Dr Max Gerson Healing the Hopeless

413 Pages·2002·60.19 MB·English

by  Howard Strauss

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New York, 1954
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Dr, ax Gerson
Healing the Hopeless
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Howard Straus
witli Barhara Marinacci
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QUARRY
HE ALT H
BOOKS
Copyright © Howard Straus, 2002.
All rights reserved.
The publisher acknowledges the support of
the Government of Canada, Department
of Canadian Heritage, Book
Pub~shing
Industry Development Program.
ISBN 1·55082-290-x
Design by Susan Hannah.
Printed and bound in Canada by
AGMV Marquis, Cap·St·Ignace, Quebec.
Published by Quarry Press Inc., PO Box 1061,
Kingston, Ontario K7L 4Y5 Canada.
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Contents
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Foreword
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Introduction by Dr. Abram Hoffer
14
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The European Years
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1 ·""e Boyhood in Wongrowitz (1881-1899)
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2 . Physician in Training (1899-1914)
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3 Doctor (1914-1918) 41
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4 Practice in Westphalia (1918-1922) 54
-~· Medical
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5 .. .,_. Dietary Discoveries (1-922-1924) - 68
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6 -"'" The Diet for Tuberculosis (1924-1927) 8o
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7 and Fame (1926-1928) 92
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8 -'"""' Moving Onward (1929-1932) 108
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9 The Exile Begins (1933-1934) 129
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10 the Mov;Again
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The American Years
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Starting Out in New York (1936-1941) -- 164
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12 . ...,.. New Focus on Cancer (1941-1944) 182
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13 ..., ... A Growing Cancer Practice (1945-19_46_)_ 204
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14 ·"-..,.. Progress in Curing Cancer (1946-1947) 214
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15 ..., ... Mounting Opposition (1946-1947) 233
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16 Gunther's Tragedy (1946-1947)
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17 Work Goes On (1947-1951)
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18 .. ,_,_. Health Ecology (1949-1952) - 270
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19 ,,... Whole Body Medicine (1953-1954)
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20 Politics of Cancer (1955-1957)
.~,.. The 310
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21 ·-""' The Perils of Publicity (1957-1958) ·-·~··--·
330
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22 ·""-"·Censured for Curing Cancer (1957-1958)
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23 Healer's Passage (1958-1959)
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24 _..,_. Dr. Gerson's Legacy (1959- )
370
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Bibliography
399
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Dedication
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To live for a time next to great minds is the best kind of education.
- Jolin Budtan, 1875-1940
This book is dedicated with love to my grandfather, Dr. Max Gerson, his wife
Gretchen Gerson, and my mother, Charlotte Gerson (Straus). I knew my
grandfather, not as a medical genius or a beleaguered innovator in the world
of human health, but as "Opa," the German familial term for "Grampa." He
was a gentle, quiet man who was only partly present in my world, spending
most of his time and energy in expanding his knowledge and helping his
patients. He left most of the details of day-to-day life to his wife, Gretchen
(later, Margaret), who raised their three daughters and several grand
children, packed up and moved their household repeatedly and often
alone, and managed their home and finances.
No one person has had more influence on my life than my mother,
Charlotte Gerson (Straus), whose qualities I describe as combining the best
of Billy Graham's fiery evangelism, Ralph Nader's stem caution and June
Cleaver's warm, solid and loving motherhood. She bas kept her father's
work alive for the past 30 years by doing the daily work in the trenches with
the doctors and patients. She is the most powerful human being I have ever
met, bar none, continuously helping others overcome diseases that stump
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medical science-and all the while going head-to-head with the American
Medical Association and winning by her solid integrity. She has provided
me with a granite foundation that has supported me for my entire life. I
owe her more than I can ever hope to repay.
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Foreword
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D
r. Max Gerson's life story deserves to be told. He was a pioneer physician of
dietary therapy for chronic diseases such as tuberculosis and cancer, recog
nizing the value of good nutrition in enabling the healing process and maintaining
good health. He was also what one might classify as a health ecologist, a practition
er of environmental medicine, concerned about the adverse effects of modem tech
nology upon the natural world and the human body. And he was possibly the first
truly holistic physician to practice in the United States, in the time just before holis
tic medicine became the watchword for a new medical philosophy that addressed
the whole person, integrating body, mind and spirit. Gerson called his own approach
to medicine "totality"- originally known as Ganzlidt in his homeland, Germany.
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Many alternative or complementary practitioners now employ of the
fac~ts
Gerson's dietary and detoxifying therapies, often without recognition of their
source, yet a large body of scientific literature published in the 1920s and 1930s con
firms Gerson's pioneering work in diet therapy - work that might have been rec
ognized with a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine had the political situation
gone very differently in his native Germany prior to World War ll under Nazi rule
... or had the American medical profession, after this German-Jew fled Nazi perse
cution to the United States in the mid 1930s, been more open to investigating the
methods and results of his treatment of cancer and other intractable, degenerative
diseases. Few if any references to Gerson's name and work can be found in
American medical literature after 1946, unless they are defamatory.
