"Cross the bridge and turn left," a husband might mumble as his critically ill wife sat silent in the passenger seat.

"Cross the bridge and turn left," a mother with a listless pain-ridden daughter might say to her son at the controls.

The traveler crossing the bridge, turning left and ascending the incline to Dominion Street would have no difficulty identifying the clinic, not only because since, soon after opening, its red brick facade was known across the province to cancer victims who had never been to Bracebridge, but because it was the beginning and the end of the corridors of automobiles consuming every inch of the street, the clinic doorway being distinguishable from others on the street hidden as it was behind the crowd of arrivals standing shoulder to shoulder, eagerly awaiting entrance.

The rich and the not so rich, the poor and the indigent on that sidewalk all shared one common currency, hope. The black button eyes of a fox fur draped over the shoulders of an elegant pilgrim from Toronto might stare unseeing, unfeeling at the kerchief of a miner's wife from Coppercliff.

Scented water on the hands of a socialite from Rosedale might meet stiff resistance from the musty parka of a lineman from the CNR in Capreol.

A pilgrimage is a prayer in itself. Tears have no denomination. They are free, classless. The dialectic of pain is no respecter of nationality, borders, religious denomination, philosophy. Sable, mink, muskrat cannot cover pain any better than wool or cotton.

It cares not for age.

But one thing would be absolutely inarguable by the time Rene Caisse's ambition was fulfilled: the Chinese and the Italian might both lay claim to the invention of pasta; the spices of India might come from any number of impossible-to-visit mountain bound countries of the East; salt may or may not have been the cause of the rise and fall of Timbuktu; Ethiopia and Oman might both claim to be the home of the Queen of Sheba, but the cure for the world's greatest scourge came to the world not through a banking tower in New York, a Royal enclosure in England, an academy in Paris. The cure for cancer came from a humble Indian in the northern part of a province in Canada and would be proven before the eyes of the world in the town that was Caisse's home, Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada. No one who came to her in the throes of suffering would ever have to qualify for treatment by knowing anything about geography or philosophy or religion or royalty of kingdoms and empires fallen into dust. And as long as she had life in her, no single individual, no government ministry, no corporation would ever take that away from them. The door of her clinic on Dominion Street, just uphill and to the left of the bridge, would prove that hope is universal.

The magic and mystery of nursing as exemplified by Rene Caisse in the Dominion Street clinic was captured by an observer, Dr. Leo Roy, who would work with Caisse and Essiac and would write his own manual on cancer. It can be assumed that he took inspiration for his writings from watching her in action with cancer sufferers. He produced for the cancer sufferer the equivalent of modern day sound bites that offer perspective and hope. In them we hear the collected wisdom of the centuries of medical practitioners who, in every culture, have had to find meaning in the varieties of suffering that strike the onlooker and the victims as so meaningless. They are included here in their original simplicity, a veritable catalogue of common sense. As we hear them, we can imagine Rene Caisse moving from room to room administering to her patients.

The patient who wanted to understand the process of healing was the easiest to treat.

"Attitude is the first and most important step towards curing."[1]

Those angry at God for their condition were the most difficult. The pilgrims sighing from pain-ridden bodies in Dominion Street shared the grim view of the future being weighed by millions in the Depression era dust bowl of the United States. Wall Street had failed. The capitalists who had made it happen and who had not yet seen fit to set world commerce upright and lend mankind a new lease on living, the children of Marx and Engels who, between the wars were ensuring that the suffering of Europe after the Great War would never end, the exploiters who bankrupted workers, impoverished farmers, reclaiming property and cementing monopolies across the world had no power over the hopeful huddled before the door on Dominion Street. The oppressors of mankind worldwide could not reduce in even the slightest way those people at the door because they had already all been made little by suffering.

"Cancer patients erect a false self to hide their malignant thoughts and feelings."[2]

From the very first day of operations, a trend developed that was noticeable to Rene immediately but would also be testified to emphatically by visiting doctors and specialists.

