• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Bloodroot and cancer

LibraryLady

Emeritus
LibraryLady
Joined
Sep 4, 2004
Messages
14,331
Location
Maryland
Can anyone point me to some literature about the use of bloodroot to treat cancer? A co-worker is upset that a friend of hers is planning to treat herself this way, and asked me to find something to point out the folly. If anyone knows of a particularly good article, please let me know. If not, I'll start researching it myself. I don't want to reinvent the wheel.
 
Bloodroot is also covered in devastating detail in "Natural Causes" by Dan Hurley (Broadway Books, 2006).

ETA: The title refers to bad outcomes that are attributed to use of natural products contrary to the notion that "natural" means "safe" (it does not).
 
Last edited:
I've printed out the two articles for my co-worker who is very grateful, and more than a little horrified. She plans to share them with her friend. We don't own the book Natural Causes, but I'm going to mention it to her as well.

Within a few days, her face became very painful and she developed red streaks that ran down her cheeks. Her anxious phone call to the naturopath brought the explanation that the presence of the lines was a good sign because they "resemble a crab, and cancer is a crab." He also advised her to apply more of the black salve. Within a week, a large part of her face, including her nose, sloughed off. It took 3 years and 17 plastic surgery operations to reconstruct her face. During a deposition, the naturopath stated that he had obtained the salve from a woman in Mexico and that he didn't know who had manufactured it. The picture shows the extent of the injured area.
Click to expand...

"Cancer is a crab?" I hope this guy did time for this.
 
LibraryLady said:
"Cancer is a crab?" I hope this guy did time for this.
Click to expand...
Yup, criminalise stupid - and while there won't be enough clever people to imprison the stupid, there's an outside chance you'd be smart enough to design a prison the stupid enter of their own free will.
 
jiggeryqua said:
Yup, criminalise stupid - and while there won't be enough clever people to imprison the stupid, there's an outside chance you'd be smart enough to design a prison the stupid enter of their own free will.
Click to expand...

He practiced medicine without a license and seriously injured someone. That's not just stupid. That's criminal.
 
LibraryLady said:
He practiced medicine without a license and seriously injured someone. That's not just stupid. That's criminal.
Click to expand...

I advise anyone with domestic burns to apply honey, which they are likely to have to hand. I can swear by its efficacy on the two occasions I've (stupidly) picked up very hot pieces of metal - I did the whole cold water thing first, but I've done that before - the pain reduction and practical absence of blistering is down to the honey. Curiously, that was an Old Husband's Tale (I was speaking to my dad on the phone the first time, it was his wisdom).

The point is I just practised medicine without a license, and the only person I've ever seriously injured was myself. Was he passing himself off as a medical doctor? I don't believe so. More to the point, I was responding to what you actually said:
""Cancer is a crab?" I hope this guy did time for this. "
For that? Oh, no, for something else - which he probably isn't guilty of. In the UK, I understand that you can sue an expert for negligent advice, but civil cases don't incur prison punishments. In the US, I understand that you can sue anyone for anything, but that's still civil law and financial recompense. I don't think you could even get get him for ABH or GBH in the UK, she applied the unguent herself. Maybe she'll wander into one of those smart prisons for the stupid.
 
Last edited:
You've got sites like this which scare me.:

http://www.earthclinic.com/Remedies/bloodroot.html

Particularly the entry about the woman who treated her son's pancreatic cancer:

She discovered "black Salve" (blood root and zinc paste) only a month or two before he passed away by that time the cancer had spread all over his body. She began applying it to a large area with the most cancer and wrapping him with gauze. It began working immediately the cancer was beginning to come through the skin in clumps. Though she continued the process for a long time it did not work quick enough at the stage that he was in and he passed away shortly...She has had over 20 successful cases where any cancer from lung to breast to skin have literally disappeared and saved death row people from death
Click to expand...

