On rare occasions, to the surprise and sometimes disbelief of doctors, well established cancer growths in a patient mysteriously disappear. Believing such cancers to be "incurable", sometimes a doctor will reverse his original diagnosis and say the patient never really did have cancer in the first place. However, it is now accepted that such remissions do occur--probably more often than generally believed.

   In his valuable book Victory Over Cancer Cyril Scott quotes surgeon Hastings Gilford stating in 1925: "Though cancer is so commonly regarded as inevitably fatal, many cases are recorded of its 'spontaneous' disappearance--and nothing can be more certain than that these recorded cases are very few in comparison with those which are unrecorded". Hastings Gilford then listed the names of many eminent men who have testified to spontaneous cures of cancer. Among the names were Paget, Brodie, Muller, Sauerbrach, Gleitmann, Rohdenburg and Lomer. Lomer had recorded 213 cases and Rohdenburg 302. A Dr E. F. Bashford provided a list of 13 other eminent doctors, all who had observed spontaneous healing of tumors.

   Scott then quotes Dr Georgina Luden (USA) who said: "The importance of this fact can hardly be over-estimated. It is a proof positive that the human body can wage a winning fight against malignancy under the most untoward conditions . . .

   "Since outside aid has proved useless, the victory must have been won by inside means. Changes in the body chemistry, resulting from increased or renewed activity of organs by which the chemical condition in the body is regulated, seem to be the only available explanation, since the chemical composition of the blood must influence the body cells."

   Now remember--these spontaneous cures happened by "accident", not by design, so that a patient today who knows exactly what to do must have an infinitely better chance of achieving success, ie. complete spontaneous remission.

   Sir Alexander Haddow, a medical leader in cancer research, always said the key lay in finding out why spontaneous remission occurred. He was right.