Autolyzing Tumors
by Dr. Herbert M.
Shelton
The word autoloysis is
derived from Greek and means, literally, self-loosing. It is used in
physiology to designate the process of digestion or disintegration of
tissue by ferments (enzymes) generated in the cells themselves. It is
a process of self-digestion.
Enzymes exist
throughout nature. All organic processes are accomplished by their
aid. Seeds sprout by the aid of enzymes. Every tissue has its own
enzyme.
It is now common
knowledge that the processes of digestion that take place in the
mouth, stomach and intestine are made possible by active agents or
ferments known as enzymes. For instance, starch is converted into
sugar by digestive enzymes that are said to be starch splitting, or
amylolytic; proteins are converted into amino acids by
protein-splitting, or proteolytic, enzymes. The digestive enzymes
digest only “dead” substances and therefore, do not digest the
stomach and intestine.
Acids and alkalies do
not accomplish the work of digestion. They only supply favorable
mediums for the work of the digestive enzymes. The enzyme, ptyalin,
of the saliva acts only in an alkaline medium and is destroyed by a
mild acid; the enzyme, pepsin, of the gastric juice works only in an
acid medium and is prevented from working by an alkali.
It should be equally
well known that the chemical changes that take place in the cells and
tissues are instigated by enzymes, of which there are a number in
every living thing. Simple sugar (monosaccharide) is absorbed from
the intestine and carried to the liver where it is converted, by an
enzyme, into glycogen (animal starch) and stored until used. When the
body needs sugar, the glycogen is reconverted into sugar, again by
enzymic action. It is now general knowledge that insulin secreted by
the pancreas is necessary to the metabolization (oxidation) of sugar
and that when the pancreas fails to turn out sufficient insulin,
unoxidized sugar is excreted in the urine.
A number of autolytic
enzymes are known and are included under the general terms, oxidases
and peroxidases. Physiologists know that proteolytic
(protein-digesting) enzymes are formed within many, if not in all,
living tissues.
These various
intracellular enzymes play a conspicious part in the metabolism of
food substances; that is, in the normal or regular function of
nutrition or metabolism. A few familiar examples of autolysis will
prepare the reader for what is to follow about tumors.
When a bone is broken,
a bone-ring support is built around the fractured section, extending
each way from the point of fracture. After the bone is reunited and
knitting or healing is completed, and the circulatory channels are
reestablished, the bone-ring support is softened and absorbed, except
about a quarter of an inch about the point of fracture.
If planaria, or flat
worms, are cut into small pieces and placed where they can absorb
nourishment, each piece will grow into a small worm. If they cannot
get nourishment, they cannot grow. Each piece, therefore, completely
rearranges its materials and becomes a perfect, but very minute worm.
The piece that contains the pharynx, finding this too large for its
diminished size, will dissolve it and make a new one that fits its
new size.
The manner in which an
abscess “points” on the surface of the body and drains its septic
contents on the outside is well known to everyone of my readers. What
is not generally known, is that this “pointing” on the surface is
possible only because the flesh between the abscess and the surface
is digested by enzymes; that is, it is autolyzed and removed.
Certain animals have
specialized stores in which they store up a reserve of nutrition to
feed them during periods of scarcity or during hibernation. These
physiological storehouses are analogous to the “water tank”
possessed by the camel. Examples of this are the big-tailed sheep of
Persia, the gila monster of our Western plains and the Russian bear.
Other animals, including man, possess only the generalized reserves
found in the bone marrow, liver, blood, fatty tissue, etc., and the
private reserve possessed by each cell in the body.
Both types of animals
may draw upon these reserves for supplies with which to nourish their
vital tissues, if raw materials from without are not to be had; or,
if, due to sickness, they cannot be digested.
These tissues (fatty
tissue, bone marrow, etc.) and food substances (glycogen) are not fit
to enter the bloodstream before they are acted upon by enzymes.
Indeed human fat, or human muscle is no more fitted to enter the
circulation without first being digested, than is fat or muscle from
the cow or sheep.
Glycogen (animal
starch), stored in the liver, must be converted into a simple sugar
before it can be released into the bloodstream. This conversion is
accomplished by enzymic action.
Many more examples of
autolysis could be given, but enough have been presented to convince
the reader that it is a common fact of everyday life. It remains now
to show that the body possesses control over this process, just as it
does over all the other processes of life: that the process is not a
blind, undirected bull-in-a-china-shop affair.
