9 - The Doctors Catch On

“One striking concept has come out of the Cayce health readings,” Dr. William O. McGarey said, “the concept that each cell has a consciousness of its own. Apparently, Cayce was able to identify clairvoyantly with the consciousness of these cells, to look at every gland, organ, blood vessel, nerve, and tissue from inside the body. His unconscious seemed to communicate with the autonomic nervous system, traveling through the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, which it controlled, into each and every cell.”

The doctor’s lean, sensitive face lit up with interest as he held out a slim finger.

“An uncomfortable cell in this finger might tell Cayce’s unconscious there was pressure on it, and the unconscious would recommend an oil that would soothe and comfort it. All through the body, cells were apparently conveying their message to this remarkable unconsciousness — for even as there are wars between nations, cells war among themselves.”

And in this conflict, there was disease or illness. Like many doctors who had studied the Cayce readings, Dr. McGarey had begun to apply them to patients and was gratified at the results.

“It requires an almost intuitive knowledge, at tunes,” he observed, “for the practitioner to sense when some of these measures may be most effective.”

But many remedies seemed broadly applicable.

McGarey knew Cayce only through reading about him. He was considered a solid practitioner, operating a clinic in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife, Gladys, also an M.D. Like other physicians, McGarey was vexed and saddened when the orthodox didn’t work, left with a sense of helplessness. There was so much about therapy that was a mystery. Recognizing his own shortcomings, the doctor brought into his assault on disease a certain humility.

He did not discount what he had learned at the Cincinnati medical school, or in the training years that followed, but his mind was open. And so as his interest developed in Cayce, he did something about it. He pored over some of the Cayce health readings, studying their results, and out of the health readings of the unschooled mystic, came successful adaptation of some Cayce treatments. McGarey’s greatest luck has been with castor oil packs which have helped reduce sundry abdominal complaints: stomach ulcers, appendicitis, colitis, gall bladder. Conventionally trained, he applied the packs only after more conventional cures failed.

His most remarkable recovery, a la Cayce, was an eighty-year-old woman with an intestinal obstruction. Because of an irritated bowel, he was afraid of gangrene. Surgery was inadvisable because of the patient’s condition. So, as a last resort, he began applying the packs to the abdominal area, which was noticeably distended and sore. Within twenty-four hours, magically, the obstruction had cleared up; within a few days, the patient’s stomach was as flat as a teenager’s, distention and stress clearly removed for the first time in years.

As Cayce had suggested, in cases of hypertension and high blood pressure, he found the packs had a quieting effect in some instances on the autonomic nervous system.

“Apparently by speeding up the lymphatic flow,” he observed, “the packs relieved stress on the sympathetic system, which directly reacts when people get excited or angry, what doctors call the fright-flight symptom.”

Cayce’s treatment usually embraced the whole system, not only specific local areas. After the packs, olive oil was given to clear out the gall bladder and stimulate the liver, stirring an apparent outflow of toxicity via liver, kidneys, skin, lungs. Apparently, the castor oil reduced local toxicity, soothing stiffened arthritic joints and modifying local abcesses.

McGarey’s theory of how the packs worked has been elaborated on elsewhere. Dr. George O’Malley of Galien, Michigan, practicing successfully from the readings, suggested that the castor oil packs beneficially stimulate the lacteals, tiny lymphatic vessels in the small intestines.

“Some authorities,” he said, “suggest that the vital life force of the human organism begins in these cells.”

O’Malley, an osteopath, has been applying the remedies Cayce dredged out of his dreams, since the time a friend impishly gave him a copy of Tom Sugrue’s book, There Is a River, which features the Cayce cures. Intrigued, O’Malley obtained files of Cayce readings on diseases particularly difficult to treat. He noticed that castor oil packs were commonly recommended, as was Atomidine, an iodine derivative. Where an eye specialist had failed, O’Malley reported relieving a corneal ulcer with two drops of Atomidine daily, just as Cayce had recommended.

But his most outstanding successes came with castor oil packs. In one notable case, even as surgeons were planning to operate on a fifty-fouryear-old patient for an abdominal obstruction, O’Malley kept faithfully applying his castor oil packs. When an electrical storm held up the operation, the packs were additionally continued, and then an hour before the rescheduled surgery, the obstruction dramatically cleared up, and the surgery became unnecessary. O’Malley has reported similar success with chronically inflamed gall bladder, chronic stomach disorders, ulcerative colitis, chronic appendicitis, even swelling of feet—all as susceptible to the packs as the obstructions.

