In Tijuana, capital of Mexico's Baja California state, Mildred Nelson, a registered nurse and director of the Bio-Med Center on Avenida General Ferreira, had read the Canadian edition of this book given her by Kim Lalancette, a young Québecer who, like Bernard Baril and other young AIDS victims, had recovered from his affliction after treatment by Naessens's remedies. Leafing through its pages, Nelson, a veteran battler for alternative cancer cures, grew increasingly excited.

As far back as the 1930s, the Tijuana clinic director had become chief assistant to Harry Hoxsey, a Texan oil millionaire who had developed a formula made up of seven herbs, plus potassium iodide, the earliest version of which his great-grandfather had first concocted in the mid-nineteenth century after watching a cancerous horse seek out special meadow plants, the ingestion of which led to recovery.

Used on hundreds of cancer victims, the Hoxsey formula's results were so promising that the American Medical Association (AMA) made its inventor a stingy offer to buy all rights to it. The offer, made in 1924, was flatly turned down by Hoxsey, who, as a result, became the object of a relentless AMA persecution, which, lasting for thirty-five years, was to lead to his repeatedly being charged with practicing medicine without a license and to his being sentenced to several jail terms.

Only Hoxsey's personal fortune, gained through his oil and gas ventures, allowed him to meet the legal costs of his extensive court battles and to continue to treat suffering cancer victims. In 1949, he carried his fight into enemy territory by suing the AMA.

The cake of his victory against America's most powerful medical authority was frosted when both the judge presiding at the trial and the AMA's own lawyer declared that there was no doubt that Hoxsey's formula really did cure many cases of cancer.   Yet, in spite of all this, and as incredible as it may seem, the AMA, with unbounded viciousness, kept hounding Hoxsey as a quack. Exhausted by his struggles, Hoxsey finally closed his clinics and moved his operation to Tijuana, where, since his death, Mildred Nelson has presided over it.

A prize-winning film, "Hoxsey," available on videocassette, was made by Ken Ausabel and can be obtained by writing to him at Box 1644, Santa Fe, New Mexico  87504.

For another enthralling historical account of a Native American herbal remedy successfully used on cancer victims, and its suppression by the U.S. and Canadian medical authorities, see ESSIAC: An Herbal Treatment of Cancer (A Special Report), by Tom Valentine, Associated Partners West, P.O. Box 3048, Iowa City, Iowa 52244. Unpublished is the testing of still one more herbal concoction obtained from the head-shrinking Jivaro Indians by the late Pino Turolla, an Italian explorer, and author of Beyond the Andes (New York: Harper & Row, 1980). Tested on cancer-infested mice in a Seattle, Washington, laboratory for over two years, it proved ninety-eight percent effective in stopping their cancers.