Hoxsey Therapy

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Hoxsey Therapy

By Richard Walters

For over three decades, Harry Hoxsey (1901-1974), a self-taught healer, cured

many cancer patients using an herbal remedy reportedly handed down by his

great-grandfather. By the 1950s, the Hoxsey Cancer Clinic in Dallas was the

world's largest private cancer center, with branches in seventeen states. Born

in Illinois, the charismatic practitioner of herbal folk medicine faced

unrelenting opposition and harassment from a hostile medical establishment.

Nevertheless, two federal courts upheld the " therapeutic value " of Hoxsey's

internal tonic. Even his arch-enemies, the American Medical Association and the

Food and Drug Administration, admitted that his treatment could cure some forms

of cancer. A Dallas judge ruled in federal court that Hoxsey's therapy was

" comparable to surgery, radium, and x-ray " in its effectiveness, without the

destructive side effects of those treatments.

But in the 1950s, at the tail end of the McCarthy era, Hoxsey's clinics were

shut down. The AMA, NCI, and FDA organized a " conspiracy " to " suppress " a fair,

unbiased assessment of Hoxsey's methods, according to a 1953 federal report to

Congress. Hoxsey's Dallas clinic closed its doors in 1960, and three years

later, at Hoxsey's request, Mildred Nelson, R.N., his long-time chief nurse,

moved the operation to Tijuana, Mexico.

The Bio-Medical Center, as the clinic is now called, treats all types of cancer,

with Nelson overseeing a staff of fully licensed medical doctors and support

personnel. The records indicate that many patients, some arriving with late

stages of the disease, have been helped and even completely healed of cancer by

the nontoxic Hoxsey therapy, which today combines internal and external herbal

preparations with a diet, vitamin and mineral supplements, and attitudinal

counseling.

The medical orthodoxy labeled Harry Hoxsey " the worst cancer quack of the

century. " His herbal medicine was denigrated as worthless, simply " a bottle of

colored water " containing extracts of useless backyard weeds. FDA officials

would go to patients' houses, intimidate them, tell them they were being duped

by a quack, and take away their Hoxsey medicines. The American Cancer Society

added the Hoxsey therapy to its blacklist of Unproven Methods in 1968, using its

customary phraseology about the lack of any evidence that the treatment works.

Yet no representative of the ACS has ever visited the Bio-Medical Center or

scientifically tested the Hoxsey remedies. Hoxsey repeatedly urged the AMA and

NCI to conduct a scientific investigation of his formulas, but his pleas went

unanswered. Instead, his practice was outlawed, the FDA banning the sale of all

Hoxsey medications in 1960. His therapy was driven out of the country by a

close-minded medical fraternity that continues to view inexpensive, nontoxic

herbal medicine as direct competitive threat.

Today we know that Hoxsey's plant-based remedies contain naturally occurring

compounds with potent anticancer effects. According to eminent botanist James

Duke, Ph.D., of the United States Department of Agriculture, all of the Hoxsey

herbs have known anticancer properties.1 All of them are cited in Plants Used

Against Cancer, a global compendium of folk usage of medicinal plants compiled

by NCI chemist Jonathan Hartwell. Furthermore, Duke noted, the Hoxsey herbs have

long been used by Native American healers to treat cancer, and traveling

European doctors picked up the knowledge and took it home with them to treat

patients.

Hoxsey treated external cancers with a red paste made of bloodroot (Sanguinaria

canadensis) -- a common wildflower -- mixed with zinc chloride and antimony

sulfide. The rootstock of bloodroot, a spring-blooming flower, contains an

alkaloid, sanguinarine, that has powerful antitumor properties. North American

Indians living along the shores of Lake Superior used the red sap from bloodroot

to treat cancer. Drawing on Indian lore, Dr. J. W. Fell, working at Middlesex

Hospital in London in the 1850s, developed a paste made of bloodroot extract,

zinc chloride, flour, and water. Applied directly to a malignant growth, Dr.

