What Medical Professionals Have to Say…

Below you'll find a compilation of interesting quotes from other medical doctors and researchers that I've come across in my study of medicinal mushrooms, as well as some historical quotes from various sources on healthcare and medicine.

“Many of the medicinal mushrooms, including chaga mushroom, maitake mushroom, ganoderma mushroom, and cordyceps mushroom, contain cancer-preventive and cancer-fighting actions. Research has focused on the polysaccharides with beta 1,3 glucan linkages. Indole-3-carbinol is a nutrient found in large quantities in cruciferous vegetables. It is a potent antagonist of breast cancer, reducing formation of cancerous compounds from hormones and participating in blockage of cancer cell progression.” - The One Earth Herbal Sourcebook: Everything You Need to Know About Chinese, Western, and Ayurvedic Herbal Treatments by Alan Keith Tillotson, Ph.D., A.H.G., D.Ay.

“Other mushroom extracts that have been shown to have clinical effectiveness against human cancers are D-fraction extracted from the Maitake mushroom, and extracts from the split gill, turkey tail and Reishi mushrooms. In 1998, Maitake Products received FDA approval for an Investigational New Drug Phase II pilot study of maitake mushroom extract in the treatment of advanced breast and prostate cancer. There is also some evidence that the consumption of mushrooms in the diet may ward off cancer.” - You Don't Have to be Afraid of Cancer Anymore by Bill Sardi

“As with many of the medicinal mushrooms, Shiitake has been shown to be of benefit as an adjuvant cancer therapy. It has been shown to improve specific immune markers (including natural killer cells, tumor necrosis factor, T-helper cells, and a variety of interleukins), and patient outcomes. Reishi is one of the most versatile medicinal mushrooms. It has long been used in Asia as an energy tonic to promote longevity and overall health. Studies indicate that reishi is an antioxidant and contains polysaccharides and other compounds that may boost the immune system. Reishi is taken to counter bacteria and viruses and has shown promise as an agent to help prevent or treat cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, and other conditions. Russian researchers at the Cancer Research Center in Moscow have had positive results using reishi extracts to boost the immunity of cancer patients.” - The Health Benefits Of Medicinal Mushrooms by Mark Stengler (Naturopathic Medical Doctor, USA)

“Cancer patients may also wish to investigate medicinal mushrooms (such types as reishi, shiitake, cordyceps, maitake, agaracus, and coriolus) as immune-boosting companions to chemotherapy. These medicinal mushrooms are sources of antitumor and immunity-modulating polysaccharides (a type of carbohydrate) that have been extensively researched. Formulas containing concentrated extracts of medicinal mushrooms are available; talk with your oncologist about which he or she might recommend.” - Supplement Your Prescription: What Your Doctor Doesn't Know About Nutrition by Hyla Cass, M.D.

“Like many other medicinal mushrooms, reishi mushroom can be used to treat cancer patients due to its ability to activate NK cells, macrophages, T-lymphocytes, and cytokines, all important immune system components. Kee Chang Huang reports that reishi "exerts a synergistic effect with other anticancer chemothera-peutic agents or radiotherapy, to augment the clinical therapeutic effect in the treatment of cancer patients.” - The One Earth Herbal Sourcebook: Everything You Need to Know About Chinese, Western, and Ayurvedic Herbal Treatments by Alan Keith Tillotson, Ph.D., A.H.G., D.Ay.

“It takes about 15 pounds of reishi mushrooms to produce 1 pound of the powdered concentrate. Medicinal mushrooms make a significant contribution to the healing process by enhancing and stimulating the body's own immune system. This is a very important factor in diseases like cancer and HIV, which have components unique to each individual. In my protocols for people with cancer, I always include one or more medicinal mushroom extract products.” - Herbal Medicine, Healing and Cancer: A Comprehensive Program for Prevention and Treatment by Donald R. Yance, j r.,C.N., M.H., A.H.G., with Arlene Valentine

“Although the Mayo Clinic regards the use of medicinal mushrooms as more traditional than scientific, they operate in a manner similar to prescription drugs known as monocle. Cancer patients need to understand the disconnect between the supposed mission to cure cancer and the objective of the companies that make monoclonal antibodies, which appears to be profits above delivery of an effective treatment. The total therapeutic monoclonal antibodies market was estimated at $296 million in 2002, and was projected to surge to $2.8 billion by 2010.” - You Don't Have to be Afraid of Cancer Anymore by Bill Sardi