From the Cayce readings O’Malley concluded that castor oil packs, absorbed through the skin, served to relieve abdominal congestion due to sluggishness of the lymphatic circulation.

Widely used as a laxative internally, castor oil is sometimes known as Palma Christus—the hand of Christ.

“The action of the castor oil on the skin is twofold,” the doctor found. “It directly stimulates the lymphatic flow through the superficial and deep lymphatic vessels, and strengthens some deep organs of the abdomen.”

O’Malley applied the packs just as Cayce had outlined.

“Three thicknesses of soft flannel soaked in hot castor oil were applied over the abdomen in the area of the liver and gall bladder, extending down over the caecum [right lower quadrant of the abdomen] and appendix. A heating pad or heat lamp was used to retain the heat, with the packs applied three consecutive days each week, for one and a half to three hours per day. They were followed by olive oil taken internally for the next three days.

 

“Apparently,” the doctor theorized, “the olive oil stimulates the increased production of lymph, which acts to decrease the circulatory stasis [stoppage] in most abdominal disfunctions. At the same time, it stimulates the production of lymphocytes, a forerunner in the body-defense mechanism.”

Whatever happened, the relief of ailments which had been troubling people for years was often miraculous.

One day, O’Malley made an emergency call on a middle-aged school teacher, stricken with an apparent heart attack at the dinner table. He soon discovered that she had a history of chonic pain aggravated by injudicious, fatty foods. X-rays revealed an inflamed, nonfunctional gall bladder. Her heart was sound. She was anxious to get back to her classes, as only two weeks of the semester remained.

“Doctor,” she said, “it would please me and my class to finish the year together.”

Castor oil packs were relatively new in the O’Malley armory at this time. He told the teacher about them, and she agreed to give it a try.

“She was instructed to report any adverse symptom at once,” the doctor said, “and keep us up on her progress.”

A week later the husband phoned to report his wife better than in years. The deceptive heaviness in the chest had virtually disappeared. She was to continue the packs for another week. The next report, weeks later, came from the local superintendent of schools, as he mentioned how well the teacher looked as the new term opened. In three months there was no recurrence.

Ulcerative colitis was like a plague to most doctors, difficult to diagnose, difficult to treat. An elderly woman, sixty-six, injured in an auto accident, entered a clinic; the diagnosis was ulcerative colitis, due to trauma and shock. Treated six months, she lost considerable weight, as she was afraid to eat, since it immediately irritated her bowel. When she complained of palpitations, the family feared a heart condition and called in O’Malley.

He immediately prescribed castor oil packs.

“With the first treatment,” he noted, “she began to respond. After three weeks, all the pain had subsided in her abdomen. She began sleeping without medication.”

One of the more rewarding cures, so unexpected, came in treating an eight-year-old girl for a recurring abdominal pain, dating back to a siege of measles. She was operated on for chronic appendicitis, and surgery revealed an old appendix rupture, complicated by an acute abscess. Due to adhesions, the removal of the appendix was difficult, and the child’s condition critical. There was abdominal bloating, vomiting, high temperature.

Antibiotics were not effective. Finally, castor oil packs were used, for an hour at a time, three times a day.

“There was slight improvement during the first twenty-four hours,” O’Malley observed, “but by the third day, the bloating began to subside, and the temperature dropped.”

The packs were continued for twelve days of convalescence.

“It is my conviction,” the doctor recorded, “that the castor oil packs stimulated the body’s defense mechanism, and with the improved circulation, the medication helped to restore homeostasis [equilibrium between cells]. It was of interest to note that an anemia, which the patient had picked up, appeared to respond much better to iron therapy while the castor oil packs were being applied to the abdomen.”

As they relieved congestion, the castor oil packs were helpful also in reducing excrescences such as moles, warts, and cysts, and in psoriasis, gout, and kidney stones. Like McGarey, O’Malley not only profited from treatment of specific cases, but gained a broader concept of what some ailments were all about. The castor oil packs seemed helpful in maladies where a lack of lymphatic circulation resulted in improper removal of “toxins of the body or of the disease.”

This seemed to offer the possibility that the packs might have even broader application.

“In tabulated cases of psoriasis, cancer, and arthritis,” O’Malley observed, “the readings refer to lack of absorption of lymph circulation through the alimentary canal.”