Fell's paste generally destroyed it within two to four weeks. In the 1960s,

various teams of doctors reported the complete healing of cancers of the nose,

external ear, and other organs using a paste made of bloodroot and zinc chloride

-- a mixture virtually identical to Hoxsey's.2

The American Medical Association condemned Hoxsey's " caustic pastes " as

fraudulent in 1949, even though a prominent Wisconsin surgeon, Dr. Frederick

Mohs, in 1941 had used a red paste identical to Hoxsey's to fix cancerous tissue

that he surgically removed under complete microscopic control.3

Medical historian Patricia Spain Ward reported " provocative findings of

antitumor properties " in many of the individual Hoxsey herbs when she

investigated the Hoxsey regimen in 1988 for the United States Congress's Office

of Technology Assessment.4 The basic ingredients of Hoxsey's internal tonic are

potassium iodide and such substances as licorice, red clover, burdock root,

stillingia root, barberis root, pokeroot, cascara, prickly ash bark, and

buckthorn bark. Ward noted that " orthodox scientific research has by now

identified antitumor activity " in most of Hoxsey's plants.

For example, two Hungarian scientists in 1966 reported " considerable antitumor

activity " in a purified fraction of burdock. Japanese researchers at Nagoya

University in 1984 found in burdock a new type of desmutagen, a substance that

is uniquely capable of reducing mutation in either the absence or the presence

of metabolic activation. This new property is so important, the Japanese

scientists named it the B-factor, for " burdock factor. " 5

Hoxsey himself believed that his therapy normalized and balanced the chemistry

within the body. Like many other holistic healers, he considered cancer to be a

systemic disease, not a localized one. Cancer, he wrote, " occurs only in the

presence of a profound physiological change in the constituents of body fluids

and a consequent chemical imbalance in the organism. " His herbal medicines are

intended to restore the original chemical balance to the body's disturbed

metabolism, creating an environment unfavorable to cancer cells, which cease to

multiply and eventually die.6 The herbal remedies are said to strengthen the

immune system and to help carry away wastes and toxins from the tumors that the

herbal compounds caused to necrotize. While this theory may be inexact, current

research appears to be vindicating Hoxsey, or at least showing that his method

merits a thorough, unbiased investigation by the medical orthodoxy.

Mildred Nelson was first introduced to the Hoxsey approach in 1946, when her

mother, Della Mae Nelson, underwent the Hoxsey therapy for cancer. Mildred, a

conventionally trained nurse from Jacksboro, Texas, believed Hoxsey was a quack,

so she went to Dallas to try to talk Della Mae out of her foolishness. Instead,

she ended up taking a job at Hoxsey's clinic as a nurse. Her mother recovered

and is alive and well today. Mildred's father was also treated by Hoxsey for a

recurrence of cancer in the eye socket, having had one cancerous eye removed

earlier. He became cancer-free and remained so until his death in 1957 from

meningitis.

According to Hoxsey's autobiography, You Don't Have to Die, his family's healing

saga began in 1840 when Illinois horse breeder John Hoxsey, his

great-grandfather, watched a favorite stallion recover from a cancerous lesion

on its leg. The horse, put out to pasture to die, grazed on one particular clump

of shrubs and flowering plants and healed itself. John Hoxsey picked samples of

these plants, experimented with them, and formulated an herbal liquid, a salve,

and a powder. He used these medications to treat cancer, fistula, and sores in

horses that breeders brought from as far away as Indiana and Kentucky. The

herbal formulas were handed down within the family, and Harry's father, John, a

veterinary surgeon, began quietly treating human cancer patients. From the age

of eight, Harry served as his father's trusted assistant. After years on the

road as an itinerant healer, he opened the first Hoxsey Cancer Clinic in Dallas

in 1924.

Thus began a protracted battle pitting Harry Hoxsey, an ex-coal miner and Texas

oilman whose family traced its lineage to Plymouth Colony, against the American

medical establishment. Hoxsey was arrested more times than any person in medical

history, usually for practicing medicine without a license. But no cancer

patient ever testified against him. On the contrary, his patients would gather

at the jail in a show of support, hastening his release. Senators, judges, and

some doctors endorsed his anticancer treatment. Although the colorful,

flamboyant healer fit the stereotyped image of a quack, legions of supporters,

once gravely ill with cancer, said they owed their lives and continued

well-being to him. Finally, in 1954, an independent team of ten physicians from

around the United States made a two-day inspection of Hoxsey's Dallas clinic and

issued a remarkable statement. After examining hundreds of case histories and

interviewing patients and ex-patients, the doctors released a

signed report declaring that the clinic ... is successfully treating

pathologically proven cases of cancer, both internal and external, without the

use of surgery, radium or x-ray.