“In another study, researchers exposed mice to a known urinary bladder carcinogen, N-butyl-N'-butanolnitrosoamine (BBN), every day for eight weeks and then fed them medicinal mushrooms, including maitake, shiitake, and oyster mushrooms. All of the mice treated with BBN developed bladder cancer. While each of the mushrooms reduced the number of bladder cancers, maitake was clearly most effective (carcinomas were observed in 46.7 percent of the maitake-treated mice compared to 52.9 percent and 65 percent for shiitake and oyster, respectively).” - Natural Cancer Cures: The Definitive Guide to Using Dietary Supplements to Fight and Prevent Cancer by Freedom Press

“Japanese products containing LEM, a polysaccharide-rich extract from the shiitake mushroom, and similar extracts from maitake are currently undergoing trials in Japan and the U.S. to test their effectiveness in treating various forms of cancer. They show promise for treating people suffering from various forms of cancer and AIDS and are currently in strong demand in Japan.” - Medicinal Mushrooms: An Exploration of Tradition, Healing, & Culture (Herbs and Health Series) by Christopher Hobbs

“Goro Chihara notes that medicinal mushrooms such as shiitake can play an important role in augmenting "intrinsic host defense mechanisms" - boosting the body's inherent abilities to fight off invading agents. He says that such "host defense potentiators" should be a more important focus for cancer research than the current fascination with cell-killing substances. Shiitake and reishi are the most common medicinal mushrooms in the United States today, though other varieties are beginning to become available either in fresh or packaged forms.” - Medicinal Mushrooms: An Exploration of Tradition, Healing, & Culture (Herbs and Health Series) by Christopher Hobbs

“Often called the "king of mushrooms," shiitake is just one of a number of medicinal mushrooms currently under study at research centers in Germany, the United States, Japan, and China. Shiitake is being used for a wide variety of conditions involving depressed immune function, from frequent colds to cancer. In Japan, physicians prescribe shiitake in two different forms to treat many health conditions, including asthma, hepatitis B, ulcers, high cholesterol, AIDS, kidney inflammation, herpes, and various skin problems.” - The Encyclopedia of Popular Herbs by Robert S. McCaleb, Evelyn Leigh, and Krista Morien

“In the 1980s, Japanese researchers began to investigate the folklore behind medicinal mushrooms and found that many had truly remarkable properties. For example, maitake mushroom stimulates the immune system by activating T-cells, the body's natural defenders against viruses and cancer cells. Recent animal studies have shown that maitake extract can shrink tumors in mice even better than a common chemotherapy drug.” - Earl Mindell's Supplement Bible: A Comprehensive Guide to Hundreds of NEW Natural Products that Will Help You Live Longer, Look Better, Stay Heathier, ... and Much More! by Earl Mindell, R.Ph., Ph.D.

“Here is a brief summary of published studies on medicinal mushrooms and beta glucans: Mushroom polysaccharides have remarkable anti-tumor activity. Mushrooms have anti-hyperlipidemic, hypotensive, and hypoglycemic actions. Beta-glucan from maitake mushrooms may induce apoptosis in prostate cancer cells. Shiitake extracts have reduced cholesterol and have anti-viral effects. Mushrooms are high fiber and function as prebiotics, antioxidants, and antibiotics.” - The Anti-Aging Solution: 5 Simple Steps to Looking and Feeling Young by Vincent Giampapa, Ronald Pero, and Marcia Zimmerman

“As with most of the medicinal mushrooms, unique polysaccharides present in Hericium Erinaceus [also known as Lion's Mane Mushroom] have immune-enhancing properties, and preliminary studies are demonstrating some anticancer effects. The most intriguing potential of Hericium Erinaceus is that it may stimulate the production of a substance known as Nerve Growth Factor (NGF). This specialized protein is necessary for the growth of sensory neurons. An in vitro study found that an extract from Hericium Erinaceus mushroom promoted myelin sheath growth on brain cells.” - The Health Benefits Of Medicinal Mushrooms by Mark Stengler

“Shiitake and reishi offer a diverse range of potential health benefits. You can take all of these supplements in perhaps eight to ten pills or capsules daily. If you take just three or four of these natural supplements at breakfast and the same number later in the day, you will have substantially increased your energy levels, boosted your immune system, lowered your risk of heart disease and cancer, and strengthened and balanced your overall system.” - Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature's Healing Secrets by Mark J. Plotkin

“There have been 150 species of medicinal mushrooms found to inhibit the growth of different kinds of tumors, especially cancers of the stomach, esophagus, and lungs, but chaga seems to stand out from the rest. I learned about this mushroom from herbalist David Winston, who told me it has been used traditionally to treat different forms of cancer in Siberia, Canada, Scandinavia, the United States, and Russia. Chaga is a fungal parasite that draws its nutrients out of living trees, rather than from the ground.” - The One Earth Herbal Sourcebook: Everything You Need to Know About Chinese, Western, and Ayurvedic Herbal Treatments by Alan Keith Tillotson, Ph.D., A.H.G., D.Ay.

