About Max Gerson

Charlotte tells about her father Dr. Max Gerson, M.D., a medical genius who developed the Gerson Therapy, a natural therapy for cancer.

My father had a genetic propensity for having severe migraines. When he was a young doctor, just out of medical school, he was very ill with migraines, which he usually had three days a week. It caused him such terrible eye sensitivity and nausea that he had to lie in a dark room and was absolutely unable to function.

The severity was such that he was actually despairing of living. He consulted professors and teachers who had been considered authorities in this area to try to get relief. They all told him, “Well, you know from the books that there is nothing that we can do about migraines. When you are 45 or 55, you’ll feel better.”

At this point he felt that he would have to help himself. He started to study and read about nutrition, but there was relatively little available. He realized that the first food babies take and digest is milk, so he thought if he was to take nothing but milk, this might help him because surely his body would be able to digest milk. He tried that for a little while but was just as sick as ever. Milk didn’t help him. After thinking about this again, he realized that in nature there aren’t any adult animals that live on milk. Milk is a food designed for babies who have a fast growth and a completely different type of metabolism. He saw that adult monkeys in the jungle ate fruit, nuts, and vegetables, but did not drink milk. He thought that fruit might be a good food to start with, so he began a diet of apples. He found that within a very short time he was free of migraines.

He then used apples as a basis for adding other foods. He lived on apples in all forms and then on other fruit. The minute he added something to this basic apple diet that disturbed his system he would have severe migraines again. He lived on this same diet all his life.

He soon began his practice as a doctor. His advertising shingle read “Dr. Max Gerson, Internal and Nerve Diseases.” He had been a student under Professor Ottfried Foerster, the top neurosurgeon in Germany at the time. This was his specialty.

One day a man came to him complaining of migraines and Dr. Gerson told him very simply, “The books say there is nothing one can do.” But he did tell the man what he did. “These foods I eat, those foods I don’t eat. Why don’t you try it?”

The man did and shortly reported that when he adhered to the prescribed diet he was fine. If he ate the forbidden foods, he did not do well and the migraines recurred.

Another day a patient came in with migraines, and my father gave him the same migraine treatment that he was using on himself. The patient reported a few weeks later and said, “You know what, doctor? My migraines cleared up, but on top of that I cleared up my Lupus.”

Lupus is skin tuberculosis. So my father said, “No, that’s impossible. Lupus is incurable. It must have been something else.”

“No,” said the patient. “It’s not. I have these various lab reports and slides to prove this was Lupus.”

Father said, “Let me see” He observed that these were incontestable lab reports and the man had had Lupus. He said, “Well, let me see the lesions.” As he looked at a Lupus lesion healing, he realized no one had ever seen such a sight before. He was flabbergasted. His next thought was that there might be a connection between this migraine and the Lupus. He thought the man might have responded because of an allergy which cleared up.

Then he asked, “Do you know other people who have Lupus? It is a relatively rare disease. I would like to find out if other infected people who have no migraines respond to this diet.” You see, my father still thought like a specialist. A specific treatment for a specific disease.

The patient replied, “Oh, yes. In the hospital where I spent many months with Lupus there were a lot of patients on my floor with the disease. I will send some to you.”

My father said, “I will treat them free. I would like experiment and see what happens.”

To make a long story short, the other patients without migraines also recovered from Lupus.

Now, what do you think happened next?

Father was sued by the medical community. His shingle said internal and nerve diseases, but this was skin disease. He had no right to treat Lupus. He live Germany where the judges quite the same as some found in the courts today.

The judge asked the doctors, “Do you cure Lupus?”

The doctors answered, “Well, no, it’s incurable.”

So the judge retorted, “Then why don’t you let this doctor do it?” Afterwards he dismissed the case.

From working with Lupus patients Dr. Gerson figured the body was developing the ability to kill off a very specific tuberculosis germ and restore itself to health with the right nutrition. Then he went on to other forms of tuberculosis, and lo and behold, they also responded.

In 1928, the wife of Albert Schweitzer who had contracted lung tuberculosis and was in a very serious condition came, to my father. She recovered completely using his migraine diet. At this point, my father no longer called it a migraine diet. He also removed his shingle and became a general practitioner.

It did not take very long before he realized that patients who were recovering from all forms of tuberculosis, meningitis, etc., often had other complications including arteriosclerosis, arthritis, or other diseases. These all cleared up with the same treatment, too. He recognized that in this approach the basis of the treatment was to see the body as a total organism. When you restore its ability to heal, it will heal itself. And it will not heal selectively. It will not heal skin tuberculosis without healing migraines. It will not heal arteriosclerosis without healing heart trouble. When the body begins the healing process, it will heal whatever is ailing it.

(Part of Charlotte’s speech, presented before The Cancer Control Society Annual Cancer Convention, Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, California, 1974) – used by permission.

Charlotte Gerson is Dr. Max Gerson’s daughter and clinic associate. She was born in Germany and had her early schooling there. In 1933, she moved to the United States. She was always interested in her father’s work and helped as a practical nurse in his nursing homes in New York. She was raised on his strict ideas of nutrition.