Rene Caisse - Canada's Cancer Nurse
The remedy is reputed to have been given to an English woman at the end of the 1800's by a Medicine Man of the Ojibway Tribe from Canada.   He gave the remedy with instructions on collection of the herbs to an English woman who had breast cancer.   She followed the instructions.   Thirty years later when she was a patient in the hospital Rene Caisse was working in she gave the recipe to Rene Caisse.   Rene did not immediately do anything with the information, but when her aunt became ill with cancer and was not expected to live very long she asked her aunts' doctors permission to use the herbs to treat her aunt.   Her aunt recovered completely and lived another 30 years eventually dying of old age.   Rene also used the herbs with success to treat her mother who died in her sleep 21 years later.   Rene realised the implication of the herb, and started to use it, researching all the while.   She eventually opened a cancer clinic in her hometown of Bracebridge, and treated 1000's of patients there.   She was in regular contact with the medical profession, always hoping that the remedy could be adopted as an official cancer remedy but this was not to be so.   The medical profession tried to shut her up over the years and she was regularly threatened with imprisonment for treating and healing cancer patients.   Rene Caisse gave her name to the remedy, Essiac is her name spelt backwards.

There are several good books written on her life and work that charts her research and work over the 50 years she worked with it.   Suffice to say that there is still research into Essiac going on in different placed in the world and some of it is being carried out by a UK trust.   Rene Caisse was able to cure people of cancer when they were literally on their deathbeds and had only days or weeks to live.   Evan when the patient survived only for a few years they claimed that the Essiac helped them to deal with the pain, depression and other problems relating to a terminal disease, and that they were able to use the remaining time much better and in much less pain, and so was able to die quite peacefully.