1. “The cause of most disease is in the poisonous drugs physicians superstitiously give in order to effect a cure.” ~ Charles E. Page, M.D. practices emergency medicine in Durango, Colorado.
2. “Medicines are of subordinate importance because of their very nature, they can only work symptomatically.” ~ Hans Kusche, M.D.
3. “The only real difference between medicine and poison is the dose....and intent.” ~ Oscar G. Hernandez, MD, Miami, FL, Critical Care Medicine, Pulmonology, Internal Medicine.
4. “Drug medications consists in employing, as remedies for disease, those things which produce disease in well persons. Its material medica is simply a lot of drugs or chemicals or dye-stuffs in a word “poisons!”. All are incompatible with vital matter; all produce disease when brought in contact in any manner with the living; all are poisons.” ~ R.T. Trall, M.D., in a two and one half hour lecture to members of congress and the medical profession, delivered at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.
5. “Every drug increases and complicates the patient’s condition.” ~ Robert Henderson, M.D., Orthopedic Surgeon in Dallas
6. “Drugs never cure disease. They merely hush the voice of nature's protest, and pull down the danger signals she erects along the pathway of transgression. Any poison taken into the system has to be reckoned with later on even though it palliates present symptoms. Pain may disappear, but the patient is left in a worse condition, though unconscious of it at the time.” ~ Daniel H. Kress, M.D.
7. “The greatest part of all chronic disease is created by the suppression of acute disease by drug poisoning.” ~ Henry Lindlahr, M.D., the founder of "Scientific Naturopathy" in the United States.
8. “Every educated physician knows that most diseases are not appreciably helped by medicine.” ~ Richard C. Cabot, M.D. (Mass. Gen. Hospital)
9. “Medicine is only palliative, for in back of disease lies the cause, and this cause no drug can reach.” ~ Wier Mitchel, M.D., Neurologist
10. “The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine.” ~ William Osler, M.D., Late Regius Professor of Medicine, Oxford University.
11. “Medical practice has neither philosophy nor common sense to recommend it. In sickness the body is already loaded with impurities. By taking drugs (medicines) more impurities are added, thereby the case is further embarrassed and harder to cure.” ~ Elmer Lee, M.D., Past Vice President, Academy of Medicine.
12. “Our figures show approximately four and one half million hospital admissions annually due to the adverse reactions to drugs. Further, the average hospital patient has as much as thirty percent chance, depending how long he is in, of doubling his stay due to adverse drug reactions.” ~ Milton Silverman, M.D. (Professor of Pharmacology, University of California)
13. “Why would a patient swallow a poison because he is ill, or take that which would make a well man sick.” ~ L.F. Kebler, M.D., Chief, Division of Drugs, U. S. Department of Agriculture WASHINGTON, D. C.
14. “What hope is there for medical science to ever become a true science when the entire structure of medical knowledge is built around the idea that there is an entity called disease which can be expelled when the right drug is found?.” ~ John H. Tilden, M.D., Health Research, Mokelumne Hill. California.
15. “The necessity of teaching mankind not to take drugs and medicines, is a duty incumbent upon all who know their uncertainty and injurious effects; and the time is not far distant when the drug system will be abandoned.” ~ Charles Armbruster, M. D.
16. “We are prone to thinking of drug abuse in terms of the male population and illicit drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and marijuana. It may surprise you to learn that a greater problem exists with millions of women dependent on legal prescription drugs.” ~ Robert Mendelsohn, M.D.
17. “Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn’t organized to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals.” ~ Ivan Illich, in Medical Nemesis (1976)
18. “From inability to let well alone; from too much zeal for the new and contempt for what is old; from putting knowledge before wisdom, science before art and cleverness before common sense; from treating patients as cases; and from making the cure of the disease more grievous than the endurance of the same, Good Lord, deliver us.” ~ From inability to let well alone; from too much zeal for the new and contempt for what is old; from putting knowledge before wisdom, science before art and cleverness before common sense; from treating patients as cases; and from making the cure of the disease more grievous than the endurance of the same, Good Lord, deliver us.
19. “We have to ask ourselves whether Medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.” ~ Elisabeth KuBler-Ross, July 8 1926 – August 24 2004, a Swiss-born psychiatrist, a pioneer in Near-death studies and the author of the groundbreaking book On Death and Dying (1969), where she first discussed what is now known as the Kübler-Ross model. She is a 2007 inductee into the National Women's Hall of Fame. She was the recipient of 20 honorary degrees and by July 1982 had taught, in her estimation, 125,000 students in death and dying courses in colleges, seminaries, medical schools, hospitals, and social-work institutions.
20. “Injections are the best thing ever invented for feeding doctors.” ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez, born March 6 1927, a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, journalist; considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982 and is the earliest winner of this prize to be still alive.
21. “From year to year, it is more obvious: the goal of Medicine is not health but the further extension of the health system.” ~ Gerhard Kocher, Born 1939 in Berne. Swiss health economist and writer of aphorisms.
22. “Pharma industry is the art of making billions from milligrams.” ~ Gerhard Kocher, Born 1939 in Berne. Swiss health economist and writer of aphorisms.
23. “Never ask a surgeon whether you need an operation.” ~ Gerhard Kocher, Born 1939 in Berne. Swiss health economist and writer of aphorisms.
24. “Mankind has survived all catastrophes. It will also survive modern Medicine.” ~ Gerhard Kocher, Born 1939 in Berne. Swiss health economist and writer of aphorisms.
25. “Many of us will die for science without knowing it.” ~ Gerhard Kocher, Born 1939 in Berne. Swiss health economist and writer of aphorisms.

