The cancer treatment practiced by Harry M. Hoxsey (1901-1974) is one of the longest-lived unconventional therapies of this century. It has retained great popular appeal, despite unrelenting opposition by the medical profession; despite 40 years of biting journalistic ridicule by such skilled AMA journalists as Arthur Cramp and Morris Fishbein; despite an unceasing stream of court actions; even despite an unprecedented Public Warning Against Hoxsey Cancer Treatment which the Commissioner of the FDA ordered mounted in 46,000 US post offices and substations in 1956 (Young, 1967, 387; Larrick, 1956). Since Hoxseys death, his treatment has continued under his longtime nurse assistant, Mildred Nelson, who currently oversees the thriving Bio-Medical Center at Tijuana, within sight of the border between Mexico and the United States. (Hoxsey himself chose this site in 1963, when his heart had begun to fail and the combined pressures of organized medicine and the FDA had finally closed down his last operation in the US [Chowka, 1984; New York Times, 1955].)

As Illinois coal miner before he began to promote himself as a healer in the 20s, the colorful, dynamic Hoxsey mixed his medicine with flamboyant public statements that skillfully contrasted his populist heritage with the growing elitism and hauteur of the American medical profession  Continue reading →