Many healers have pored over Cayce’s remedies for such mystifying ailments as arthritis and cancer, looking for clues that would be therapeutically helpful in their treatment. Many “cures” for arthritis are recorded in the Cayce files, with testimonials years later from those who got well. Cayce approached arthritis on a broad front, understanding what many doctors have only recently come to accept: that arthritis is the body’s—and mind’s—reaction to multiple wrongs and abuses. Scores of readings on this crippling disorder were closely examined by Dr. Henry George III of Wilmington, Delaware, descendant of the noted economist.

In forty-nine of fifty-nine cases under study, Cayce recommended olive oil or peanut oil massage, general osteopathy with special stress to adjustments in the cervical (neck) and low dorsal area in thirty-eight cases. Gold chloride or Atomidine was used in combination with these therapies eleven times; colonic irrigations, cleansing the system some fourteen times. In nine cases, he urged the subjects to improve their mental and spiritual attitude. He was strong on diet, banning large quantities of meat in half the cases and pork in virtually every case. Many were told to avoid white bread, potatoes, fatty foods and grease, encouraged to eat root vegetables. The progress reports were interesting. Twenty-three were cured or improved, eleven found the diversified treatment too complex to follow, two died before they could start the treatment, and the balance couldn’t be located for a report-back.

It was rather absorbing to follow the question and answer process by which Cayce arrived at a dramatic cure. In one pertinent case, the subject was a middle-aged nurse, who had made the rounds of doctors and finally turned to Cayce.

She got right to the point.

“What,” she asked, “is causing the hard places or knots to form on or around the joints of my fingers?”
“The lack of the proper eliminations through the general system,” Cayce said, “and the stimulating of the circulation in the upper dorsal and through the cervical areas [through Osteopathic adjustments] should set up better eliminations through the general alimentary canal.” A diet suggestion: “Add to the diet a great deal of watercress and beet tops.”
Nurselike, she was persistent. “Should anything specific be done for the hard place on the joint of my little finger which is now sore?”
“Application of an Epsom salts pack will bring relief to this area, but the better eliminations set up in the order as indicated [colonies every ten days] will relieve the conditions through the general system.”
There was a war on, and she was an enterprising soul. “Would it be safe—not harmful to my health—for me to donate blood to the Red Cross?”
“Not harmful under the present conditions.”

She threw in still another digressive question.

“What is the best treatment for a bedsore—I ask this for my patient?” Cayce obviously didn’t mind two subjects for the price of one. “The best application as a general condition for such is the use of ichthyol ointment.”

The nurse followed the treatments faithfully, and they worked. The adjustments were made by Dr. Andre Aillaud, an osteopath, of Charlottesville, Virginia, and the patient did the rest Some ten years later, in November 1952, she reported back enthusiastically, both for herself, and the auxiliary patient, with bedsores. “The knots on my fingers cleared up; I gave blood six times during the war years. The bedsore remedy was wonderful; my patient never had any more trouble from sores.” In December 1965, when last checked, the patient was approaching seventy. She was described as “the picture of health.”

Philosophically, Cayce often intrigues the scientists who use him.

“I could give twenty or thirty case histories of arthritis treated by the readings,” reported M.L. Hotten, an osteopath, of Arvin, California, “and indicate good results. But when one starts to use these readings, one cannot help but ask questions about some of the gaps in the information. There is a challenge to the material which we cannot easily ignore. We can scarcely accept health readings, for instance, and ignore the spiritual and psychological overtones. We must not simply use what we want and throw the rest aside.”

Hotten observed the same clinical attitude toward the Cayce readings that he did in determining the best treatment for a patient; he suggested that other practitioners do likewise. Many of the Cayce readings dealt with arthritis, and a survey of the recommended treatment revealed enough similarities for Hotten to arrive at a therapeutic pattern.

“A simplification,” he pointed out, “shows four major steps:
1. Improved circulation through salt packs and baths.
2. Specific massage with certain oils and resinous extracts such as myrrh and peanut oil.
3. Dietary alteration to change the chemical balance and reduce intake of certain minerals. 4. Osteopathic manipulation of the third cervical, the ninth dorsal, and the fourth lumbars; these latter three areas are most often mentioned.”

Like McGarey, he had become convinced that the body was acutely conscious of its own state.

“We know there is a ‘consciousness’ innate in the entity, which is usually termed the subconscious or unconscious. This is usually related to mental activity, but there may be still another type of consciousness at a still deeper level which is sensitive to the state of balance existing in the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.”

Because nobody else could apparently explore this consciousness, the Cayce readings, together with the underlying philosophy, became doubly important. And so Dr. Hotten delved eagerly into Cayce’s conception of the cause of disease, and of healing.

