Free Death Be Not Proud by John J. Gunther Page A

hot, noisy afternoon, and Johnny was sick with strain, just plain sick. So a new long chapter in his indomitable struggle began.

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    Those September days were grim at first. Johnny lay there pale and panting with misery. His blood count slipped lower and lower, and great bruises appeared on his arms and chest, caused by breakdown of the capillaries. We had been warned that the blood would go very low, and perhaps we were needlessly alarmed—it might well have come back of itself. But anyway we were worried sick. One doctor told us that the reason he had seemed so casual when Johnny entered the Gerson nursing home was his conviction that he couldn’t possibly outlast the week anyway. In particular what is known as the polymorphonuclear count of Johnny’s blood (I will not go into the technical details) was staggeringly low— down to 3 per cent, and the red cells showed a profound anemia. One specialist told us later that he has never known of a recovery with such a blood condition.
    Within a week, Johnny was feeling, not worse, but much better! The blood count rose steadily, the bruises were absorbed with extraordinary speed, the wound in the bulge healed, and, miracle of miracles, the bump on the skull was going down!
    Traeger had walked down the street with me to meet Gerson. He was deeply pessimistic. He said, “We’ll move Johnny to a hospital and try massive transfusions—nothing else can save him.” The two doctors retired into the kitchen, and came out after half an hour. Then Traeger looked Johnny over slowly and said, “Never mind about the transfusions. Let’s do it Gerson’s way for another twenty-four hours.”
    First, Gerson took Johnny off penicillin. This we thought to be a very grave risk, but, he insisted, penicillin could irritate a tumor. Second, he refused to permit any transfusions or other emergency measures whatsoever. What a terrible chance we thought he was taking! Third, he demanded that for some weeks at least Johnny should have rest, absolute rest, nothing but rest, rest, rest.
    The Gerson diet is saltless and fatless, and for a long time proteins are excluded or held to an extreme minimum. The theory behind this is simple enough. Give nature opportunity, and nature herself will heal. It is the silliest thing in the world to attempt to arrest cancer of the tongue, say, by cutting off the tongue. What the physician should strive for, if he gets a case in time, is to change the metabolism of the body so that the cancer (or another affliction) dies of itself. The whole theory is erected on the basis that the chemistry of the body can be so altered as to eliminate disease. Perhaps this may sound far-fetched. But that diet, any special diet, can markedly influence bodily behavior is, of course, well known. Consider inversely how a milligram or so of a poisonous substance, like potassium cyanide, can almost instantly kill a body. Ho w Gerson decided what foods helped to create new healthy cells, as the diseased cells sloughed off, is not altogether clear to me. At any rate the first principle is to make the diet potassium-rich and sodium-free. Gerson took the line that the body spends an absurdly disproportionate share of its energy getting rid of waste, and that therefore, when the body is ill, it will be much freer to combat illness and build healthy cells if the amount of waste is drastically cut down. Hence, as a patient enters upon the Gerson diet, not only does he subsist largely on specially prepared fruit juices and fresh vegetables that burn down to the minimum of ash, but he has enema after enema—in the beginning as many as four or five a day, till the system is totally washed out and cleansed.
    Gerson’s sanitarium, operated by his daughter and Mr. and Mrs. Seeley, was run with the utmost loving care; I cannot possibly pay tribute enough to Mrs. Seeley and to Miss Gerson for what they did for Johnny. Also I saw, month after month,’ a number of Gerson’s cases. One patient, it