Cancer and culture

This Autumn is a time for me of many seminars - in more than one country. There is no fixed programme that is the same everywhere; it has, rather, a very rich and growing theme. In Amsterdam and Bern I will speak about dementia. But in Hamburg the theme will be 'Cancer and culture'. I will give a kind of preview here, as I did for dementia.

When I was a medical student, with no interest at all in alternative medicine, I took lessons on the viola. My teacher was a musician who played the viola in the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. He lived around the corner and I only had to walk for a minute or two to go to my lesson. We always talked about life. He was an older man and I admired his playing, but also his stories about all his life experiences. One day he told me about a tour with the orchestra to America. He fell ill there, and had to have an abdominal operation, not very serious, but still... He was lying in a two bed room, alongside a man that had a far more serious illness. Then it happened that this roommate received the diagnosis of an incurable bowel cancer. He was told that he only had a few months to live. The man became furious about this ‘proud’ judgment. He got up from his bed, they exchanged addresses and he left the hospital, saying to the doctors: “I don't accept this death sentence from you!”

The musician returned home, but at Christmas he received a postcard from his roommate, saying that he was still alive. And so it happened throughout many, many years.

It was a story that gave me a very high feeling of hope, it provided a riddle to live with. I have told this story many times and have remembered it in many circumstances. It is a kind of life guide - just as the verse of Francis. But it was a riddle too, how such things can happen - for one hears more stories like that...

What kind of illness is this, that it can threaten life and that it can also be survived?
Growth of tumours can be seen as a kind of neglecting boundaries. The human body has a wonderful faculty of renewing its tissues by growth, and it has a kind of 'knowing' where it should stop this growing. A healthy body knows this healthy balance between growth and structure.

In the plant world this faculty can be seen as a wonderful forming force. A leaf grows, it expands, but at structural points it is being held up - and so the form of the leaves is being developed. This forming force is also found in the human body. We can experience this force by trying to 'grow along' with an unfolding plant. We can feel where there is expansion, and where there is retention.

In tumours we see that this wisdom of the forming forces is being lost. The growth goes on and on and 'forgets' where it should have stopped. This is the case in benignant and in malignant tumours.

In benignant tumours the tissue keeps its normal cell-structure, but it loses its macroscopic form.

In malignant tumours it not only loses the macroscopic form, but also the cell-structure. Cells are formed that are not belonging to healthy tissue. If you look at cancer cells under the microscope, it is really clear that they are vicious. They look bad and grow willfully, not staying iwithin the order of the healthy tissue. It seems that they want to rule the body, that they want to become the leading cell type. By doing so, they destroy our health and if there is no therapy, there is no cure.

In regular medicine the cause is being seen in the DNA. Of course one knows about the influences that come from the environment, and from personal life – which is also a kind of environment. But the genetic model shows whether a person has a predisposition for cancer.

Let us leave the discussion about the truth of this behind. Far more important is the question: What really happens, when the sound tissue changes to a cancerous tissue? I hope to write about an answer next week.


MistletoeCancer and culture by Mieke Mosmuller