Looking back on Saturn in Virgo, The future of health care, The secret history of cures and The amazing Harry Hoxsey

They’re curing cancer down the street.

Saturn is at least temporarily out of Virgo for now. It will return for one, brief, curtain call in April of 2010 and that’s where it will stay until June, when it finally moves into Libra until it transitions into Scorpio in October of 2012. It’s time to take a look back and just slightly ahead.

When Saturn was in Virgo, the healthcare debate moved front and center and while people were busy arguing about who gets and doesn’t get it, who has to pay, who doesn’t have to pay, if it will be enforced or if there will be a public option, no one ever really brought up the quality of healthcare into the debate at all. It was assumed that the present system afforded to those who could pay was the one that provided the best medical solutions available. But is it really? Is allopathic or western medicine the panacea for all our individual and social ills? Is wellness vs illness ever part of the discussion at all? It wasn’t and when congress reconvenes after the first of the year to discuss the Obama healthcare plan, I doubt it will get addressed then as well. But to understand the nature of allopathic medicine and what it entails, which is a high preponderance and emphasis placed on surgery, technological interface and prescription drugs, one must also have a greater understanding of homeopathic and naturopathic methodologies. I wasn’t as keenly aware of this until I watched an amazing documentary called, “Hoxsey.”

“Hoxsey” is the life story of Harry Hoxsey, the founder of an alternative cancer healing method handed down to him by his father, on his father’s deathbed. Hoxsey’s dad had been a vet and watched one of his cancer stricken horses begin to tug and gnaw at plants growing in the field. The horse had not previously eaten these select plants prior to the cancer. But the elder Hoxsey watched in amazement as the horse recovered from cancer. He then explored the properties of the plants themselves and came up with two cures. One was an external paste made up of blood root and cascara. It served as an escrotic and burned the cancers away from the skin, leaving the non-cancerous skin alone. The second was a serum. also based on roots and herbs. Iodine also played a role in Hoxsey’s serum as well. In addition to these two things, he also had his patients get off of wheat, sugar, fried foods, alcohol and vinegars, while scaling back salt. At his clinics, a feeling positivity and well being was encouraged from the moment that people walked through the front door. According to Hoxsey, he had a 80% cure rate. Many of his patients that came to him were deemed terminal.

While Hoxsey succeeded, opening 17 clinics across the country, his detractors grew in ranks and rancor. Hoxsey’s most active nemesis was Morris Fishbein, head of the AMA and a man that would personally ruin the wonderful work of Royal Raymond Rife.

It must be noted that during the early part of the 20th centruy, The AMA was simply a small group of doctors who were trying to create their own version of a trade union with the power to lobby. Their great fortune and perhaps not ours, was the ascent of the industrial revolution as new mechanical devices like iron lungs and later x-ray machines would capture the imagination and pocketbooks of industrialists like Getty, Carnegie, Rockefeller and Morgan. These giants of manufacturing and commerce saw the medical field as a way for them to essentially move more product and thus they put their full weight and wallets behind Fishbein and The AMA. Its ironic to note however, that John D. Rockefeller never visited an allopathic doctor. His father also made the first of the family fortunes selling “snake oils” at county fairs. But nonetheless, JDR was willing to live by two standards instead of one.

Fishbein went after Hoxsey hard, but Hoxsey was not one to lie down and roll over. He had his own camp of support, including a radio evangelist who promoted his cures to millions around the country. The AMA might have been obstinate but they weren’t dumb. They knew that Hoxsey had something and they wanted to buy his serum from him. When Hoxsey asked that a provision be included that no matter who was sick or what they could or could not afford to pay, they would get the treatment. The AMA would have nothing of the sort, since they simply wanted to bury the formula. Hoxsey refused to sign and the simmering feud, erupted into a full scale battle.

Fishbein went after Hoxsey at every turn, meanwhile, Hoxsey and his methods were winning over people in the right places. A city attorney from Dallas, one who had been going hard after Hoxsey had a brother develop cancer. His brother went to see Hoxsey and was cured. The attorney went on to become a judge and one of Hoxsey’s biggest, local supporters. Fishbein went too far. He slandered Hoxsey in an article. Hoxsey sued and had his day in court. Day after day, witness after witness they came to attest to the his method and how it saved their lives. While people were lining up to support him, his defense did a little fact finding on Fishbein and it turned out that Fishbein hadn’t even passed elementary anatomy and never even treated one patient. He was forced to resign in disgrace. Hoxsey had won, but the battle wasn’t over.

Once the AMA lost, it was the FDA’s turn to have a go at Hoxsey. They shut down his clinics in the various states based on interstate trucking laws. They would do something very similar to Wilhelm Reich in a few short years. Hoxsey could not fight each case individually and only kept the Dallas clinic open. When he was old and ready to step aside, he passed the Hoxsey baton onto Mildred Nelson, a longtime nurse in his Dallas clinic. Nelson relocated to Tijuana and renamed the clinic “Bio-Med” where it still stands today.

The film also goes onto explore how the FDA in conjunction with The AMA have strong armed alternative medicine and healing with increasing powers and draconian oversight throughout the 20th century. While the medical reform bill is in a temporary state of abeyance, I would urge as many people as possible to watch this film and ask whether or not allopathic medicine is the right approach to the future of health care and if we can hand our health and well being over to the same agencies that have historically determined this policy, often resorting to everything from intentional and misleading disinformation, to mob-like, strong-arm-tactics. I shudder to think what the alternatives for alternative medicine will be in a top down, highly controlled system of standardized healthcare.

Watching the Hoxsey doc online is extremely difficult. There are versions out there, mostly low rez. Google even disabled a version on it’s video service. You can however find a few copies at Amazon for sale. I highly recommend that you purchase this very important document of not only one of America’s most fascinating self-made-men, but also to gain a further understanding of what’s at stake with our health and how some of our most immediate and important remedies may be affordable, less invasive and promote wellness than merely approximate a cure.

Hoxsey; The Quack Who Cured Cancer
CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE A COPY OF HOXSEY.