1. “Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing.” ~ Voltare, French Philosopher and Writer. One of the greatest of all French authors, 1694 -1778.
2. “The art of medicine consists of amusing the patients while nature cures the disease.” ~ Voltare, French Philosopher and Writer. One of the greatest of all French authors, 1694 -1778.
3. “I firmly believe that if the whole material medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be better for mankind-and all the worse for the fishes.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Prof. of Med. Harvard University, 19th century Physician.
4. “The objective of medicine is not the knowledge of the Disease, but the relieve of the suffering due to it.” ~ Miguel Ángel García, Spanish Medical Doctor.
5. “Medicine, the only profession that labours incessantly to destroy the reason for its existence.” ~ James Bryce, British Politician, Diplomat and Historian, 1838-1922.
6. “Cured yesterday of my disease, I died last night of my physician..” ~ Matthew Prior, 1664-1721, English Poet and Diplomat.
7. “The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will educate his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.” ~ Thomas A Edison.
8. “The orthodox school has witnessed for centuries that nature itself has never once cured any existing disease with another dissimilar one, however intense. What must we think of this school, which nevertheless has continued to treat chronic diseases allopathically, with medicines and formulas that can only cause a disease condition -God knows which -dissimilar to the one being treated? Even if these physicians have not hitherto observed nature attentively enough, the miserable results of their treatment should have taught them that they were on the wrong road.” ~ Samuel Hahnemann, April 1755 – July 1843, a German Physician, known for creating an Alternative Form of Medicine called Homeopathy.
9. “For each illness that doctors cure with medicine, they provoke ten in healthy people by inoculating them with the virus that is a thousand times more powerful than any microbe: the idea that one is ill..” ~ Marcel Proust, French Novelist, Critic and Essayist.
10. “I am dying from the treatment of too many physicians.” ~ Alexander the Great.
11. “The Lord hath created Medicines out of the earth: and he that is wise will not abhor them. Was not the water made sweet with wood, that the virtue thereof might be known?.” ~ Bible [Ecclesiasticus 38:4-5]
12. “Medicine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind.” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821, a Military and Political leader of France and Emperor of the French as Napoleon I, whose actions shaped European politics in the early 19th century.
13. “Some fell by laudanum, and some by steel, and death in ambush lay in every pill.” ~ Sir Samuel Garth, English physician and poet.
14. “They had me on the operating table all day. They looked into my stomach, my gall bladder, they examined everything inside of me. Know what they decided? I need glasses.” ~ Joe E Lewis
15. “There are three subjects on which the knowledge of the medical profession in general is woefully weak; they are manners, morals, and Medicine.” ~ Gerald F Lieberman
16. “To live by Medicine is to live horribly.” ~ Carolus Linnaeus, May 1707 – January 1778, a Swedish Botanist, Physician and Zoologist who created the Binomial Nomenclature.
17. “God help the patient.” ~ Lord Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench from 1756 to 1788.
18. “Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.” ~ Sir William Osler, 12 July 1849 – 29 December 1919 was a Canadian physician. He was one of the "Big Four" founding professors at Johns Hopkins Hospital as the first Professor of Medicine and founder of the Medical Service there.
    
    (The "Big Four" were William Osler, Professor of Medicine; William Stewart Halsted, Professor of Surgery; Howard A. Kelly, Professor of Gynecology; and William H. Welch, Professor of Pathology).Osler created the first residency program for specialty training of physicians, and he was the first to bring medical students out of the lecture hall for bedside clinical training. He has been called the "Father of modern medicine." Osler was a pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, and renowned practical joker.
19. “Poisons and Medicine are oftentimes the same substance given with different intents.” ~ Peter Mere Latham, July 1789 – July 1875, an English Physician and a great Educator.
20. “He who lives by medical prescriptions lives miserably.” ~ Proverb