Remedies for Cancer
A multitude of strange remedies are prescribed for Cancer. When Lord Metcalfe, the Governor of Canada, was beset with this cruel disease, Mr. Kaye, his biographer, tells us: “One correspondent recommended Mesmerism, which had cured Miss Martineau; another Hydropathy, at the pure springs of Malvern; a third, an application of the common dock-leaf; a fourth, an infusion of couch-grass; a fifth, the baths of Docherte, near Vienna; a sixth, the volcanic hot-springs of Karlsbad; a seventh, a wonderful plaster made of rose-leaves, olive-oil, and turnip-juice; an eighth, a plaster and powder, in which some part of a young frog was a principal ingredient; a ninth, a mixture of copperas and vinegar; a tenth, an application of pure ox-gall; an eleventh, a mixture of Florence oil and red precipitate; whilst a twelfth was certain of the good effects of Homœopathy, which cured Charlotte Elizabeth. Besides these varied remedies, many men and women with infallible recipes, or certain modes of treatment, were recommended by themselves and others. Learned Italian professors, mysterious American women, erudite Germans, and obscure Irish quacks—all had cured cancers of twenty years’ standing, and all were pressing, or pressed forward, to operate on Lord Metcalfe.”