The German-born doctor Max Gerson introduced the clinical use of coffee enemas in Europe as part of a cancer therapy from 1930, but later moved to the US, where the treatment is still continued by his family. He used it to cure Nobel Laureate Albert Schweitzer's wife of tuberculosis when conventional treatments had failed, before adapting it to other diseases like cancer, heart disease, kidney failure and diabetes. Gerson's daughter Charlotte, now 79, has used the therapy throughout her life. She herself was also a tuberculosis cure when she was 12 in Vienna. But the method, like many alternative health treatments, is considered by the medical profession as controversial.
Nobody wants to cure disease, just treat it.
In Germany, when he cured tuberculosis, all the doctors were up in arms. Straus defended the treatment, which boosts the body's natural immune system through consuming high levels of organic fruit and vegetable juices daily and eliminates toxins via the enemas. Straus's wife is a recovered cancer patient using the Gerson therapy. According to the Gerson website, the use of coffee enemas decreases pain, hastens healing and helps eliminate toxic residues from chemotherapy or other orthodox cancer treatments. He emphasised that the use of coffee enemas could not be used in isolation, only as an integral part of the therapy.