The sheer immensity of Dr. Gerson's achievements is staggering. He was able
to prevent and cure, not simply arrest or slow, a wide range of degenerative dis
eases, including the top four killers in the United States-heart attack, cancer, stroke
and diabetes - which together account for between two and three million deaths
annually. Dr. Gerson also had remarkable success in treating rheumatoid arthritis, mu1-
tiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, multiple chemical sensitivity and other immune sys
tem-connected or toxin-associated disorders. He did this without the financial or acad
emic support of any university, government, institute or laboratory-working alone,
FortwOrd 7
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while treating patients and maintaining a practice-though for brief periods of time,
small private foundations did provide limited support. Yet Dr. Gerson's name remains
unmentionable in medical literature, even as his principles regarding the importance
of diet as prevention of and therapy for a wide variety of diseases are becoming accept
ed as standard medical thinking. His emphasis for health maintenance on sticking to a
saltless, low-fat, largely vegetarian diet with ample fresh fruits and vegetables and
whole-grain products, with no (or much restricted) stimulating or alcoholic drinks, no
longer seems threatening to the establishment, but for over 6o years, the medical, phar
maceutical and governmental health authorities in the United States and abroad have
seemingly done their utmost to maintain a total blackout on Gerson's therapies. Clinics
have been shut down and physicians expelled from practice when they began to use
the Gerson's therapeutic methods, specifically as a cure for cancer.
Max Gerson and Albert Einstein were born at opposite ends of Germany only
two years apart. Both ended their lives in the United States of America, having been
hounded from Nazi Germany by the anti-Semitic prejudices of the times. Einstein,
working alone, formulated his Theory of Relativity and revolutionized physics, but
he searched in vain for his holy grail, the grand unifying field theory in physics . .
Within his chosen profession of medicine, Max Gerson searched for the underlying
principles that connected the seemingly disparate causes and effects of good and ill
health. Early in his career, almost by accident, Gerson discovered a portion of a tan
talizing, unifying theory of human immunity and well-being. He then developed the
concept of "totality in medidne"-the holism of today-by continuously, for the
rest of his days, testing out and proving its efficacy on his patients. Both men pro
posed ideas that were so radical, yet simple in their bases, that other scientists could
not readily accept them. Like Einstein, Gerson was attacked by many of his col
leagues. But Einstein's reputation grew so great that he is considered the most
famous and influential scientist of the 2oth century, whereas Max Gerson's name is
scarcely known.
This biography is a labor of love. Dr. Max Gerson was my grandfather; in fact, he
ushered me into the world. When my mother, Charlotte Gerson, first proposed the
project to me, I was rather hesitant to take it on. My reluctance did not stem from
the fact that I had never written a book before; after all, there is a first time for every
thing. Also, I had written many types of documents in the past: some technical, stem
ming from my work as a computer systems analyst, and some reflecting my under
standing of the Gerson Therapy gained from a lifetime of absorbing it-sometimes
by osmosis, sometimes by intent.
I was not hesitant either about the subject itself. On the contrary, Dr. Max
Gerson's life story is intertwined with some of the greatest and most dramatic hap
penings of the 2oth century. My misgivings instead stemmed from the immensely
tragic nature of Gerson's journey, due mostly to his persecution by colleagues in the
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8 Dr. Max Gmon - - - - -------
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medical profession. As a child, I had personally witnessed or heard about enough of
the incidents to know how painful it would be for me to revisit them in detail. I was
not mistaken. The deeper into the story I delved, the angrier and more depressed I
became at the incredible behavior of the medical profession when confronted by a
true healer. Whether it was by overt conspiracy or petty jealousy, the result was the
same. Max Gerson was prevented from giving to the world his message of a pow
erful curative technique.
When I set out to resurrect the important lifework of Dr. Max Gerson for pub·
lie viewing, I also wanted to reveal some of the "underside" of standard medical prac
tice, particularly when it is directed by an entrenched orthodox medical establish
ment that seeks to retain power and absolute control over its physician members.
Some organizations- most notably the Medical Society of the County of New York,
the American Medical Association, the Congressional Office of Technology Assess
ment (OTA) and the National Cancer Institute - still will not release their volumi·
nous records regarding Dr. Gerson's results, even after 50 years. Any records that
remain will have to be uncovered in the future by other people with more resources
and political power than I could muster.
The medical establishment should by now recognize and publicize that diet and
health are intimately connected, for better or for worse. In other words, what we eat
and drink - always taking into full account the conditions of our food and water
sources, which may be contaminated or poisoned - is going to make us healthy or
unhealthy. This being so, it should often be possible to reverse the course of a patient's
illness, and even totally cure it, by using a therapeutic diet and detoxification tactics.
Which is what Max Gerson did, and did with extraordinary success, again and again
in his medical practice.
Though the pain of researching and recounting the attacks on Gerson was more
than I anticipated, the rewards of examining the accomplishments of th.is truly good,
decent and honorable healer have been far greater than I ever expected.
If I have done my job, I trust that you will feel inspired by Dr. Gerson's exem·
plary life and his experiential medical wisdom - and therefore be motivated to
improve your own health by using the techniques so dearly set forth by him over 6o
years ago. If this book about Dr. Gerson can save so much as one human life from
affliction by an incurable disease, my own efforts to tell his life story and describe the
value of his therapies will be worthwhile.
In writing this book, I relied on a host of resources. My late grandmother, Gretchen
(Margaret) Rose Gerson, after her husband's death in 1959, wrote a memoir of his for·
mative years in Germany and his medical career. Calling it "Max Gerson, a Life
Without Fear," she mostly focused on his medical practice following their marriage
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Foreword 9
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