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ISBN: 188283416X
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Cancer Salves:
A Botanical Approach to Treatment

My book on botanical escharotic treatments of cancer evolved from fairly simple notes based on the experiences of the people who make the products and a few historic sources. Eventually, I found the time to pursue fairly extensive research on the most prominent doctors who used escharotics in their practices, dating back to the 17th century. I also collected dozens of formulae and listened to the stories of many people who used the salves successfully, including medical doctors who used the black and yellow salves on recurrences of their own breast cancers.

The introductory section on the history of the salves is followed by a discussion of the various escharotic approaches—there are many—and my own sense as to how and why the salves work as they do. Then, there are some testimonials, some historic, some modern, and a few case histories, again some older and some more recent.

Besides presenting a fairly comprehensive overview of the salves, I address the major frustrations faced by patients who attempt to use the salve without supervision from a health care professional. The primary issue is how to interpret the dramatic changes occurring at the treatment site. To aid patients, I have added color pictures and diagrams. I also offer some suggestions that may reduce the pain and scarring normally accompanying the use of bloodroot pastes.

The book contains material useful to medical herbalists and health care professionals who might want to become more familiar with this treatment. There is a brief discussion of some of the properties of the major herbs used in cancer treatment. There are also nearly 100 recipes, my gift, and hopefully the end of greed surrounding the use of formulae by individuals who considered themselves rather than humanity.

My personal philosophy of healing can be found interspersed throughout the book and heavily on this site. More importantly, the book contains three different sets of instructions for use of escharotics, for bandaging, and for poulticing the treatment sites, each based on the methods of the practitioners advocating the particular strategies. The book is extremely thorough, cautious, and hopefully helpful both to those seeking relief for their conditions as well as practitioners searching for meaningful options for the cancer dilemma.

 

What's in the book that is not on this web site:

Testimonials and Case Histories
Instructions
Formulae/Recipes
More Depth
More Pictures

Reviews of the Book

Review from Amazon.com

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients Review

 

Now available in German:

VAK Verlags GmbH
Eschbachstrasse 5
79199 Kirchzarten bei Freiburg
Germany

Fax: +49 7661 987199

 

Customer Reviews

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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful: Lifetime student & advocate of Alternative Medicine, March 1, 2005 Reviewer: TCM (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews Cancer Salves is a fabulous reference resource and a truly fascinating read. Dr. Naiman has accomplished quite a feat in this book. When I got my copy, I literally could not put it down and as I read more and more of it I became more and more in awe of the amount of research that obviously went into this less than one inch thick volume. Throughout the book, Dr. Naiman has referenced her sources and outlined all the cautions that one must be cognizant of when embarking on any healing journey. Think of this book like the old Portuguese Pilot Books that were so highly valued as the only reliable navigational aids prior to the sextant. Like them, this book will aid you in navigating through the physical and spiritual journey that is healing. It tells tales of both success and failure, it gives further resources, points out pitfalls in science as well as philosophy--a truly epic ode to healing and the reform of our philosophy of health. Although Cancer Salves is obviously and specifically focused on cancer, I found that the information provided on individual herbs is very useful generally and not just for cancer. The appendices, especially the suggested reading list, and the bibliography alone are worth the price of the book. Dr. Naiman's musings on the philosophy of health and healing will be echoing within me for some time to come. Finally, I would like to add my own cautionary note: Do not attempt to put any of the programs outlined in Cancer Salves--or any other alternative medical resource--into practice unless you are prepared to take full and complete personal responsibility for your own health and healing. This book is a map, an atlas, a Pilot Book, not a guarantee. It gives you resources to make your own educated alternative medical decisions. What comes of your decisions is your own responsibility, just as it should be. I for one am very grateful to Dr. Naiman for this invaluable resource. Shortly after I received the book, I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Naiman. I was just as impressed by her knowledge, presence, and integrity as I was by her book. Was this review helpful to you?  (Report this)

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful: Buy this book while you still can!, December 7, 1999 Reviewer: Bruce Boatner (Murrieta, CA USA) - See all my reviews When I heard of a woman who had pancreatic cancer and who had been sent home to die, but had managed to save herself with these salves (self-administered under the guidance of a Naturopath), I was incredulous. I was told she actually had the growths in jars and was always happy to share her story with others who might benefit. I made a point of meeting the woman and found her the picture of health, running a vibrant business, working harder than any of the men under her employ. She showed me the jars containing some evil-looking growths. She showed me an unusual scar where the cancer had exited her side. She told me how much it had hurt and how hard it was to kick the morphine they had her on in the hospital. And she told me of other "terminals" who had survived. I got to know this woman well and I trust her implicitly. When I got the book "Cancer Salves" and showed it to her, she was ecstatic. Somebody had finally gotten it in print! How brave! The value of the internet is that you have access to information that would otherwise be banned. With the bad (pornography, etc.) comes the good - voices long silenced by the heavy hand of institutional authority - facts about effective cancer cures that have saved many lives. Search the web for the life history of Royal Raymond Rife. Get the video "Hoxsey - The Quack(?) Who Cured Cancer" (Also renamed "Hoxsey - How Healing Becomes A Crime"). Make up your own mind, however incredible it all may sound at first. And get this book while you still can! Many less-threatening items have been banned by the AMA/FDA. If one out of every four people in America will get cancer, this may save you or someone you love. Knowledge is power. Was this review helpful to you?  (Report this)

