Coffee Enema by Howard Straus
Some years ago, my wife Sally and I were invited to spend a skiing weekend with some old friends of hers who owned a chalet in North Lake Tahoe. CA. Since it was a capacious residence, other friends has also been invited to stay the weekend by Howard Straus as well.
One of the other guest was a woman who was in the “strange” habit of doing daily coffee enemas. Since this is a habit generally shared only with other Gerson Persons, I was curious about her motivations and asked her about it at a convenient juncture. (As if any juncture could be really convenient or comfortable to ask a stranger, “ Why exactly do you take coffee enemas?”) Her answer did not exactly surprise me because of the rarity of the practice among the general population of the United States, and possibly most of the rest of the world. She attributed the Gerson’s book with saving her life though I never found out the ailment.
What did surprise me, however was the sequel to her story. She had for several years, been the road manager for the U Zulu Dance Company of South Africa, an incredibly athletic and talented group of Southern African dancers, drummers, musicians and actors. Those who have never experienced their primal, colorful and expressive dances should keep this troupe in mind if they ever get a chance to see them dance.
The group had brought with them their own medicine man from Africa and trusted him with their health much more than they trusted Western allopamic medicine. The herbs seemed to be keeping them fairly healthy since they performed highly athletic and exhausting routines, often nightly.
The road manager, however, related the surprising information that the troupes medicine man, in order to maintain the health of each individual and the troupe in general, required each of the dancers to take a coffee enema every night. “The room service bills for coffee,” our new friend told us , “ were astronomical!”
I could not find out, however, where the medicine man got the idea for coffee enemas. I would tend to doubt that he had heard of a German cancer physician, widely denounced in the United States, or, even if he had that he would have used part of that doctor’s cancer therapy as prophylactic care for his dancers. Whether it was his idea or a traditional remedy in Southern African tribes is a mystery that I would like to one day solve.
The history of the coffee enema as used by Dr Gerson is, in itself, quite interesting, The story begins in the MASH units of the German Imperial Army of World War 1. Towards the end of the lengthy conflict, the noose of the Allied blockade of Germany had cut off supplies of pain-killing narcotics used as post-operative analgesics by the doctors and nurses. This left the medical staff at the front with tens of thousands of casualties in agony and no way to relieve them.
Desperate for some means of alleviating the pain; the nurse tried anything. One of the “bizarre” solutions was to try enemas with the only sterile solution available: the coffee the surgeons had on hand to keep them awake for their 36 and 48 hour shifts. To the amazement and gratitude of the nurses, the soldiers reported great pain relief, to the point that the remedy was used widely instead of the unavailable drugs.
After the war, a physician who had witnessed the phenomenon did animal research at the University of Gottingenm and discovered the liver cleansing properties of the coffee enema, with its accompanying pain relief.
Years later, when Dr Gerson began treating cancer, he lost a few patients to hepatic (liver) coma, the toxic by products of healing were poisoning the liver. But how could he remove the toxins from the liver? It was then that he remembered the experience of the nurses in WW1 and began using the coffee enema to flush the toxins out of the liver. This proved to be the answer, and has remained an integral part of the Gerson Therapy ever since . The pain relief aspect remains and is a welcome feature to cancer patients who are often in major pain.
