The Search for a Cure
Even in Washington’s day, there was an urgent search for cancer’s cure. George Washington wrote to Dr. Hugh Martin, a surgeon of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment on October 20, 1782. Dr. Hugh Martin had allegedly learned the formula for his famous “cancer cure” from the Indians while stationed as a military surgeon at Fort Pitt during the Revolutionary War. The publication Washington describes below was likely Dr. Martin’s A Narrative of a Discovery of a Sovereign Specific, for the Cure of Cancers, published in Philadelphia that same year.
“I have received and thank you for the 2 copies of your narrative of a discovery for a cure of cancers; one of which agreeably to your request I have transmitted to Mrs. Washington. The discovery is as beneficial to mankind as it would be regretted by them if the secret, being only known to one man, should die with him…” (3)