met all his critical objections to the therapy and explained all the aspects that I could. I had gone to the meeting with the recovered patient, a bladder cancer patient who also was the secretary of the royal society of chemistry and had quite excellent credentials as a scientist himself. At the end of the meeting Dr. Righton, who is the chief medical officer, said that the practical problems of doing a therapy like this were enormous to implement. I said, “This should not be a consideration. We should look into a therapy and if it was scientifically valid and worked and we were satisfied that patients were being helped by this method and had had no other method that could explain their recovery, these practical problems should and must be overcome by the community as a whole.” He sort of chuckled cynically and said he used to
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think like that when he was just out of medical school, but it just wasn’t so. I said to him on that point that he may as well write to all the cancer research foundations and tell them that they should stop looking for a cure for cancer because, after all, there was no sense in having idealism anymore.
The Gerson Therapy does have many patients now in Britain who are doing well. It is more difficult to do the therapy there because outside of London it’s extremely hard to get organically grown food. England is a cold country. The weather is not very conducive in many part of the country, to growing food at all times of year. That is a big problem. We have organized a little network in London where organic food can be sent out to various parts of the country for a surprisingly small fee. People with a great deal of determination have been able to organize liver supplies for the liver juice. We’ve organized medication supplies and I think pretty much everything is now available to people in England who want to do the Gerson Therapy. Patients who’ve come all the way over from England to do the therapy in Mexico, have been able to continue their therapy in England with very good results. We are pleased at the kind of response that we’re having.
In addition, a very good recent development, probably springing out of the new Association for New Approaches to Cancer, is that we’re getting some very interesting articles in the national press. England has a bit of a different situation with the newspapers than exists in this country. There are three or four important, serious, national newspapers. They really have the corner on the serious news stories. You’ll have many local papers and sort of tabloid papers, but the ones that are really looked to are these few newspapers. Recently a very long article came out in The Guardian, which is one of these national newspapers, by a man called Brian Ingles dealing with, attacking really, the orthodox approaches to the diseases of civilization, which is the title of his new book. The Gerson Therapy was mentioned very positively in this article. We also expect very soon a long piece in the Sunday Times, which is, of course, the most prestigious newspaper in Britain. Now this is quite an extraordinary thing. It would be as if the Sunday New York Times wrote a very big piece on the Gerson Therapy, independent of the kind of medical pressures that are put on journalists and newspapers in this country.
I think that’s about all I have time to say about the situation in England. I would like to, if I may, if I have just a few more minutes, I would like to say that I’m also over here to bring to you and to launch this poem which my mother mentioned this morning and some of you have bought. I think you’ll really enjoy reading it. It’s a wonderful tribute to Dr. Gerson by an ex-patient who also happens to be a writer. In the tradition, which is an ancient and respected tradition of writing tributes in verse to great men, Dr. Juliana Diego of the University of London felt that it was time that literature opened its gates to new age ideas and
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especially to the work of Dr. Gerson. This is the book, as we mentioned this morning. I’d like to just read you a couple of lines, a few lines from it if I may. You know that the coffee enema is a very crucial part of the Gerson Therapy and I think the very interesting invention was thought of by Dr. Diego concerning the medical bird, the ibis. I’d like to read you what he wrote about the ibis.
“Even the ibis knows the formulation to make his feathers flaunt a healthy gleam. That bird has quite a medical vocation, endowed by nature with a perfect scheme for self-impelled colonic irrigation. He sucks the water from a sun-warmed stream, then as a hose his long, curved beak applies when tummy hardens or when bowel dries.
The night is ending now in dew and vapor, and dawn has vanished too. It’s coffee time. My lap is covered by a heap of paper. It’s been so since I heard the midnight chime. I feel the draft that’s long put out my taper. It filters through the shutters while I rhyme. A healthy hour. I’ll walk down to the pier. My tribute to Max Gerson must end here. In Maple Grove a curving, shaded lawn contains among its hills his modest stone. A quiet corner near a fountain on the wooded path where mourners seek their own. Here hardy sparrows sing and winters dawn and never grass or shrub is overgrown. He broke no promise, served no private clan, he gave the title of an honest man.”
Thank you veer much. [Applause]
[audio cuts out]
George: It’s an honor to be counted among the friends of these two people who work diligently, year in, year out, usually seven days a week, to help people against all odds, of the medical establishment, to bring about a natural way of healing and perhaps more important, to continue the work of Max Gerson whose birthday we celebrate today, to achieve eventually the prevention of disease. I consider Charlotte Gerson Strauss one of the great ladies in the world today. I welcome her once more to this podium.
[Applause]
Charlotte: Thank you so much, George. We appreciate you too. George is a kind of universal genius. He also has a medical background and training. He is a tremendous musician. He has written his own scripts for documentaries he’s done. He is a tremendous man. Now let us get down to our subject. The subject again seems to cover an awful lot of ground. Good health, from the moment of inception, conception, to old age. I’d like to spend only a little time on certain aspects.