Accepting the standard yardstick of cases that have remained symptom-free in

excess of five to six years after treatment, established by medical authorities,

we have seen sufficient cases to warrant such a conclusion. Some of those

presented before us have been free of symptoms as long as twenty-four years, and

the physical evidence indicates that they are all enjoying exceptional health at

this time.

We as a Committee feel that the Hoxsey treatment is superior to such

conventional methods of treatment as x-ray, radium, and surgery. We are willing

to assist this Clinic in any way possible in bringing this treatment to the

American public.7

But the treatment was denied to the American public. In 1924, according to

Hoxsey's autobiography, Dr. Malcolm Harris, an eminent Chicago surgeon and later

president of the AMA, had offered to buy out the Hoxsey anticancer tonic after

watching Hoxsey successfully treat a terminal patient. Hoxsey would get 10

percent of the profits, according to the offer, but only after ten years. The

AMA would set the fees, keep all the profits for the first nine years, then reap

90 percent of the profits from the tenth year on. The alleged offer would have

given all control to a group of doctors including AMA boss Dr. Morris Fishbein.

Hoxsey refused the offer, or so he claims. The AMA denies that any such incident

ever occurred. In any event, two things are certain: The " terminal " cancer

patient, police Sergeant Thomas Mannix, fully recovered and lived another

decade. And Morris Fishbein became a powerful, relentless enemy of Hoxsey.

Another opponent was Assistant District Attorney Al Templeton, who arrested

Hoxsey more than 100 times in Dallas over a two-year period. Then, in 1939,

Templeton's younger brother, Mike, developed cancer. He had a colostomy, but the

cancer continued to spread; his doctors told him nothing more could be done for

him. When Mike secretly went to Hoxsey and was cured, Al Templeton had a change

of heart. The once-hostile prosecutor became Hoxsey's lawyer.

Esquire magazine sent reporter James Burke to Texas in 1939 with the aim of

doing an expose that would discredit Hoxsey as a worthless, dangerous quack.

Burke stayed six weeks, became a strong supporter of Hoxsey and later his

publicist, and filed a story entitled " The Quack Who Cures Cancer. " Esquire

never published it.

In 1949, Morris Fishbein, long-time editor of the Journal of the American

Medical Association (JAMA), wrote an attack on Hoxsey that was published in the

Hearst papers' Sunday magazine supplement, read by 20 million people. In the

piece, entitled " Blood Money, " Fishbein, the influential " voice of American

medicine, " portrayed Hoxsey as a malevolent charlatan and repeated many of the

unsubstantiated charges that he had been printing for years in JAMA.

Hoxsey sued Fishbein and the Hearst newspaper empire for libel and slander. It

seemed a hopeless David-versus-Goliath contest, but Hoxsey won. Although his

monetary award was just two dollars, he achieved a stunning moral victory. Fifty

of his patients testified on his behalf. The judge found Fishbein's statements

to be " false, slanderous and libelous. " And Fishbein made astonishing admissions

during the trial, such as that he had failed anatomy in medical school and had

never treated a patient or practiced a day of medicine in his entire career.

Even more shocking, Dr. Fishbein admitted in court that Hoxsey's supposedly

" brutal " pastes actually did cure external cancer.

The leader of America's " quack attack " was now on the defensive. Critics charged

the AMA with being a doctor's trade union, setting national medical policy to

further its own selfish interests. The United States Supreme Court agreed that

the AMA had conspired in restraint of trade. Dr. Fishbein was forced to resign.