“Is it possible,” Cayce was once asked, “to give information through psychic readings, which will lead to the cure of diseases now known as incurable?”

He replied:

“We find that all conditions existent in physical bodies are produced by that which may be met. There are in truth no incurable conditions. For each ailment is the result of the breaking of a law. Healing will of necessity come when there is compliance with other laws which meet the needs. No healing is perfected without some psychic force exerted. In regard to healing of any kind, the counteracting force, whether operative or medicinal, or self-producing, is nothing more nor less than the active force exerted in psychic force.”

Apparently, this was one reason why Cayce preferred a request from an individual for a health reading. He wanted subjects whose minds were already prepared for help. Just as many skeptics have been converted through exposure to the Cayce readings, Hotten feels that science might learn more about healing if it would but consider ideas foreign to orthodox medical concepts.

“It is really unscientific and dogmatic,” he observed, “to indict any treatment, concept or idea because one thinks it has no value.”

As the arthritic have been helped, so may the cancer-ridden. And just as peanut oil was helpful in arthritis, that was the function of almonds, frequently mentioned by Cayce in cancer therapy.

Cayce often emphasized the vibrations of various substances, and Hotten questioned:

“Is it the vibration of peanut oil, applied once or twice a week, which helps prevent arthritis? What is the vibratory nature of almonds that could alter the physiology of the body so that, for one individual at least, one or two almonds a day would help prevent cancer?”

Hotten was not saying that almonds would prevent or cure cancer. He was just suggesting that the possibility be scientifically explored.

“Now that cancer cells can be grown on synthetic culture media, perhaps the chemical components of almonds could become a subject for such research. Or,” he added with delicate irony, “perhaps this is too simple an idea to appeal to men who are searching for a drug to cure disease, rather than considering the delicate chemical balance probably essential for prevention of disordered physiology.”

The doorway on apparently universal knowledge was not closed to those with open minds. “One man in our time, Edgar Cayce, with deep inner desire and perfected vehicle, was able to be the perfect channel, while in hypnotic trance. Let us not close the door on that channel.” It is easy to see why even the most open-minded doctors were baffled by Cayce. His knowledge of the anatomy, disease and drags was encyclopedic. He was an authority on diet, down to the last calorie and vitamin, and gave minute lists of meals for his subjects.

He not only prescribed the drags, but told how they should be made, just as he once said how a glass of orange juice should be ten minutes in the drinking. His treatments were many-sided. Not only diet and drags, but massage and manipulation and therapeutic baths, all for the same patient; whatever would help. A fully documented report on one of his most outstanding cases was a marvel of detail. Reading it, one wondered how even the most erudite physician could have been so explicit in diagnosis and treatment, not to mention one who had never progressed beyond grade school.

To the sleeping Cayce, the body was a connecting network of blood, muscle, nerves, and bone, and when any of these were out of order, the whole entity, as he described the individual, was out of order. In one instance, the subject was suffering from paralysis of the limbs, and had consulted many doctors without success. He was a man of thirty-five, doomed to invalidism.

Cayce, reading for this man three hundred miles away, whom he had never seen, said the patient was suffering a disturbance in the lower lumbar plexus, affecting coordination of the sympathetic and cerebrospinal nervous systems. With great detail he advised adjustments of the spine, specifying the dorsal and cervical vertebrae, and declaring that the resultingly restored vibration of the bod; would help step up the blood supply and hasten the healing process.

As a supplementary aid, he recommended a concoction of herbs and told how it should be put together. Nobody could have consciously memorized it:

“First, we would take eight ounces of distilled water. To this add garden sage one-half ounce, ambrosia leaves, no; much stems, but leaves—one-quarter ounce.”

 

Then: “Prickly ash and dog fennel, one-quarter ounce, and wild ginseng, one-half ounce.”

 

The directions continued: “Reduce this by simmering, not boiling too strong, to one-half the quantity. Strain, and while warm, add one and a half ounce 85 proof alcohol, with one dram of balsam of tolu cut in same. Then add three minims tincture of capsici. The dose would be half a teaspoonful four times each day, taken about fifteen to twenty minutes before the meals.”

He then minutely described each meal. Breakfast would consist principally of citrus fruits, though gruels might be added, “especially those of the whole wheat, of the oat, or of those where both the gluten from rice and wheat are combined.”

He even directed how the patient should be handled.

“Positive suggestion, in a gentle, quiet, easy way and manner. Blustering will only irritate. To scold, or to be too much of the commanding nature, is to destroy that which may be built up in the body.”