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Obviously I can’t cover the whole subject. Dr. Livingston has done a good deal of my work already. She mentioned many things that are necessary to conceive and bear a healthy child. We have unfortunately so many young people now who have used drugs, pot and those things, which have already definitely shown their activities and propensity of causing birth defects.
Now obviously this is not the way to start a new life. But that’s not the only thing. The mother’s body should be healthy. Here, aside from what Dr. Livingston already mentioned and I go along with all of these things, the mother’s body should be in good health and activity, cleansed of the toxic materials so that she does not have any problems in carrying the baby. There is a very interesting situation that occurs at times. I’d like you to think about this. It’s a very, very dangerous business. Every once in a while you hear people say, “I never felt real good. I’m hypoglycemic. But I felt marvelous while I was pregnant. As soon as the baby was born hypoglycemia game back.” What is really happening here is that the mother’s body is drawing on the baby’s forming pancreas and pancreatic juices and digestive systems to help her in her severe lack. She feels good. But what does that do to the baby. It’s drawing on a developing thing that should be given and not giving. This is a very dangerous business. If you have gone through an experience like that, give your child every advantage. Help in every way to build from this already damaged body, to build up a good, healthy liver and pancreas, or this child will have problems.
Almost the same thing applies, and we have seen several examples of it in our own clinic. A lady who immediately after giving birth had very severe arthritis. How come she felt great while she was pregnant? Arthritis is a problem of protein digestion. I asked her, “Did you continue drinking milk after you had given milk?” She said, “Yes.” Her body was incapable of handling it so she became ill. With the child and the ability of the child’s pancreas to function partially for her, she felt good. But this is a dangerous way to go and of course damages the new baby. You don’t want to do that.
The next thing you want to consider after birth, the richest and best and most wonderful source that nature and the good Lord have instituted for the baby to set up the baby’s entire digestive and immune system, is the very first milk that goes into the mother’s breast. It is not true milk. It is known as colostrum. It is a liquidy material. It’s only recently been seen and found and discovered how rich and wonderful a material it is. It has certain bacteria in it, as Dr. Livingston again mentioned, the bacteria in bifidus and others. These bacteria, including also certain friendly coli -- there are many different coli bacteria. There are certain friendly bacteria and important bacteria and organisms in this first material that goes into the mother’s breast, that helps to set up the entire immune system of this new little life. How many of you have heard doctors and these wise pediatricians say, “Don’t give the baby that first liquid? That’s not milk. Throw it
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away.” They know better than nature, do they? What they do, of course, when they throw away this important material. The child is going to have colitis and colics. It’s going to have a poor immune system. It’s going to be sick. They are developing a good customer. I don’t think they know this. But that’s the way it works out. Dr. Mendelssohn mentions a good deal about that in his book. The best way for a pediatrician to work himself out of a practice is to insist that every mother nurse her baby. This is the natural and only proper food for a newborn child, mother’s milk.
It is different from cow’s milk. A cow grows quickly. A baby grows slowly. A cow’s brain, do you want to raise a cow’s brain in your baby? It’s a different kind of brain. The baby needs different materials. The only proper and correct food is mother’s milk. Nature has such a wonderful way too. If a baby is not properly functioning or maybe has gotten a problem, maybe an injury or a cold or infection, which is rare to impossible if a baby is breastfed, but if it does happen, the mother’s body responds and generates the right materials to give the baby the immune activity and the healing materials it needs to fight that problem.
Where can you do that with formula? Now comes the real problem, formula. It’s cooked to death. It’s dry. It’s dead. Enzymes are killed. It is cow’s milk, which is not right for the baby. So the doctor says, “Put some sugar and a little of this.” Now you have formula. Supposed to be right for your baby. Nothing is right for your baby except your breast milk. But that’s supposed to be the formula, with sugar in it. You begin to raise a sugar-addict right then and there. And the baby will have colics and problems and teething difficulties and runny noses and will have night fevers and stuff like that. Not so the breastfed baby.
The next thing the baby will be getting canned, jarred baby foods and pablum with chemicals in it, preserved, dead, cooked to death. It won’t spoil because it’s dead. When you want to give your baby a jarred dessert, the pureed fruit desserts contain 18 to 21 percent sugar. When you want to really do something for that baby and give him something different, a little custard with milk and egg in it. No way. Some years ago Gerber’s custard was analyzed to have 42 percent sugar. More than candy! These new babies, the young babies that are now starting on canned, jarred baby foods, are poisons. They used to even put monosodium glutamate in these baby jars because in case the mother should taste it it shouldn’t taste flat. Monosodium glutamate causes brain damage. That’s all right. But when you figure the sugar content of the formula, the canned, jarred baby desserts, and now the sugar that’s in all the sweet drinks, the soft drinks, in the sweet cereals,