"All the patients," Rene noted, "would seem to throw off all their depressions, fears, distress, burdens and develop a new optimistic outlook on life. As pain decreased and disappeared they would become happy and talkative. My waiting room was the brightest spot in the clinic."[3]

Bitterness in life, about life, toward life, left little room for hope. Bitterness faded quickly on Dominion Street.

"Patients were happy to talk to visiting doctors, and would tell how distressed they were when they first came for treatments and how much relief from pain they had after a few treatments. They were no longer sick at heart."[4]

Always, it was the patient who was humble and accepting that healed the surest.

"Curing is based on reverence for life and reverence for nature."[5]

Prayer and faith doubled the effectiveness of any treatment.

"Faith in a power from above gives us our wisdom and healing abilities."[6]

Down hill from the clinic the rush and swirl of the river was a constant reminder that this was about nature, normal and abnormal. That within nature the Creator had sewn the very antidote for any aberration that might afflict it. Clearly, heaven found irony an effective teaching tool.

What did Rene think when she looked down at that street. She had no time to think. Within weeks of returning to Dominion Street she saw her faith in Essiac drawing to Bracebridge sufferers yearning for a dip in the waters of hope. Hopeless patients had always been her first priority. But she had never seen anything like this. The streets filled with petitioners, wheelchairs, litters. Patients often arrived in ambulances for their first treatment and, too ill to leave, even with help, had to be administered to right inside the vehicle.

Often times, perhaps when climbing into the back of an ambulance to inject some hope into a cancer sufferer, that one, all too present reality became just too hard to bear. There on her knees, the smell of death rising in her nostrils, she could not forget that there existed a determined and organized cancer 'business' raising enormous amounts of money, a veritable river of lucre, for cancer research. Vested interests would naturally be compelled to discredit and even to annihilate any inroads in cancer cures that did not come from within the foundations and institutes that comprised the cancer industry, even though decades of well-funded medical careers had produced absolutely nothing in terms of a cancer remedy.

She struggled through crowds who by their very presence were showing their willingness to expose their despair to public scrutiny. Often their spirits were broken or lame.

It was human nature as a whole that was ill, not just individual members.

"Cancer is a disease of civilization -the vindication of all the abuses we perpetrate on ourselves and what the abnormalities and hazards of chemicals of our environment and external world do to our bodies. Over many years, we each build our own cancer tombstone."[7]

"Feelings used as weapons against someone, or self, can be as toxic as exposure to a lethal physical agent."[8]

"Only positive healthy thoughts heal."[9]

"Let go of hurts of the past." [10]

Rene endured the touch of people reaching out to stroke her as she passed, pilgrims in search of a saint. A very real danger loomed - the sanctification of a process, as yet unproven and a person, also as yet unproven, by the patients and their loved ones. Always there remained the ever-present need to present only a professional caring touch, smile, word or phrase, so that none would go away with her name on their lips where instead prayers should be.

Sometimes after the fourth or fifth or sixth treatment they would start to arrive by car instead of ambulance and be assisted into the clinic. Then, soon after, they could enter without any help whatever.

"This was a happy event for them because many of them never hoped to even get out of bed again," Rene would recall, placing in bleak perspective the opposition of the medical establishment.[11]

Meanwhile the task at hand dealt with more human issues. The stress on marriages caused by cancer was immeasurable. None could escape the grief imposed by that condition. Patients often failed when unresponsive mates or spouses visited.

"Deadly emotions are definite causes of cancer."[12] .

"Cancer patients have usually lived in relationships that have had serious negative impacts on their lives." [13]

The hardened heart was the hardest case to treat. Irascible personalities demanding cures found their bodies resisting treatment.

"There is no incurable disease. There are masses of incurable people."[14]

"There is no cure for cancer. There never will be. There are only cures for people who have cancer."[15]

In many ways Rene had to educate a whole medical world that had strayed too far from the underlying understanding needed to attack cancer.

