Mistletoe
Viscum album
“Although mistletoe had a long history of use as a medicinal plant, it was not used in cancer treatment before Rudolf Steiner introduced it as a specific anticancer drug. The plant is a semiparasite that grows on various deciduous and pine trees. Specially developed and manufactured mistletoe preparations used for treatment of cancer were introduced in anthroposophic medicine and pharmacy in 1917. The best known is Iscador, about which there exists a wealth of scientific data. The various Iscador preparations vary with respect to their host tree and type of additional potentiated metal salts, if any. The differentiated use of these preparations in different types of cancer is derived from medical application of the anthroposophic method. Other mistletoe preparation shave now been developed according to this method. All are injectable solutions that are administered either subcutaneously, intramuscularly, or as a short infusion. None of these preparations can be categorized as an herbal drug in the narrow sense. Two phytotherapeutic mistletoe extracts are available, namely, Plenosol and Eurixor. The latter is a variant of Plenosol with a standardized mistletoe lectin-1 content. It was standardized according to this lectin because researchers had assumed that it was responsible for medicinal action. This assumption has meanwhile been proved to be false. Plelnosol was used for adjuvant treatment of advanced tumor until the 1950’s. It achieved good results and improved the patient’s quality of life in some cases. Virtually the only use for Plenosol nowadays is as a local injection for treatment of arthrosis. According to the findings of modern immunological research, mistletoe must, from a scientific point of view, be classified as a medicinal plant that stimulates the body’s immune system to check or stop tumor growth. A number of clinical studies that fulfill all modern criteria have demonstrated that this is possible. It is not surprising to find that the smaller the tumor, the better the results of mistletoe therapy. Hence, mistletoe therapy can be administered in combination with surgical tumor excision whenever possible. Mistletoe should be extremely beneficial to patients who were healthy when the tumor was removed and in those without an unequivocal indication for chemotherapy or radiotherapy according to the histological criteria. We should not forget to mention that the use of mistletoe requires a great deal of experience on the part of the physician, especially with respect to the selection of the host tree, the size of the dose, and the frequency and timing of the injections. Disappointing results are often due to a failure to meet these requirements.”
- Herbal Medicine, Weiss & Fintelman