 

There was even a moral, years ahead of its time: “Teach or train the body not only to be good, but to be good for something.”

The first reading for the paralytic occurred in September 1930. To make sure treatments were properly administered, the patient was moved to the then functioning Cayce Hospital on October 6. He remained a patient there until October 24, and then, showing marked progress, was returned to his home to continue the treatment.

The person who had sent him to Cayce noted with satisfaction,

“Doctors have admitted their inability to help, and yet his cure will now be a comparatively fast one.”

His appetite was picking up, he was gaining weight, and beginning to move his limbs, and take a few halting steps. In November, he was walking. He sent the Cayce Foundation a grateful letter on November 17. “I am glad to tell you that I am still gaining. I weigh 170 [a gam of thirty pounds]. I can walk about a mile in a day, but of course I get awfully tired.” His care was supervised by Dr. Theodore J. Berger, a New York osteopath.

On December 1, he had another reading, and the treatment modified because of his improvement. Cayce stressed massage for the reviving circulation. “We would change now to one general Osteopathic treatment each week, and one massage with balsam of sulphur in the lumbar and sacral regions, rubbing thoroughly along the limbs to the knees and ankles, following the course of the muscles rather than the nerves. Greater strength will be gained by the body through this application.” It could be done by any masseur, or by somebody at home, if thorough.

The balsam of sulphur, not too dry, was to be massaged thoroughly,

 “into the lumbar and sacral regions, and along the muscular portions of the limbs, to the feet, ankles, and on to the upper portion of the body, to the hips.”

The general diet was to be maintained, along with outdoor exercise. And then Cayce predicted, “It will be found that earlier than expected the body will be able to return to daily labors.” An interesting sidelight developed, when the subject asked if he should stop smoking.

“If in moderation,” Cayce replied, “does not become harmful to the body.” In February of 1931, a few months after the first reading, the patient was so much better that he asked for a life reading, feeling that if Cayce was so right about the physical he most likely was right about everything else.

Cayce kept to the physical at first. He altered the diet, since the patient was now too heavy.

“Leave off too much starches for the next thirty to forty days. The only character of meat being either kid or lamb; nerve-building meats, no sweets, no butter; taking all foods in as near its natural state as possible, without sugar.

No potatoes of any kind.” The drug intake was tapered off. “When it’s to be filled again, leave off. Decrease in quantity until this is gone.” Then some job advice: return to work at once, in congenial surroundings.

“What kind of work?” the convalescent asked.

“That which has been followed, or found to be more keeping with the nature or tendencies of the body.”

There was one last question. “Any advice regarding mental or spiritual body?”

He was pleasantly reassured. In the discipline of getting well he had also developed spirit and mind.

“As the body has built in the mental force, this recuperation has begun. Keep an ideal and work toward it.”

In May of 1931, the patient was reported fully recovered. The A.R.E. record revealed a letter of gratitude to Cayce from his sister-in-law. “It took a great responsibility off our shoulders. He is fine, working every day and always talking about you.” Six months later, the patient added his own testimonial.
 

His name was not used, but was available, together with this accolade:

“I am writing this letter in appreciation of all you did for me. When I went under your care, I could not use my hands to write, and my legs were partially paralyzed and I could not straighten them out at all. I only weighed 140 pounds. I had been in this condition for six months previous and was gradually getting worse. I was not at the Cayce Hospital one week before I wrote letters home and straightened my legs out and have gradually gained ever since.

I now weigh 184 pounds. Also medical doctors had as much as told me there was no help for my condition. I was able to go to work May 5, 1931, eight months after I started your treatment and have not laid off one day since. When I got home everyone was more than surprised to see me walking as good as ever again. I cannot word this letter to show my appreciation and thank you enough. As you know, when people first hear about a reading they cannot believe in it. I did not at first and I hope others who are sick will let you help them before waiting too long.”

The Cayce concoctions amazed the pharmacists, who had seen nothing like them before. As a young druggist fresh from college in Richmond, Virginia, Milton H. Snyder had knit his brow over the prescriptions of herbs and roots that Cayce had sent into the Virginia Beach pharmacy where he worked.

In one prescription, for instance, the man who had never looked at a medical book or pharmaceutical journal ordered for a patient two ounces of strained honey, brought to a boil in four ounces of distilled water, and then—before it had cooled entirely, but after it had stopped steaming— added: Essence from wild ginseng, tincture of stillingia, essence of wild turnip, essence of wild ginger (made from the herb itself); essence of cinchona bark.”

