Helen Coley Nauts Monographs

In 1953, in New York City, Helen Coley Nauts—the daughter of cancer immunotherapy pioneer Dr. William B. Coley—founded the Cancer Research Institute (CRI), and in Stockholm, the first installment of Nauts’ momentous monograph series was printed.

Today, we are in the midst of a revolution in cancer care, thanks to decades of research by CRI scientists. But during and after Dr. Coley’s lifetime, the mainstream medical establishment largely wrote off his bacteria-based immunotherapy approach, known as Coley’s toxins. It was his daughter Helen, with no scientific or medical training, who kept alive the flame of cancer immunotherapy.

She compiled information on more than 1,000 people with cancer who were treated with her father’s approach, as well as another 450 who had natural bacterial infections, and worked tirelessly to follow up with them and their doctors as much as possible. By looking at all the cases, when it worked as well as when it didn’t, she sought to identify what factors might make it more successful. What she learned—above all, that in many instances these early immunotherapies led to long-lasting benefits against cancer—she published in this monograph series.

According to Dr. Lloyd J. Old—the father of modern tumor immunology and the founding scientific and medical director of CRI—these “works of high scholarship” are “invaluable encyclopedias of knowledge that record the world’s literature on the subject from antiquity.”

Here, we present them publicly for the first time for their historical and scientific significance.

Two points about Helen’s work in general that should be stressed and applied both to her published and unpublished material:

In the early years, without a medical degree/title, Helen C. Nauts could not get her work published. And, as the New York Cancer Research Institute’s board was not yet fully established, it was felt wisest to publish the monographs by physicians, although she actually wrote or edited them all (with the exception of Monograph #19, authored in consultation with Helen by Stephan Maurer and Klaus F. Kölmel). They were printed under the following names, either alone or in combination: George A. Fowler, MD, Theodore N. Miller, MD, F.A.C.S., Jess T. Nicholson, MD, F.A.C.S., and Louis Pelner, MD.
Helen told me many times that from the 1890s through mid-1930s, when her father, William B. Coley, MD, wrote about his toxins there were “maybe a total of 40 words or so, including conjunctions and articles,” that were available to describe his work. This explains the duplication and/or similarity in the titles of his papers. It was later on, in the mid-twentieth century or so, as the field grew and expanded, that additional words came into play and were incorporated by Helen in her papers. However, essentially the same problem existed for her, as it did in her father’s time, which explains the use and reuse of certain titles.

Memo from Kidgie M. Williams, Assistant to the Founder
RE: Manuscripts/Monographs/Papers/Speeches by Helen Coley Nauts, Founder, CRI
Date: February 16, 2001