I was reading my November, 1938, issue of Popular Science when I came across a blurb that said a doctor named Leonell C. Strong discovered a potential cure for breast cancer. That’s exciting news, even in 2018. While the magazine doesn’t actually call it a cure, it does imply that tumors can be halted with this oil derived from wintergreen. At least in dogs.

 

Honestly, even if heptyl aldehyde only worked in dogs to stop tumors, it would have been a big deal, unless it was slowly poisoning the dogs in some other way. Like radium water, another miracle cure from the 1930s.

 

I don’t want to imply that ingesting or injecting heptyl aldehyde will kill you. I don’t know what will happen. I assume the tumor-halting results were not duplicated, unless there’s some kind of conspiracy theory I missed.

 

I guess if my mom or wife had breast cancer, I’d delve more deeply into the possible benefits of heptyl aldehyde. In fact, if you’re here because you or someone you love has any kind of cancer, I am sure you’re looking for anything that has ever worked, and it sure would be amazing if an obscure, two-sentence article in a magazine from 1938 held the key.