In 1958, the Fitzgerald Report, commissioned by a United States Senate

committee, concluded that organized medicine had " conspired " to suppress the

Hoxsey therapy and at least a dozen other promising cancer treatments. The

proponents of these unconventional methods were mostly respected doctors and

scientists who had developed nutritional or immunological approaches. Panels of

surgeons and radiation therapists had dismissed the therapies as quackery, and

these promising treatments were banned without a serious investigation. They all

remain to this day on the American Cancer Society's blacklist of " Unproven

Methods of Cancer Management. "

By this time, the Hoxsey clinic in Dallas had 12,000 patients and Harry Hoxsey

was contemplating running for governor of Texas, a post that would enable him to

appoint the state medical board and thereby get an impartial investigation into

his therapy. Hordes of Hoxsey's patients flooded Washington, D.C., demanding

medical freedom of choice.

Hoxsey threatened to picket the White House with 25,000 cured patients. But the

FDA and other federal agencies mounted a massive legal and paralegal assault. A

therapy with the potential to help cancer sufferers was hounded out of the

country.

When Mildred Nelson moved the clinic to Mexico in 1963, Hoxsey stayed in Dallas

in the oil business. In 1967, he developed prostate cancer. He took his own

tonic, but ironically, it didn't work for him. Although surgery is fairly

routine for prostate cancer, he refused to have it, fearing that the Dallas

doctors would take their revenge on him on the operating table. Hoxsey spent his

last seven years as an invalid, dying in isolation, nearly forgotten. He was

buried around Christmas in 1974, without an obituary or tribute in the Dallas

newspapers.

The Bio-Medical Center in Tijuana, a glass-walled mansion within sight of the

United States-Mexico border, is an outpatient clinic only. Patients who arrive

before 9 A.M. are seen without an appointment. They are given a complete workup,

including a physical examination, lab tests, and X-rays, and have their clinical

history taken. Patients are advised to bring existing medical records from other

hospitals and facilities. After their appointment, which usually lasts one full

day, sometimes longer, patients return home with enough Hoxsey medications and

supplements to last several months. They are encouraged to make a follow-up

visit after three to six months.

The herbal tonics, salves, and powders given are adjusted to suit the specific

needs of each patient, taking into account his or her general health, the

location and severity of the cancer, and the extent of previous treatments for

it. The Hoxsey therapy is reportedly effective in alleviating pain in many

cases.

Dietary specifications include the total avoidance of pork, vinegar, tomatoes,

carbonated drinks, and alcohol. The forbidden foods are thought to work against

the therapeutic action of the medicine. Patients are also told not to consume

bleached flour or refined sugar and to ingest very limited amounts of salt.

Supplements include immune stimulants, yeast tablets, vitamin C, calcium

capsules, laxative tablets, and antiseptic washes. Patients are counseled to

adopt a positive mental outlook and to assume complete responsibility for their

own health. The clinic also offers chelation, immunotherapy, and homeopathy, as

well as chemotherapy in extremely serious, life-threatening cases.

The types of cancer said to respond best to the treatment include lymphoma,

melanoma, and external (skin) cancer. The clinic's patient brochure includes

case histories of patients successfully treated for breast, cervical, prostate,

colon, and lung cancers.

In 1965, Margaret Griffin of Pittsburgh was given one year to live by her

conventional doctors. She had been having blackouts, and X-rays revealed that

she had two tumors around her aorta. Exploratory surgery confirmed the existence

of the tumors and also uncovered lesions in the right lung, a blockage of the

superior vena cava, and metastases to the lymph glands. Thirty doses of cobalt

radiation failed to arrest the growing tumors and made Margaret feel worse. As

time went on, her face became puffy, she experienced difficulty breathing, and

she felt that she was going steadily downhill.

Margaret decided to fly to Dallas to try the Hoxsey therapy. After visiting the

clinic, she took four teaspoons per day of the herbal tonic for several months

and followed the prescribed diet. She noticed no improvement, however, and was

having serious doubts about the therapy's value. But after ten months on the

regimen, her breathing improved, her strength returned, and she sensed a

dramatic overall improvement. When she called her family doctor for a checkup,

he refused to see her " because you didn't believe in my diagnosis. " Subsequent

X-rays taken by a different doctor indicated that the two tumors and related

conditions were gone.

Margaret continued to take the Hoxsey tonic until 1979, when she went off it for

a five-year period. In 1984, she had a build-up of fluid in her right lung.

Surgery revealed a recurrence of the tumor blocking the superior vena cava.