A remarkable example of
this control is afforded by the piece of diced plenarium that
contains the pharynx. Here is manifest the ability to tear down a
part and shift its constituent materials. The same thing is seen in
the softening and absorption of the bone-ring support around a point
of fracture. Only part of the bone-ring is digested, the remainder is
allowed to remain to reinforce the weakened structure.
The phenomena of
fasting supply many examples of the control the body exercises over
its autolytic processes. For instance, tissues are lost in the
inverse order of their usefulness—fat and morbid growths first, and
then the other issues. In all animals, from worms to man, the various
organs and tissues differ very greatly in their rates of loss while
fasting. Usually the liver loses more in weight relative to the rest
of the body than the other organs, especially in the earlier stages,
due to the loss of glycogen and fat. The lungs lose almost nothing
and the brain and nervous system still less.
The vital tissues are
fed on the stored reserves and the less vital tissues, so that
abstinence from food can produce damage only after the body’s
reserves have been exhausted.
The body possesses the
ability to shift its chemicals and fasting furnishes many remarkable
instances of this. The digestion and reorganization of parts seen in
worms and other animals, when deprived of food, the digestion and
redistribution of reserves and surpluses and nonvital tissues, as
seen in all animals, when forced to go without food, constitute, for
the writer, some of the most marvelous phenomena in the whole realm
of biology.
The body is not only
able to build tissue; it can also destroy tissue. It can not only
distribute its nutritive supplies; it can also redistribute them.
Autoloysis makes redistribution possible.
I propose now to show
the reader that this process of autolysis can be put to great
practical use and be made to serve us in getting rid of tumors and
other growths in the body. This fact is not exactly new for it has
been known for a long time. Over a hundred years ago, Sylvester
Graham wrote that when more food is used by the body than is daily
supplied, “it is a general law of the vital economy” that “the
decomposing absorbents (the old term for the process of autolysis)
always first lay hold of and remove those substances which are of
least use to the economy; and hence, all morbid accumulations, such
as wens, tumors, abscesses, etc., are rapidly diminished and often
wholly removed under severe and protracted abstinence and fasting.”
To fully understand
this, it is necessary for the reader to know that tumors are made up
of flesh and blood and bone. There are many names for the different
kinds of tumors, but the names of all indicate the kind of tissue of
which the tumor is composed. For instance, an osteoma is made up of
bone tissue; a myoma is composed of muscular tissue; a neuroma is
constituted of nerve tissue; a lipoma consists of fatty tissue; etc.
Tumors being composed
of tissues, the same kinds of tissues as the other structures of the
body, are susceptible of autolytic distintegration, the same as
normal tissue, and do, as a matter of experience, undergo dissolution
and absorption under a variety of circumstances but especially during
a fast. The reader who can understand how fasting reduces the amount
of fat on the body and how it reduces the size of the muscles, can
also understand how it will reduce the size of a tumor, or cause it
to disappear altogether. He needs, then only to realize that the
process of distintegrating (autolyzing) the tumor takes place much
more rapidly than it does in the normal tissues.
In his Notes on Tumors,
a work for students of pathology, Francis Carter Wood says: “In a
very small proportion of human malignant tumors spontaneous
disappearance for longer or shorter periods has been noted. The
greatest number of such disappearances has followed incomplete
surgical removal of the tumor; they have occurred next in order of
frequency during some acute febrile process, and less frequently in
connection with some profound alteration of the metabolic processes
of the organism, such as extreme cachexia, artificial menopause or
the puerperium.
No more profound change
in metabolism is possible than that produced by fasting and the
change is of a character best suited to bring about the autolysis of
a tumor, malignant or otherwise.
The conditions Dr. Wood
mentions as causing spontaneous disappearance of tumors are, for the
most part, “accidents” and are not within the range of voluntary
control. Fasting, on the other hand, may be instituted and carried on
under control and at any time desired. It is the rule that operations
are followed by increased growth in the tumor. Spontaneous
disappearance following incomplete removal is rare. The same may be
said for extreme cachexia and artificial menopause. In fevers, we
have rapid autolysis in many tissues of the body and much curative
work going on, but we cannot develop a fever at will. Pregnancy and
childbirth occasion many profound changes in the body, but they are
certainly not to be recommended to sick women as cures for their
tumors. Even if this were desirable, it would be a hit-or-miss
remedy. The effects of fasting are certain. There is nothing
hit-or-miss about the process. It works always in the same general
direction.
Fever is a curative
process and does help to remove the cause of the tumor. None of Dr.
Wood’s other causes of spontaneous disappearance assist in removing
the cause of tumors. Fasting does assist greatly in the removal of
such cause.
During the fast, the
accumulations of superfluous tissues are overhauled and analyzed; the
available component parts are turned over to the department of
nutrition to be utilized in nourishing the essential tissues; the
refuse is thoroughly and permanently removed.
I could quote numerous
men of wide experience with fasting to corroborate what I am going to
say about autolyzing tumors, but I do not desire to weary any reader
with quotations. I will content myself with one quotation. Mr.
Macfadden says: “My experience of fasting has shown me beyond all
possible doubt that a foreign growth of any kind can be absorbed into
the circulation by simply compelling the body to use every
unnecessary element contained within it for food. When a foreign
growth has become hardened, sometimes one long fast will not
accomplish the result, but where they are soft, the fast will usually
cause them to be absorbed.”
Due to a variety of
circumstances, some known, others unknown, the rate of absorption of
tumors in fasting individuals varies. Let me cite two extreme cases
to show the wide range of variation in this process.
A woman, under forty,
had a uterine fibroid about the size of an average grapefruit. It was
completely absorbed in twenty-eight days of total abstinence from all
food but water. This was an unusually rapid rate of absorption.
Another case is that of
a similar tumor in a woman of about the same age. In this case, the
growth was about the size of a goose egg. One fast of twenty-one days
reduced the tumor to the size of an English walnut. The fast was
broken due to the return of hunger. Another fast a few weeks
subsequent, of seventeen days, was required to complete the
absorption of the tumor. This was an unusually slow rate of tumor
absorption.
Tumor-like lumps in
female breasts ranging from the size of a pea to that of a goose egg
will disappear in from three days to as many weeks. Here is a
remarkable case of this kind that will prove both interesting and
instructive to the reader.
A young lady, age 21,
had a large hard lump—a little smaller than a billiard ball—in
her right breast. For four months it had caused her considerable
pain. Finally she consulted a physician who diagnosed the condition,
cancer, and urged immediate removal. She went to another, end another
and still another physician, and each made the same diagnosis (an
unusual thing) and each urged immediate removal.
Instead of resorting to
surgery, the young lady resorted to lasting and in exactly three days
without food, the “cancer” and all its attendant pain were gone.
There has been no
recurrence in thirteen years and I feel that we are justified in
considering the condition “cured.” Hundreds of such occurrences
under fasting have convinced us that many “tumors” and “cancers”
are removed by surgeons that are not tumors or cancers. They cause us
to be very skeptical of the statistics issued to show that early
operation prevents or “cures” cancer.
The removal of tumors
by autolysis has several advantages over their surgical removal.
Surgery is always dangerous; autolysis is a physiological process and
carries no danger. Surgery always lowers vitality and thus adds to
the metabolic perversion that is back of the tumor. Fasting, by which
autolysis of tumors is accelerated, normalizes nutrition and permits
the elimination of accumulated toxins, thus helping to remove the
cause of the tumor. After surgical removal, tumors tend to recur.
After their autolytic removal, there is little tendency to
recurrence. Tumors often recur in malignant form after their
operative removal. The tendency to malignancy is removed by fasting,
in Europe and America literally thousands of tumors have been
autolyzed during the past fifty years, and the effectiveness of the
method is beyond doubt. The present writer can give no definite
information about bone tumors and nerve tumors; but, since these are
subject to the same laws of nutrition as all other tumors, he is
disposed to think they may be autolyzed as effectually as other
tumors. These things are certain—the process has its limitations
and tumors that have been allowed to grow to enormous sizes will only
be reduced in size; while, not all cysts will be thus absorbed. It is
advisable, therefore, to undergo the needed fast or fasts while the
tumor or cyst is comparatively small.
One other limitation
must be noted; namely, tumors that are so situated that they dam up
the lymph stream will continue to grow (feeding upon the accumulated
excess of lymph behind them) despite fasting.
