The Essiac Story

By The Royal Cancer Commission of Canada.

Rene Caisse was a Canadian Nurse who for a period of sixty years treated thousands of cancer patients with a herbal remedy. In 1923 she discovered that one of her patients, who had been officially declared incurable, made a complete recovery. This patient had taken an Ojibway herbal drink. Experimenting with other incurable cancer patients, Rene found that many of them recovered after starting a regime of taking this Indian herbal drink twice daily.

Rene Caisse got the herbal formula from the Ojibway Indians. When Rene visited the medicine man, he explained that the Ojibwa (Chippewa) of the Lake Country in Canada used their Essiac tea herbal remedy for both spiritual balance and body rejuvenation. He said it was "A holy drink that would purify your body and place it back in balance with the Great Spirit." She named it Essiac (her name backwards). She then offered Essiac to terminal cancer patients. She documented thousand of cases of her patients who were cured of cancer.

It wasn't until 1924 that Rene actually used the Essiac tea herbal formula when her aunt developed stomach and liver cancer. Rene later said, "My aunt lived for twenty-one years after being given up by the medical profession. There was no recurrence of cancer."

The larger and further developed formula of Essiac, now known as "Flor-Essence", was the first out on the marketplace in July 1992 and subsequently our "Essiaque Plus." It contains 8 herbs in perfect proportion for synergistic activity. Many imitators have now jumped on the band-wagon with drops, capsules, liquids, and dry versions, all claiming to be "The Original Rene Caisse Tea". In fact the "ORIGINAL" formula has NOT been used since 1924, when Rene Caisse started experimenting with it after curing her aunt. That was when modifications were begun, and an injection was developed. Those claiming otherwise, are simply NOT privy to confidential information or trying to hang their hats on illusive claims.

Over the next fifty years, Rene Caisse gave the Essiac tea formula to thousands of patients who were suffering from various illnesses and ailments. Although there is no clinical evidence to support the effectiveness of the Essiac tea formula on any of the diseases, it is believed to be beneficial to those suffering from cancer, AIDS, diabetes, ulcers, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, hypoglycemia, psoriasis, stress, anxiety, chronic fatigue syndrome, herpes, and many other ailments.

She collaborated with several doctors proving over and over the beneficial qualities of the Native American Essiac herbal tea. Rene Caisse refused to expose the formula for fear of it being suppressed by the medical establishment or used by pharmaceutical companies to generate massive profits.

In 1930, the Canadian government attempted to arrest Rene Caisse for "practicing medicine without a license." When the government agent discovered Rene was working for free and with the permission and approval of the doctors, the warrant for her arrest was never served. Throughout the next four decades, the government and medical establishment would repeatedly threaten Rene with arrest but she refused to stop helping people. Her supporters tried in vain to get a bill passed by the Canadian Parliament to allow Rene to treat her patients without the constant threat of arrest. The bill failed by three votes due to the influence of the Canadian Medical Association and Cancer Commission.

In 1977, a year before her death (from complications after hip surgery) at the age of ninety, Rene Caisse sold her formula to the Resperin Corporation in Toronto. She also gave the Eassiac tea formula to a few close friends. Resperin has trademarked the name Essiac® so the herbal tea appears under a variety of names. Each company claims it has Ms. Cassie's original Essiac tea recipe.

In 1937 the Royal Cancer Commission of Canada conducted hearings concerning Essiac. Rene Caisse's documented evidence was presented to the commission. The commission's conclusion was that Essiac was a cure for cancer. In 1938 the Canadian Parliament voted on letting Rene use Essiac as a cure for cancer. Essiac failed by three votes to be approved as an officially sanctioned cure for cancer.

In the 1960s Rene worked with the Brusch Medical Clinic in Massachusetts. Dr Brusch was President Kennedy's personal physician. After researching Essiac for 10 years, Dr Brusch made the following statement: "Essiac is a cure for cancer, period. All studies done at laboratories in the United States and Canada support this conclusion." Further studies showed Essiac assisted with other illnesses, such as AIDS, Lupus, ME, Alzheimer's and Multiple Sclerosis.

The Essiac formula was presented by Rene Caisse to the Royal Cancer Commission: Sheep Sorrel and Burdock Root are the two "cancer killers" in the Essiac formula. They are the basic curative agents, and are the main ingredients. The other ingredients, Slippery Elm Bark and Rhubarb Root, "assist" the Sheep Sorrel and Burdock Root by increasing bile flow and assisting in the intestinal tract to eliminate the toxins released by the Essiac. Simply put, the Sheep Sorrel and the Burdock Root do the curing, and the Slippery Elm and Rhubarb Root assist them to cure.

Burdock root, a key active ingredient, dicussed by two Hungarian scientists in 1966 reported "considerable antitumor activity in a purified fraction of burdock." In addition, as also discussed, Japanese scientists at Nagoya University in 1984 discovered burdock contains a new type of desmutagen, a substance uniquely capable of reducing cell mutation either in the absence or in the presence of metabolic activation. So important is this property, the Japanese researchers named it the B-factor, for "burdock factor." Another herb in Essiac, turkey rhubarb root, was demonstrated to have antitumor activity in the sarcoma-37 animal test system. Herbalists, however, believe that the synergistic interaction of herbal ingredients contributes to their therapeutic effects. They point out that laboratory tests on a single, isolated compound from one herbal formula fail to address this synergistic potency.

Through her work with cancer patients, Caisse observed that Essiac broke down nodular masses to a more normal tissue, while greatly alleviating pain. Many patients would report an enlarging and hardening of the tumor after a few treatments. Then the tumor would start to soften. People also frequently reported a discharge of large amounts of pus and fleshy material. Masses of diseased tissue were sloughed off in persons with breast, rectum, and internal cancers. After this process, the tumor would be gone.

Caisse theorized that one of the herbs in Essiac reduced tumor growth while other herbs acted as blood purifiers, carrying away destroyed tissue as well as infections related to the malignancy. She also speculated that Essiac strengthened the body's innate defense mechanisms, enabling normal cells to destroy abnormal ones as Nature intended.

Even if a tumor didn't disappear, Caisse maintained, it could be forced to regress, then surgically removed after six to eight Essiac treatments, with much less risk of metastasizing and causing new outbreaks. "If there is any suspicion that any malignant cells are left after the operation," she stated, "then Essiac should be given once a week for at least three months, supplying the body with the resistance to a recurrence that is needed."

She wrote, "In the case of cancer of the breast, the primary growth will usually invade the mammary gland of the opposite breast or the auxilla, or both. If Essiac is administered either orally or by hypodermic injection, into the forearm, the secondary growth will regress into the primary mass, enlarging it for a time, but when it is all localized it will loosen and soften and can then be removed without the danger of recurrence." Caisse spoke from personal experience, having administered thousands of Essiac injections to gravely ill patients, always under the supervision of a physician.

In 1983, Dr. E. Bruce Hendrick, chief of neurosurgery at the University of Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, urged Canada's highest health officials to launch "a scientific clinical trial" of Essiac. In a letter to the Canadian Minister of Health and Welfare, Dr. Hendrick reported that eight of ten patients with surgically treated tumors of the central nervous system, after following an Essiac regimen, had "escaped from the conventional methods of therapy including both radiation and chemotherapy." Yet today, patients in Canada must go through a bureaucratic maze that makes it difficult or impossible for them to receive Essiac therapy.

islandteashop sells Powerful Essiac concentrate which several drops may be added to any beverage or Rooibos tea!