Margaret went back on her Hoxsey regimen, and her lung problem cleared up.

X-rays taken in 1989 showed no sign of cancer, and today, more than twenty-five

years after she was given a year at most to live, Margaret is alive, healthy,

and active.

" Mildred Nelson is a totally dedicated healer, " says Margaret. " The medical

community should pay homage to her. I told Mildred that I wish we could clone

her. The world needs her. "

Approximately 80 percent of the patients seen at the Bio-Medical Center benefit

substantially from the treatment, according to Nelson. No full-scale independent

studies have ever been done to evaluate this claim, however. In an informal

tracking survey, Steve Austin, a naturopath from Portland, Oregon, and

colleagues followed approximately thirty-five Hoxsey patients. They were able to

stay in touch with twenty-two of them either for five years or until death.

Austin, who teaches at Western States Chiropractic College in Portland, visited

the Bio-Medical Center in 1983 and asked patients walking through the doors if

they would be willing to participate in his survey. He then kept in touch with

them through annual letters.

Of the twenty-two patients, eleven had died by the end of the five years and

eleven were still alive. Among the survivors, three said their condition was

deteriorating, but eight claimed to be totally cancer-free. All eight of the

cancer-free survivors had previously been diagnosed in the states by medical

doctors.

Austin, who plans to publish his findings, emphasizes that his case studies

should be considered very preliminary. His sample was small, and it is possible

that many of the twenty-two patients were in the very late stages of cancer.

Also, a number of the patients may have failed to take their medicine or to stay

on the recommended diet.

" The outcome -- 8 out of 22 five-year survivors -- suggests that the results

were better than chance, especially since one of the 8 had late-stage melanoma

and another had lung cancer, " says Austin. " I was a skeptic about the Hoxsey

program. Initially, it felt pretty hokey to me. But Mildred Nelson told me,

'Everything is open here. Go out there and talk to any of the patients. They all

know somebody who has been cured by the treatment.' When I mingled with the

patients and spoke to them, Mildred's statement turned out to be true, though

our results certainly do not suggest a substantial benefit in 80 percent. "

Mildred Nelson has said that if she cannot find a health professional whom she

feels she can entrust to run the clinic and fill her shoes, the Hoxsey therapy

may one day die with her. That would be a tragic end to the Hoxsey saga.

Meanwhile, cancer patients who are interested in Hoxsey's methods but cannot

afford the trip to Mexico can avail themselves of at least part of the regimen.

Three herbal distributors sell products that are apparently identical to the

Hoxsey internal tonic formula, or very nearly so. The herbal capsules sold by

one of these distributors reportedly requires only supplemental potassium

iodide; the other two distributors' products -- one, a blend of herbal tinctures

-- are said to be virtually identical to the Hoxsey tonic formula.

It should be emphasized that none of these distributors is in any way connected

with the Bio-Medical Center, and none claims that its product is useful in

treating cancer. The quality of these Hoxsey-like herbal mixtures and the

results for people who use them are unknown. Furthermore, taking only the herbal

component of the therapy and neglecting the other aspects of the program could

weaken the overall effect.

If a cancer patient wishes to pursue a Hoxsey-like protocol without a trip to

Mexico, it is strongly recommended that he or she do so under the direction of a

qualified physician or holistic practitioner. For more information about

resources for these herbal products or for practitioner referrals, contact the

Center for Advancement in Cancer Education, 300 East Lancaster Ave, Suite 100,

Wynnewood, PA 19096.

Richard Walters, who is a medical and health writer and a graduate of Columbia

University, lives in New York.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

This article was originally printed in Options: The Alternative Cancer Therapy

Book, by Richard Walters; 1993, Avery Publishing Group, $13.95 paperback, 120

Old Broadway, Garden City Park, NY 11040

FREE Copy of: Options, with Hoxsey therapy and Essaic chapters:

Subscribe for 2 years @ $48 and receive a free copy of Richard Walters’ Options:

The Alternative Cancer Therapy Book – A $13.95 value

Resources

Bio-Medical Center P.O. Box 727 615 General Ferreira Colonia Juarez Tijuana,

Mexico 22000 Phone: 011 52 66-84-9011 011 52 66-84-9081 011 52 66-84-9082 011 52

66-84-9376 – for further information on Hoxsey therapy and details on treatment.