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful: A gift to cancer patients and practitioners., October 17, 1998 Reviewer: A reader Dr. Naiman writes an amazing and giving book detailing the use, the formulas, and protocols for working with herbs to remove tumors. The reasearch on the book is scholarly and exhaustive; the prose style light and angelic. I read it in manuscript form and was so amazed by the book's generosity - the author even provides recipes for creating the salves - and its clairity that I bought a copy for my Naturopathic Doctor. He is equally impressed. As a cancer patient I heard hints and whispers about the amazing salves, like blood root and the black and yellow salves, but could find no one truly versed in the art of making or using the salves. All of the practitioners I consulted knew of the existance of the salves but knew nothing of how to obtain them or the proper way to apply them. With this book, Dr. Naiman gives anyone who believes in alternative cancer treatments a virtual howitzer to use in the battle against this killer disease. I paid nearly double the low Amazon.com price for each of the books I bought and believe that I got an incredible bargain. If you have cancer, if you love anyone who has this dread disease, or if you treat cancer patients, you need this book. The herbs are a gift from the earth. The use of them is our legacy from generations of countless healers from decades and centuries past. Certainly we owe Dr. Naiman a debt of gratitude for putting it all in our hands via her very readable and accessible book. Was this review helpful to you?  (Report this)

Ingrid Naiman

I am not a physician. I am what might be called a medical philosopher and counselor. My interest in holistic medicine began less as a rejection of allopathic medicine than a deep yearning for harmlessness, wholesomeness, and harmony. As time went on, I did become concerned that material medicine tends to ignore the issues faced by the person who is sick and suffering—and I did, in fact, reach the point in my own personal life that I was no longer interested in the technical prowess that operates at the expense of the larger picture. I have often asked myself what I would do if I were the patient rather than the person patients consult when they are ill. My first answer has usually been, "I would sit under a tree."Over the years, there have been those who understood me perfectly and those who did not. Many patients said, "You'd do nothing!" My response is that sitting under a tree is not doing nothing. It is an admission that when we are lost, there is no point in going forward.

When faced with a critical illness, there is a red flag on the game of life. We know that if we continue as if all were fine, the patterns that led to our crisis will go unchecked. The outcome, in such instances, is probably death. So, I would sit under a tree until I came to know what my life is all about. A few patients have immediately understood that this is the study undertaken while sitting.

Trees are wonderful companions. They tend to encourage us to look up into the Sky and down into the Earth, to appreciate the wind and the rain and to forge a feeling of being connected, of being one with life. While we have much to learn from trees, life is really about living our Creator's Plan, and since this is something we probably did not learn in school, we often have to set aside time for the lesson later in life—when the stakes are high.

My Education

I have some academic credentials, but to me they are not very meaningful. I majored in Asian Studies at the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii. At that time, I was, as now, interested in philosophy and in cultures different from my own; but the most important experience of my entire undergraduate days was a brief acquaintance with the famous Suzuki-sensei who taught me to recognize my own mind, where it was focused, and how that affected my concentration and awareness.

I went on to graduate school at Yale University, left with a master's degree before my right brain was permanently damaged by studies that to me seemed deeply separated from reality. The obsession with this schism became, over the decades since Yale, a major source of disquiet for me as I could see how the heart and soul are often as not left out of the major activities of our lives. How we make our livings, how we prioritize our spare time, and even how we relate to the important others in our lives are often viewed as separate from what feels good and even relevant.

Knowledge versus Knowing

In my book, I refer to this as the tyranny of "mind over matter," and I suspect it operates against genuine healing. We are led to believe that we ought to appreciate treatments that are painful, that cause us to vomit, and that make our hair fall out because they are destroying a life threatening growth. Numbed into submission by fear and arguments—and coerced into treatments that torture the body more than the illness itself—we ignore our deeper and truer selves. The loss of personal integrity that attends such denial of one half of our being is important and, in my opinion, often more life threatening than cancer.

I have sometimes remarked to patients that we do not really know anything about life and death. The soul creates life, and the soul takes it away. I therefore try, in my consultations, to awaken a sense of who this soul is. My idea is that if I can facilitate an awareness similar to that reported by people who have had near death experiences, the patient will heal naturally without dependency on modalities that hurt and maim. If I were wrong about this, there would be no cases of spontaneous remission to challenge skeptics. The question is simply: Can such experiences be safely generated on a large scale or are they always highly individualistic? They are, of course, as unique as the persons who have them, but they touch the hearts and lives of people in all nations and of all walks of life. They are therefore as universal as the sun and stars.

I went on to create an entire system of healing, based in part on astrology but also on the more esoteric components of our psyche. In 1987, I was awarded a doctorate of medicine in Copenhagen (from Medicina Alternativa). Grateful for the acknowledgment, I accepted the degree but am quick to point out that I did not attend medical school. The award was based on my contributions to the broader field of healing, not mastery of a conventional curriculum. In 1995, I was awarded a second doctorate for my work on escharotic treatments of cancer. This award was given by the Open International University in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Again, I felt honored by the recognition, a doctorate of science, despite the fact that I consider myself to be more of a mystic than a scientist. For me, the book has been more of an ethnobotanical study than a medical study. I was intrigued by the history of medicine, by the suppression of botanical medicine, first by the Inquisition and later by people whose minds are closed because of their "science." I was heartened by the fact that an isolated individual, such as Constantine Rafinesque, spent years with medicine men of the Bayou when fashion would have dictated that he spend his time otherwise.

I was even more deeply touched that a people so persecuted and mistreated by invaders from the other side of the Atlantic gave to those same colonists the keys to survival. I have never seen such an injustice repaid with such generosity, and it is for such reasons that I have been unable to be silent about a treatment that offers so much for so many.