"There is no specific entity called 'cancer'. There are only people who have succumbed to the process which creates cancer cells...those whose bodies have lost the ability to neutralize and get rid of all the chemicals, poisons and carcinogens which damage cells."[16]

The innovative intellect of any patient determined much of the body's response.

"The mind controls all healing processes."[17]

It needed a whole new mind set.

"Cancer should not be explained and treated as if it were any other disease."[18]

Those who resisted embracing the whole, but wanted only instant solutions were disappointed.

Always, the question marks lingered. Did this nurse know what she was doing?

"What is not known ...assumes the semblance of being a mystery."[19]

As Dr. Roy said admiringly, "Rene Caisse, in treating thousands of cases had dispelled some of the mystery. Over the years she had observed that tumors initially grew larger after being treated instead of shrinking, as one might expect."[20]

The disease called for a revamping of all preconceived notions of the illness.

"Cancer cells are those whose membranes no longer block the absorption of environmental substances."[21]

"Cancer is a deficiency of many enzymes over many years. The lack of enzymes weakens abilities to resist and fight disease." [22]

Cancer victims who looked for their escape in the radiation room, were invariably buried with their distress intact.

"The incurable are those who give reverence to science and chemistry rather than to nature and the life within her."[23]

The most overlooked of all the body accretions was the most common culprit.

"The majority of cancer patients that fail to overcome..are those who pay too little attention to detoxification and elimination."[24]

Toxins kill.

"The toxins poison the muscle of the intestinal walls and impair the ability to contract and force out the fecal matter."[25]

"The most powerful destroyer of a person's defensive structure is a 'traumatic loss...' chemical psychological poisons accumulate and penetrate the cells..."[26]

"Total body cleansing and avoidance of harmful and unnatural substances is essential."[27]

"Our bodies periodically throw off their excesses of toxic wastes by means of a mucus flushing we call a cold. Our bodies burn up other toxic excesses by developing fevers."[28]

"The poison and the deprivation we subject our bodies to are the disease."[29]

"Total detoxification can relieve pain that even morphine will not." [30]

"Possibly the most effective way to detoxify is by fasting."[31]

In everything Rene Caisse did the patient was involved in an interaction with the treatment and made to take an active part in the cure.

"You earned your illness. You have to earn you health. "[32]

The rewards were a sense of lost power over a worn out body restored.

"You do the curing. Special remedies, regimes, or doctors don't cure."[33]

Always the patient was encouraged to look inward.

"Our bodies know more about how to cure and eliminate disease than science, chemistry and healing professions will ever know. "[34]

And, of course, from cultures vanished and some still with us came the wisdom of the ages.

"Eat only when hungry.

"Don't eat if you're tired, exhausted, tense or hurried.

"Don't eat if you're angry, resentful, worried, upset.

"Don't eat when something is eating you." [35]

The first day of the cure was the beginning of a lifetime of awareness and active participation in body maintenance.

"The price we pay for assuming that we live in a safe world is our health and our lives."[36]

Essiac was nature itself crystalizing into a simple cup of herbal formula.

"The active and healing ingredients of herbs are the multitudes of enzymes their cells create." [37]

Always, the remedy was but the beginning of a new life, lived by new rules or the restoration of rules long ago discarded.

"Diseases are messengers from the soul demanding us to...change."[38]

"Don't give in to temptations to go back to your old ways and excesses."[39]

"Stay away from spiteful, negative, irritating, overbearing, people. You don't need friends who find fault."[40]

"The magic key to cancer curing, to cancer prevention, is to live, to really live...full of the vigor and hope...to live every true vital force in you."[41] .

Rene could have been all but consumed by the demands of the world that had so quickly mushroomed around the Dominion Street clinic. But not too long after the clinic opening, the identity of a new cancer sufferer reaching her ear brought her into sharp focus.

Who?