Reading Material

You Don't Have to Die, by Harry Hoxsey, Milestone Books (New York), 1956. Out of

print; check your local library.

The Cancer Survivors and How They Did It, by Judith Glassman. " Does Mildred

Nelson Have an Herbal Cure for Cancer? " by Peter Barry Chowka, Whole Life Times,

January-February 1984.

" Does Mildred Nelson Have an Herbal Cure for Cancer? " by Peter Chowka, Whole

Life Times, January-February, 1984

" The Troubling Case of Harry Hoxsey, " by Ken Ausubel, New Age Journal,

July-August 1988.

Other Material

Video: Hoxsey: When Healing Becomes a Crime (originally entitled Hoxsey: Quacks

Who Cure Cancer?), 1987. Ninety-six minutes. An excellent, very moving

documentary on the Hoxsey therapy, covering its history, the Bio-Medical Center,

and the politics and economics of cancer. Produced and directed by Ken Ausubel

and coproduced by Catherine Salveson, R.N., it premiered at the Margaret Mead

Film Festival in New York and was shown on cable television. Available from

Realidad Productions (P.O. Box 1644, Santa Fe, NM 87504; 505-989-8575).

Notes

Ken Ausubel, " The Troubling Case of Harry Hoxsey, " New Age Journal,

July-August 1988, p. 79

Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics, vol. 114, 1962, pp. 25-30; and see Walter

H. Lewis and Memory P.F. Elvin-Lewis, Medical Botany: Plants Affecting Man's

Health (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1977).

F.E. Mohs, " Chemosurgery: A Microscopically Controlled Method of Cancer

Excision, " Archives of Surgery, vol. 42, 1941, pp. 279-295, cited in Patricia

Spain Ward, " History of Hoxsey Treatment, " contract report submitted to U.S.

Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, May 1988, pp. 2-3.

Ward, op. cit., p. 8.

Kazuyoshi Morita, Tsuneo Kada, and Mitsuo Namiki, " A Desmutagenic Factor

Isolated From Burdock (Arctium Lappa Linne), " Mutation Research, vol. 129, 1984,

pp. 25-31, cited in Ward, op. cit., p. 7.

Harry Hoxsey, You Don't Have to Die (New York: Milestone Books, 1956), pp.

44-48. 7. Ibid., p. 59.

 

Copyright * 1993 Richard Walters.

 

 

The Hoxsey FormulaFrom the Paracelsus List

 

>Does anyone know the herbal ingredients of a purported alternative antitumor

concoction known as " Hoxsey Formula " ?

The Hoxsey formula is both famous and infamous - for its widely reported

effectiveness and its harsh suppression by the AMA in the mid 20th century. I

know of many patients who have benefited from it.

I teach history of medicine and every year at least one person writes their

paper on Hoxsey. This is one legacy that will not go away because it seems to

keep helping people.

Still the original formula is something of a secret.

In its place many practitioners use various " hoxsey-like " formulas which contain

the appropriate herbs but may not be in the same proportions as the original.

The following is used with permission from IBIS - the Interacive BodyMind

Information System.

(You can get more info on IBIS from ibis).

*formula: Hoxsey-like: a constitutional cleansing and cancer support formula.

Glycyrrhiza glabra, 12 g.

Trifolium pratense, 12 g.

Arctium lappa, 6 g.

Stillingia sylvatica (toxic), 6 g.

Berberis aquifolium, 6 g.

Phytolacca decandra (toxic), 6 g.

Rhamnus purshiana, 3 g.

Rhamnus frangula (toxic), 3 g.

Xanthoxylum americanum, 3 g.

Combine the dry herbs, place in 3 cups of water and simmer for 10-15 minutes.

Cool, strain and store in a dark glass jar.

sig: use 2-4 tbsp. tea in a third cup water adding 1-2 drops of saturated

potassium iodide and 5-11 drops strong iodine (Lugol's) solution. Take q.i.d.,

p.c. and before bed. (NCNM Pharmacy)

 

 

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" When the power of love becomes stronger than the love of power, we will have

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Jimi Hendrix