Medicine: Cancer Quacks

Although U.S. doctors have long known about the damage done by quack cancer cures, they often lack specific clinical evidence to back them up. At a meeting of the International College of Surgeons in Washington last week, Dr. Charles E. Horton of Duke University Hospital produced a sizable body of evidence: 64 case histories of men and women who had first gone to backwoods cancer quacks and then, uncured, had gone on to Duke.

Practice & Preaching. Of the 64 patients, reported Dr. Horton, ten probably never had cancer, 27 had cancer but suffered unnecessarily because of quack treatments, and 27 died because their cases had become incurable by the time they reached the hospital. Typical cases:

¶ A 37-year-old housewife had a skin condition that later (at Duke) proved not to be a cancer. Convinced that it was, she had gone to a backwoods healer, who applied a salve. Soon a quarter-sized hole disfigured her nose, opened up the nasal cavity. Duke’s plastic surgeons had to build her a new nose.

¶ A 69-year-old retired cotton mill hand developed a cancerous lesion on his cheek. He went to a healer, after twelve monthly visits ($5 each) still had the lesion plus a new scar covering his cheek and forehead. At Duke the cancer was successfully treated.

¶ When she developed a small sore inside her mouth, a 58-year-old housewife asked her husband, a night watchman, what she should do. He recalled reading somewhere that “X ray and radium are no good for cancer.” Friends recommended a healer, and she began the salve treatment. At first the lesion was only the size of a pencil eraser; after two years it had ulcerated her whole cheek. When she complained of extreme pain, the healer said: “That’s fine. The salve’s working, drawing out the cancer.” When the woman finally got to Duke, her entire cheek was affected from eye to chin, and she died.

In studying the effects of quack cures, Dr. Horton and his colleagues got to know the local quacks themselves. One was a prosperous hill-country dairy farmer, another a housewife active in church work. A third was a mountain farmer who, Horton reported, could “quote more Bible than any man I ever saw . . . We told him he didn’t know what a cancer was, and he didn’t.” When told that he had cancer himself, the mountain healer went to Duke for treatment.

Killin’ & Drawin’. As their principal remedy, the quacks used a paste in an age-old combination: a “killin’ salve” (sorrel and sweetgum bark) and a “drawin’ salve” (chestnut-oak bark mixed with equal parts of “mutton tallow, pine resin and coon root”). For “small cancers, malignant or not”: a salve made of the whites of two eggs, two teaspoonfuls of salt, one tablespoonful of bee honey, and a teaspoonful of bluestone dust.

How should the medical profession approach quacks? “We have a duty,” says Horton, “to examine and study each new cancer-cure proposal, no matter how unreasonable it may seem.” Nevertheless, Dr. Horton urges strong action: doctors everywhere should seek stiff local laws and penalties against “premeditated quackery,” report quacks to state medical examiners for investigation.