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The word amygdalin literally means “like an almond”, and it was from bitter almonds that two French scientists, Robiquet and Boutron first isolated crystalline amygdalin in 1830.  The substance was being listed in pharmacopoeias by 1834

 This first documented use of a laetrile-like substance in treating cancer is referred to in a French medical publication in 1845. Dr. T. Inosemtzeff, professor of the Imperial University of Moscow, cited two cancer patients who were treated with bitter almond emulsion. Both were successful, one living for 11 years, the other for over three years. It is believed that this was the first time in the modern western world that cancer was treated with a food factor. (the Gazette Medicale de Paris, tome XIII, of September 13, 1845.)

 Born in 1877, Ernst T. Krebs, Sr., earned a medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, San Francisco. Krebs, Sr., though a physician, had also studied pharmacy, and used his spare time in biomedical investigation. Through consulting work related to the testing of the purity of alcohol he noticed that the mold on the edge of the barrel produced enzymes affecting the taste.

 Through association with pharmacologists working in the cancer area he developed the idea that enzymes might be able to digest cancer cells. He made an extract from apricot kernels and had success in reducing cancer in experimental rats.

 His son, Ernst Krebs Jnr, obtained a bachelor’s degree in bacteriology at the University of Illinois and undertook graduate work at several universities earning an honorary doctorate from the University of California. In 1938, he came across John Beard’s 1911 book, The Enzyme Treatment of Cancer. He initially sought to develop the enzyme theory then concentrated on the nutritional factor hinted at by Beard.

 In 1952 he put forward his theory that cancer is essentially a nutritional deficiency disease like scurvy and pellagra. He isolated a purified form of amygdalin for which he coined the term laetrile, derived from shortening the chemical name for the substance. Up until his death in 1996 he fully explored how laetrile works.

 In the 1950’s a number of medical practitioners began to use laetrile theory. What emerged was a fundamental difference in perspective. Laetrilists advocated a new kind of treatment incorporating the whole person, including a change in diet, the use of laetrile and attention to the spiritual and emotional needs of the patient. “Holistic medicine” is to treat the whole person, body, mind and spirit, though laetrile is by no means the only holistic treatment.

 This of course was in total contrast to conventional medicine that sees cancer in terms of a localized malignancy to be treated by synthetic drugs, surgery or radiation. Pharmaceutical companies were opposed to laetrile that could not be patented as it is derived from natural substances.

 With the differences in outlook so stark and clear cut, the following decades saw what many describe as the most intense controversy in modern medical science. The litigation, prosecutions, the attempts to ban laetrile federally and restrict its importation and the medical establishment’s hounding of the advocates of laetrile are described in World Without Cancer, The Cancer Industry (see bibliography) and other sources.

 Another consequence of the conflict is that many thousands of Americans have traveled to Mexico and other countries to obtain treatment they are unable to receive in their own country.