Taming the Wart by Colin Haydn Evans
Colin Haydn Evans - Taming the Wart
BBC Radio 4: Afternoon Play
Broadcast: Thursday 17th February 2000 @ 2:15 p.m.
The true story of the discovery - and loss - of a possible alternative cure for cancer.
In the early years of the 20th century, a cure for certain cancers that appear as lumps near the surface of the skin, known as 'wild warts', was developed by two herbalists working in West Wales. John Evans and his brother, Daniel, would provide this 'cure', made with special
herbs and oil, and would sell it to only what people could afford. They wouldn't reveal the make-up of this 'cure' for fear it would be used for profit. John Evans was even offered £45,000 in the early 1900s but refused to sell the formula. The story eventually died down and John passed on the secret to his son on the promise that he'd follow in their footsteps.
In 1950, Derek Wragge-Morley of the 'Picture Post Magazine' gets wind of the story and publishes an article on 100 advanced cancer cases treated by Mr. Rees Evans over the previous 25 years of which there were only two positive failures. The news caused the entire
country to go wild - letters to newspapers, bishops, aunties in New Zealand, and most of all, the government itself. So thoroughly impressed was the Minister of Health by the public enthusiasm that he set up an independent committee of inquiry to investigate the claims of David Rees Evans to having discovered a treatment for cancer.
The committee wanted to know what is the makeup of the 'oil' that Evans and his father and uncle before him used successfully for the treatment of cancer for over 50 years. But Evans doesn't want to reveal which herbs he uses because the committee will either try to discredit it or sell it.
With Andy Hockley [David Rees Evans], Simon Armstrong [Derek Wragge-Morley, Scientific Editor for Picture Post Magazine], John
Hartley [Sir Ernest Rock Carling, Chairman of the Advisery Committee on Cancer and Radiotherapy], Richard Mitchley [Sir Robert
Robinson, President of the Royal Society / Mr. Meredith, a Civil Servant], Dewi Rhys Williams [John Evans, David's Father], and Manon
Edwards [Mrs. Anne Jones, John's Patient].
Directed by Alison Hindell in Wales.
Re-broadcast on Monday 4th November 2002 @ 2:15 p.m.
45 minutes
Jim
