Document dQMBbXj9Ez18ZByR711GR1qe6

164 CHAPTER 5 spinach, green cabbage, tomatoes, calves' liver, tongue, cocoa, le gumes, almonds, chestnuts, vitamin B-rich soups, and tea (for its potassium). He recommended instead a calcium- and magnesiumrich diet, roughly comparable to what diabetics were supposed to follow.145 Suspicion of vitamins as carcinogens was so high by 1933 that scholars at the Charite Hospital's Institute for Cancer Research in Berlin actually postulated that cancer mortality was high in June-July and October-November owing to the higher consump tion of vitamins in those months. Like many others at this time, the authors recommended a low-vitamin diet for cancer patients.146 The problem with all such theories was that for every study seeming to indicate an effect, another failed to reproduce the re sult. Vitamins were obviously required for growth--but cancerous growths were not unlike any other kind of growth in this regard. Like hormones, vitamins were required for bodily metabolism whether cancerous or not. When Max Borst reviewed the state of cancer research in 1941, he noted that neither hormones nor vita mins could properly be regarded as carcinogens or anticarcino gens. Both were important for bodily function, but neither seemed to offer much hope as a cancer cure.147 The situation was similar to that of another popular craze de signed to combat cancer: colonic cleansing. The Russian embryolo gist and yogurt enthusiast Elie Metchnikoff had popularized the idea early in the century, spurred by his observation that yogurt eating Bulgarians had a surprisingly high percentage of centenar ians.148 The idea was that the human colon sometimes accumulates stagnating, putrefying, cancer-causing bacteria, which a proper di etary regimen can help to counteract. As it was developed in Ger many in the 1920s and 1930s, the theory held that toxic coliform bacteria secreted poisons that could cause cancer and other diges tive ailments; colonic cleansings were prescribed for stomach and colorectal cancer patients, along with medicinal enemas and more orthodox regimens of radiation and surgery.149 One of the most ardent advocates was a Prof. Alfred Nissle at the Bacteriologic Research Institute of Freiburg, who designed a special cancer diet to combat the Dysbakterie in the colon. In the late 1920s, Nissle marketed a dietary supplement known as "Muta- THE NAZI DIET 165 flor," a mistletoe leaf extract sold in various forms to redress pur ported imbalances in the bacterial "flora" of the colon. Mutaflor became very popular in Nazi era,150 and not just for cancer but for chronic arthroses, skin and organ cancers (under the trade name "Plenosol"), and many other ailments.151 Hitler was a devotee, al lowing his feces to be routinely inspected for pathogenic bacteria, though the SS nutritionist Ernst Schenck after the war noted that whatever unhealthy germs may have been present in the Fiihrer's stool must have perished beyond recognition after transport hun dreds of kilometers back to the laboratories where it was scruti nized. Fecal inspection was popular in the Nazi era: there is at least one book devoted entirely to the structure and chemistry of human excrement.152 It is not possible even to mention all of the cancer diets proposed at this time; there are literally hundreds. The popularity of such therapies--often scoffed at by orthodox healers--must have de rived in no small part from the desperation of cancer sufferers. The willingness to grasp at straws did not change when the Nazis took over; things are not so very different today. Banning Butter Yellow I mentioned earlier the Nazi-era distinction between "negative" and "positive" racial hygiene--the former designed to curb the re production of the "unfit," the latter to encourage the breeding of "superior" populations. There was also what was known as pre ventive racial hygiene, designed to protect the genetic material from harm. The goal of this third kind of Rassenhygiene was to safe guard the human genetic heritage by preventing exposure to haz ardous genotoxins--substances like alcohol, radiation, and to bacco, but also other threats to genetic health stemming from a hazardous environment. The Nazi campaign against environ mental carcinogens can be seen as part of this push for preventive racial hygiene. One of the more interesting aspects of this campaign was the move to ban dimethylaminoazobenzene, a widely used coal tar