"This repaid me for all of my work," Rene reflected years later, "having given my mother 18 years of life which she would not have had. [It] made up for a great deal of the persecution I had endured at the hands of the medical world."6

After word of Caisse's impressive results spread to the United States, a leading diagnostician in Chicago introduced her to Dr. John Wolfer, director of the tumor clinic at Northwestern University Medical School. In 1937, Wolfer arranged for Rene to treat thirty terminal cancer patients under the direction of five doctors. Rene commuted across the border to Chicago, carrying her bottles of freshly prepared herbal brew. After supervising one and a half years of Essiac therapy, the Chicago doctors concluded that the herbal mixture prolonged life, shrank tumors, and relieved pain.

Dr. Emma Carson, a Los Angeles physician, spent twenty-four days inspecting the Bracebridge clinic in 1937. A skeptical investigator who originally intended to stay in Bracebridge for just a couple of days, she scrutinized the clinical records and examined over 400 patients. In her detailed report, Dr. Carson wrote:

Several prominent physicians and surgeons who are quite familiar with the indisputable results obtained in response to "Essiac" treatments . . . conceded to me that the Rene M. Caisse "Essiac Treatment" for Cancer is the most humane, satisfactory and frequently successful remedy for the annihilation of Cancer "that they had found at that time" . . .

I also visited, examined and obtained data at patients' homes where they were pursuing their business vocations as ably as if they had never experienced the afflictions of Cancer. They declared their restoration to normalcy was indisputably due to Miss Caisse's "Essiac" treatments.... They emphatically declared "were it not for Miss Caisse's Essiac remedy for Cancer, they would have departed from this earth" . . .

As I examined each patient regarding intervening progress during the preceding week and recorded notes of indisputable improvements . . . I could scarcely believe my brain and eyes were not deceiving me, on some of the most seriously afflicted cases....

The vast majority of Miss Caisse's patients are brought to her for treatment after Surgery, Radium, X-Rays, Emplastrums, etc., has failed to be helpful, and the patients are pronounced incurable. Really the progress obtainable and the actual results from "Essiac" treatments and the rapidity of repair was absolutely marvelous and must be seen to convincingly confirm belief.

Another independent investigator of the Bracebridge clinic was Dr. Benjamin Guyatt, a University of Toronto curator and anatomy professor. After making dozens of inspections of the clinic during the 1930s, Dr. Cuyatt summarized his findings as follows:

The relief from pain is a noticeable feature, as pain in these cases is very difficult to control. On checking authentic cancer cases, it was found that hemorrhage was readily brought under control in many difficult cases. Open lesions of lip and breast responded to treatment. Cancers of the cervix, rectum, and bladder had been caused to disappear. Patients with cancer of the stomach, diagnosed by reputable physicians and surgeons, have returned to normal activity.

. . . The number responding wholly or in part, I do not know. But I do know that I have witnessed in this clinic a treatment which brings about restoration, through destroying the tumour tissue, and supplying that something which improves the mental outlook of life and facilitates reestablishment of physiological functions.7