In a foreword Dr Hartmut Franz a Berlin cancer specialist points out that
Posted in General on 04. Aug, 2010
In a foreword, Dr Hartmut Franz, a Berlin cancer specialist, points out that many drugs used in orthodox medicine were first discovered as herbs or by chance, then finally developed in an optimal form. This has yet to be done for mistletoe.From the Health page of `The Independent’, Tuesday 22 December 1987. Being a parasite, mistletoe contains a number of substances which appear to protect it against poisons produced by the host tree in an attempt to get rid of it.Last year a whole volume of Oncology, a respectable international journal on cancer, was devoted to mistletoe. The extracts appear to stimulate lymphocytes (white blood cells) to attack the tumour.There may be a special reason why mistletoe is a good source of products effective against cancer. Druidic power is still tacitly recognised today, in so far as the plant is forbidden in churches.Belief that mistletoe imparts fecundity may be the original reason why we kiss beneath it. A couple who come together beneath the sacred plant may receive power from it and conceive.Apart from its sacred qualities, Pliny recognised 11 conditions which mistletoe could treat.
He recommends the glutinous material from the berries to treat inflamed swellings of every description, to heal wounds, for rectifying malformed nails and to desiccate scrofulous sores. Most interesting of all, he suggested that mistletoe could be used to “disperse tumours”. It is possible that Lindow man was treating himself for cancer. None was found in the upper part of his body but it is possible that there was a tumour in the lower part of the body which was not preserved.Almost 2,000 years after Pliny suggested mistletoe for tumours doctors in Germany and Switzerland are beginning to get results which suggest that the plant could be useful in cancer treatment.Dr Georg Salzer, a doctor in the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute in Vienna, has been using mistletoe with cancer patients for 30 years He says: “Mistletoe is not a miracle cure or a wonder drug.
Medieval society was full of people on the move: officers of state, nobles, armies, clergy, scholars, pilgrims, drovers. Roads were, by modern standards, poor, and travel was highly seasonally dependent, but travel people did and do.Travel is more than just the utilitarian expression of the human requirement; it is also an epression of freedom. Societies which have sought to limit freedom have always controlled travel and transport, the movement of people, goods and ideas.Today the networks of transport we have around us and upon which we depend are expressions of a greater modern freedom. The freedom of movement, a freedom which is spread more widely and has a greater influence than has ever been the case before. The consequence of this freedom is prosperity, opportunity and a richness of life inconceivable to most of our ancestors.Ralph Harrington is writing `Metropolis in Motion: trans-port, communication and the modern city, 1880-1940′. THREE GRAINS of mistletoe pollen together with a few other odd facts are enough for archaeologists to construct an intriguing theory of human sacrifice in a sacred grove.