On a subsequent page, another user

My husband and I and our dog set up a machine shop in the cellar of an old cow killing plant, where the hides had been cured. I figure he, I, and also the dog, got cancer after hanging out there for three years and breathing the dust etc. My dog has some kind of cancer in her breathing tubes, I am giving her bloodroot also. I can see small pieces of cancer coming out of my body in my *****. Also from the dog. I am convinced if my husband had been able to withstand the pain and just used the bloodroot salve both externally and internally he would still be alive.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
jiggeryqua said:
The point is I just practised medicine without a license, and the only person I've ever seriously injured was myself. Was he passing himself off as a medical doctor? I don't believe so. More to the point, I was responding to what you actually said:
""Cancer is a crab?" I hope this guy did time for this. "
For that? Oh, no, for something else - which he probably isn't guilty of. In the UK, I understand that you can sue an expert for negligent advice, but civil cases don't incur prison punishments. In the US, I understand that you can sue anyone for anything, but that's still civil law and financial recompense. I don't think you could even get get him for ABH or GBH in the UK, she applied the unguent herself. Maybe she'll wander into one of those smart prisons for the stupid.
Click to expand...

The regulatory actions available to the FDA include imprisonment and these claims would represent violations of the FDA regulations. That is, this is something that he can do time for. In addition, depending upon where the naturopath practices and whether they were governed by a regulatory body, they can be found criminally negligent.

Linda
 
FDA = Federal Drug Authority? I don't contest the suggestion that we'd all be better off he were out of our harm's way.
 
jiggeryqua said:
I advise anyone with domestic burns to apply honey, which they are likely to have to hand. I can swear by its efficacy on the two occasions I've (stupidly) picked up very hot pieces of metal - I did the whole cold water thing first, but I've done that before - the pain reduction and practical absence of blistering is down to the honey. Curiously, that was an Old Husband's Tale (I was speaking to my dad on the phone the first time, it was his wisdom).

The point is I just practised medicine without a license, and the only person I've ever seriously injured was myself. Was he passing himself off as a medical doctor? I don't believe so. More to the point, I was responding to what you actually said:
""Cancer is a crab?" I hope this guy did time for this. "
For that? Oh, no, for something else - which he probably isn't guilty of. In the UK, I understand that you can sue an expert for negligent advice, but civil cases don't incur prison punishments. In the US, I understand that you can sue anyone for anything, but that's still civil law and financial recompense. I don't think you could even get get him for ABH or GBH in the UK, she applied the unguent herself. Maybe she'll wander into one of those smart prisons for the stupid.
Click to expand...

Re the Honey cure.
I have read (and since it was just for my own info, I really don't have reference) that plain ordinary refined white sugar is just as good as honey (and will have not a trace of anything else that might cause problems) for wounds. Sugar is most likely the active ingredient in honey -- bacteria do not like high concentrations of sugar.

;)
 
Last edited:
Gord_in_Toronto said:
Re the Honey cure.
I have read (and since it was just for my own info, I really don't have reference) that plain ordinary refined white sugar is just as good as honey (and will have not a trace of anything else that might cause problems) for wounds. Sugar is most likely the active ingredient in honey -- bacteria do not like high concentrations of sugar.

;)
Click to expand...

I'm not sure bacteria play any part in a burn on unbroken skin, and I'm pretty convinced that blisters aren't caused by bacteria, though I did suppose it was the sugars in the honey that were the active ingredient. I've not really looked into it (it worked, and then it worked again, and that's far as I investigated it), but I did momentarily consider the claims made for royal jelly - not all natural remedies are woo, you know that right? ;)
 
http://www.phoenixtears.ca/

This alleged cure has always intrigued me. Has anyone seen this before? Some people will say that if it's so good why doesn't the guy go into full production and make a fortune. However, it has other medicinal uses that up until recently has been banned, ignored or suppressed, so I think this guy would probably meet a lot of resistance from govts.
 
Lots of stuff on this by googling 'black salve'. Black salve is the traditional name for the bloodroot escharotic compound. I've actually used bloodroot juice to remove a wart from my finger at one point in the past, and it did work for that, but then a wart is pretty limited to surface tissue, slow growing, non-malignant, and doesn't metastasize. It's a big jump from that to using it on skin cancers.

The problem as I understand it isn't that bloodroot salves won't destroy tissue. They're good for that. The problem is that they're pretty limited to destroying surface tissue, don't go nearly as deep as a surgeon would have to with a scalpel to cut out a cancerous lesion, and are dangerous all out of proportion to their effectiveness. Generally, in modern terms, that means 'don't use this stuff'.

Save the bloodroot for dying projects, or leave it alone, since it's pretty rare to endangered in a lot of places.

A
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom