Max Gerson

Max Gerson Oct. 18, 1881-Mar. 8, 1959 was the developer of The Gerson Therapy, an alternative therapy

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Dr. Max Gerson, 1881-1959

for cancer and most chronic, degenerative diseases. The Therapy is based on hyperalimentation, or flooding the body with bioavailable micronutrients from salt-free, fat-free, organic, vegetarian food, including 13 fresh-pressed fruit and vegetable juices daily. A critical element of the Therapy is support for the liver in its task of removing toxins from the blood stream through the use of several coffee enemas daily. The coffee enemas stimulate bile production in the liver, flushing accumulated toxins into the upper intestinal tract for elimination. In addition, some vitamin, mineral and enzyme supplementation is applied, in general only substances that would be normally found in a healthy body. The diet, supplementation and detoxification are intended to rectify conditions that Gerson considered caused chronic diseases as diverse as migraine, all forms of tuberculosis, fibromyalgia, most forms of advanced cancer, arthritis, both osteo- and rheumatoid, and diabetes. These causal conditions he identified as deficiency and toxicity; deficiency brought about by the paucity of nutrients in our heavily processed, artificially fertilized foods, and toxicity from the thousands of chemicals and pollutants in our food, air, water and soil. Gerson considered most pharmaceutical products to be liver-toxic in the long run, and avoided them, as well as "recreational" and over-the-counter drugs, including tobacco and alcohol.

Max Gerson was born in Wongrowitz, in then-German Poland, to a prosperous vegetable oil factor. His choice of career in medicine was highly influenced by the general anti-Semitism of German science at the time.

"Migraine Diet" and Tuberculosis

During Gerson's residency as a young physician, the migraine headaches he had experienced since youth became intolerably more intense, leading him to research the problem for his own sanity. After much study and some false starts, he determined that his daily dietary intake had a major influence on the malady. When he regulated his diet to eliminate the causative elements from his diet, he was able to completely avoid migraine headaches.

Later, when he entered private practice in Bielefeld, Germany, Gerson began prescribing his "migraine diet" to his own patients, with great success. However, one of his migraine patients reported that his lupus vulgaris, or skin tuberculosis, had also cleared on Gerson's "migraine diet." Gerson was able to replicate his success with other lupus sufferers, and noted that other forms of tuberculosis were also yielding to his dietary therapy.

When word of Gerson's success with lupus came to the ear of Dr. Ferdinand Sauerbruch, an ambitious and prominent pulmonary surgeon, Sauerbruch invited Gerson to conduct a clinical trial of his therapy at Sauerbruch's Munich tuberculosis ward. 450 end-stage tuberculosis patients were chosen, and Gerson's dietary regime was applied. In the first clinical trial of his Therapy for a disease then considered "incurable," 446 patients completely recovered.

With Sauerbruch's backing, Gerson and his dietary therapy quickly became household words in most of Europe, and his therapy was adopted by many as standard treatment for immune system disorders of all kinds, as well as tuberculosis. Many Swiss mountain tuberculosis sanatoria were put out of business by Gerson's discoveries, and are now ski resorts, including Davos, Gstaad and others.

During his career in Europe, Dr. Gerson supervised tuberculosis sanatoria in Germany (Bielefeld, Kassel, Berlin, Munich), Austria (Vienna) and France (Ville d'Avray, near Paris). He published dozens of papers in the leading medical journals of Europe, and lectured widely to university and medical society audiences all over western Europe. He was preparing to publish a definitive and incontrovertible study documenting the cure of tuberculosis by dietary therapy when the rising tide of Hitler's Nazism washed all such considerations away.

Flight from Nazi Germany

As a German Jew, Gerson was forced to flee with his family from his native Germany in 1933, first to Vienna, later to Ville d'Avray (near Paris) and London, before he settled in the United States in 1936. In Europe, he had published dozens of articles in the medical literature, but he was almost completely shut out of publishing in his adopted homeland. Though the American Medical Association (AMA) maintains that Gerson never published, hundreds of other articles published by dozens of medical scientists confirmed the efficacy of the Gerson Therapy for many forms of tuberculosis.

Once in the United States, Dr. Gerson began focusing on the problem of cancer. He had experienced some startlingly good results with stomach cancer in Bielefeld, and the idea that he had something to contribute to the field haunted him. He began accepting cancer patients, and treating them with his dietary therapy. After a few critical adjustments to the therapy, he started to achieve consistently good results, with patients declared "terminal" surviving for many years. Though his long-term success rate hovered around 30%, it must be remembered that almost all of Gerson's patients had been classified as "terminal" by other physicians before they saw Gerson.

Gerson's success with cancer did not escape notice by his colleagues, and he was heavily attacked by proponents of expensive allopathic surgical, chemical and radiological methods. Despite the attacks by his opponents, desperate patients continued to seek out his practice, many surviving to this writing, over 45 years after Gerson's death. His success were also noted by Sen. Claude Pepper (D-FL), who summoned Gerson to testify before a Congressional Subcommittee on his cancer therapy.

Congressional Testimony

On July 1-3, 1946, Gerson testified before the Pepper-Neely Congressional Committee hearings on appropriating $100 million to fund a cancer research center. Here Gerson became the first, and only, person ever to present five healed "terminal" cancer patients to the the US Congress. Almost no media attention ensued, despite his unprecedented demonstration of a possible cure for cancer. The appropriations bill died in the Senate, under heavy lobbying pressure from the medical industry.

Gerson died on March 8, 1959, at his home in New York City.

Dr. Gerson was called by his lifelong friend and patient, Nobel Laureate Dr. Albert Schweitzer, "A medical genius who walked among us." Schweitzer (diabetes), his wife Helene (lung TB), and his daughter Rhena were all healed patients of Dr. Gerson's.

On May 14, 2005, Dr. Max Gerson was inducted, along with seven other major contributors to natural medicine, into the Hall of Fame of the International Society of Orthomolecular Medicine, the first such honor ever bestowed on him.

Today, many of the organizations that still vilify Gerson have begun to discover the power of nutrition to stimulate and restore immune system function. Gerson's ground-breaking book, A Cancer Therapy: Results of 50 Cases, first published in 1958, has sold over 250,000 copies in 5 languages around the world. Though he died in 1959, many of his "terminal" cancer patients were still alive in 2005, over 45 years later.

References:

• A Cancer Therapy: Results of 50 Cases, Max Gerson, MD, The Gerson Institute, San Diego, CA, 1990.
• The Gerson Therapy, Charlotte Gerson, Kensington Publishing, NYC, 2001.
• Dr. Max Gerson: Healing the Hopeless, Howard Straus, Quarry Books, Kingston, ONT, 2001.
• Censured for Curing Cancer: the American Experience of Dr. Max Gerson, S. J. Haught, Station Hill Press, NY, 1991.
• History of the Gerson Therapy, Patricia Spain Ward, Ph.D., under contract to the Office of Technology Assessment.