Gerson Charlotte - The Gerson Therapy

C harlotte Gerson, the youngest daughter of Max Gerson, M.D., whom he lovingly addressed as Lotte, was an assistant for her father in his work on an almost continuous basis. In the first edition of his book A Cancer Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases, Dr. Gerson thanked her for giving help wherever she could with great interest and understanding encouragement.

Charlotte Gerson was born in Germany and underwent her early schooling there. When her family fled from Germany to Austria as a means of escaping what became the holocaust, Lotte attended school in a suburb of Vienna. Later, upon her fathers moving the Gerson family to France, which he considered safer, she studied French and continued high school under the French educational system. Dr. Gerson practiced medicine in France for only a short period under the licensure of another physician.

Next, the Gersons emigrated to England to escape domination by the French Vichy government. Lotte continued school for a short time in London, where she started to learn English. She received her high school diploma in New York City, where the Gerson family finally felt safe and could settle down. Eventually Dr. Gerson established his medical practice on Park Avenue in Manhattan and at a clinic in Nanuet, a small town located between Suffern and Nyack in upstate New York.

The young woman attended Smith College. She is literate in Spanish, which stands her in good stead since the Gerson Therapy was for close to twenty-five years primarily administered in Tijuana, Mexico, just across the border from San Diego, California.

Charlotte Gerson visits patients who are currently receiving medically supervised Gerson Therapy at the Gerson Therapy Hospital. She consults with these patients doctors, studies their progress toward health, answers many questions from the patients and their companions, lectures on the intricacies of the Gerson Therapy, and offers everyone encouragement.

This charitable and humanitarian effort is natural for Charlotte Gerson, for she was always interested in her fathers work. Even as a young woman her greatest joy involved reading medical literature. She spent much of her free time assisting Dr. Gerson by translating and writing his papers. She listened to and critiqued his lectures to health professionals and medical consumers. Often Charlotte made hospital rounds with her father and acted as one of the medical assistants at his Oakland Manor Cancer Clinic in Nanuet, New York.

In fact, to become a more valuable aide, Charlotte enrolled in and completed a formal course for medical assistants, which qualified her to help in patient nursing work at the Gerson clinic. When Dr. Gerson was absent lecturing, consulting, or on vacation, she carried out his telephoned instructions regarding the clinics patients.

After the young woman married and became Charlotte Gerson Straus, she spent a number of years in her husbands import/export enterprise, which caused her to become familiar with many business techniques. However, the marriage eventually ended in divorce.

When Dr. Gerson died in 1959, Charlotte carried on by publicizing his last, classic book, A Cancer Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases. From public demand and the need to dispose of three thousand copies, she proceeded to lecture on the Gerson Therapy. Such lecturing, locally at first and later nationally, was what gained initial broad distribution for the Gerson title and its healing program.

As a result, Charlotte Gerson has been invited to speak on the Gerson Therapy at several hundred organizations involved with aspects of health. A few of them include:

• The Cancer Control Societyevery year for twenty-five yearsin two California locations, Pasadena and Los Angeles
• The National Health Federationeighteen locations around the United States.
• The Alternative and Complementary Therapies Convention in Arlington, Virginia, put on by the clinical journal publishing house Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., of Larchmont, New York
• International Association of Cancer Victors and Friendsten cities
• Consumer Health Organization of CanadaToronto, Ontario, Canada