Cancer Isn’t a Modern Disease

What is cancer? You know the term and odds are great that you know someone personally who has suffered from a member of this constellation of diseases. But what exactly is it?

Cancer is basically a genetic disease in that something changes in the DNA inside certain cells and this, in turn, disrupts their normal functions. These changes might result in uncontrolled growth and this can cause problems simply by the tumor’s size and location. The cancerous tissues might obstruct a bowel or a bile duct, or compress brain cells and increase the pressure inside the cranium, or erode into nearby organs of blood vessels. Others changes within these cells might alter their internal workings so that they no longer function as intended or they might produce chemicals or hormones that alter the function of other cells within the body. Cancer comes in many forms.

What causes cancer? This has been the subject of debate, as well as a tremendous amount of research, for many many years. We have some answers, but there are even more questions. We know that things such as cigarette smoking, exposure to the sun, certain chemicals, and many other things can trigger these genetic changes within cells that can lead to cancers of various types.

Medicine has made tremendous strides in our understanding of cancer and in our methods of early detection, diagnosis, and treatment. There are programs for the early detection of breast and colon cancer and newer treatment protocols have revolutionized the approach to these malignancies. The progress in leukemia and lymphoma treatment, as compared to when I was in medical school, has been nothing short of astounding. 

We often think of cancer as a modern scourge, but cancer is not a new disease. Not by a long shot. It’s been around for many centuries. Evidence for cancers have been found in Egyptian mummies and a recent report from Live Science underscores that.

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Beware the Rabid Dog—-and the Homeopath

Remember the scene in the classic “To Kill A Mockingbird,” where Atticus confronted and shot the rabid dog to protect Scout and her friends? A very dramatic scene and one that had played out in other communities during that era. A rabid dog roaming the streets was indeed a community emergency.

But, I don’t remember anywhere in my medical training where the saliva of a rabid dog could be used to treat emotional problems, or anything else for that matter. Maybe I missed that day, though I doubt it.

Homeopath is a word everyone knows. You’ve heard it thousands of times. But, what does it mean? “Homeo” means “the same.” if something possesses homeostasis it means that it remains in a state of stability rather than one of flux or change. It’s static. “Path” means disease or a pathological state. So, homeopathic means a stable state of wellness that is unchanging.

A homeopath is someone who, by definition, practices medicine where nothing changes. No good, no bad, nothing. Homeostatic. Since most of what they do makes no difference, causes no changes in the body, their treatments also cause no harm. Well, except to your wallet. This is what keeps them from being more tightly regulated, or run out of business altogether. 

But that’s not always the case.

Jonah was a four-year-old boy who obviously had emotional if not truly psychiatric problems. He apparently was fearful of werewolves and would crawl around on the floor and beneath furniture and growl at his classmates. Odd behavior for sure. The proper course would have been for him to see a physician in order to determine if there was some infectious process, neuropsychiatric problem, or perhaps drugs involved in his behavior. If none of these were found, then psychiatric evaluation and care should follow.

Instead, he visited a homeopath. One Anke Zimmermann. Apparently, the treatment of choice under Zimmermann’s care was to give the young man a concocted medicine that contained the saliva of a rabid animal. Really? Odds are that this beyond bizarre treatment would do no harm, be homeopathic, but you just never know. The rabies virus is a hardy creature.

The key point here is that these types of treatments are neither regulated nor investigated and are far outside scientific thinking or procedure. The take-home lesson is, be careful out there. There are a lot of folks who, under the guise of being a so-called “health care provider,” do crazy stuff.