The directions were explicit:

“Shake the solution before the dose is taken, which would be half a teaspoonful twice each day, preferably before the morning meal and before the time for retiring in the evening. Take the whole quantity.”

In time, Snyder moved from the drug to the jewelry business, operating a shop in Portsmouth, Virginia. However, his thoughts often turned to the eccentric Cayce.

Nobody, he recalled, could have shown more concern for a patient, including an inordinate interest in the mixtures he had specified in his readings, which he referred to constantly.

“He would stand over me in the beginning,” Snyder recalled, “and make sure that I boiled a preparation in an enamel pot rather than metal, so that there would be no danger of contamination.”

There had been no potions like Cayce’s since the Middle Age alchemists, Snyder reckoned, but the roots and herbs were certainly harmless, it not helpful, and he had no compunction about filling them.

“There was no question of Cayce’s sincerity,” he drawled, “he wanted everything just the way it was ordered.”

Had Snyder ever had a reading?

He could recall having one, back in January of 1931, not long before the Cayce hospital closed. He was bothered by a bladder problem and bad headaches, and his employer, S. J. Benstock, had made an appointment for him. Snyder had not been impressed.

“I don’t think he helped me,” he said reflectively, “but he was a nice man, quite unusual.”

“I had understood,” I said, “that his treatments helped practically everybody who did exactly what he said.”
“Well, I don’t remember now what he told me,” Snyder said, “it was quite a time ago, but I finally went over to Charlottesville and some medical doctor fixed me up.” “May I check through your reading?” I asked.
Snyder laughed. “I’d be right curious myself to see what there was.”

It was no problem finding the reading. Snyder had been twenty-four years old at the time. In the file, there was no complaint, no hint of his ailment, just the request for a physical reading. The Cayce reading was rather brief. By and large, Cayce said, the subject was in good shape, organically sound though functioning improperly. He blamed some of his difficulties on the digestive and nervous system, causing at tunes headaches, as well as problems with eyes and throat. At any rate, Cayce had the headaches right.

Additionally, the reading continued, these conditions distributed toxins throughout the system, and produced pressures in various parts of the body. Cayce’s remedy was rather simple, too simple perhaps. He recommended a diet that would combat the “acid forces in the body” and osteopathic adjustments in the cervical and dorsal area, so that the nerve impulses, now under impairing pressure, would function normally.

That was all for the reading, but Snyder had some questions.

“What causes the specific ailment?” “By the creating of a balance in the digestive and assimilating system,” Cayce replied, “we will overcome these disorders. Also those pressures that exist in the lower portion of the system, for these are as of a filling up of the glands themselves.”
I remembered Snyder telling me of a urination problem.
“Are the kidneys in good condition?” That question soon followed. “These are in sympathetic disorder, from the over amount of the pressure produced from the poisons [toxics]. Remove the pressures that produce same, and we will bring the condition to normalcy.” Snyder asked how often the spinal adjustments should be made.
“At least twice each week, until the muscular forces and nerve centers are aligned through the cerebrospinal system.”
Snyder, who had been consulting a doctor, now asked, “Is treatment now being given correct?”
Cayce replied drily, “If it had been, we wouldn’t have changed it.”

Reviewing the reading, it appeared to me that Cayce had been half-right anyway. His diagnosis had been correct, headaches and pressure trouble in the lower areas were certainly applicable to the kidneys. How had he missed?

I got back to Snyder again. He was as affable as before.

A sudden thought had struck me.

“What did the osteopath do for you?” I asked.
“What osteopath?” Snyder said.
“For the adjustments Cayce ordered.”
Snyder’s voice came back pleasantly. “I never went along much with that sort of thing.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s what Cayce suggested.”
“Is that right—well, I remember something like that now. I didn’t put much store by it.”
“Then, you didn’t follow the treatment?”
“I guess not, because I didn’t go to an osteopath, and I didn’t get any adjustments. I just couldn’t see anything like that then.”
Snyder’s voice became almost wistful. “I’d like to know now what one of those osteopaths would say about what Cayce got for me—let me know if you find out?”

A week later, I checked the Snyder reading with Harold J. Reilly. He gave it an expert eye.

“The adjustment that Cayce described,” he said, “could very easily have relieved pressure on the kidneys. That was the area directly affected.”

Cayce’s Universal Mind explored public as well as individual health. In view of current controversy on fluoridation, it seems noteworthy that Cayce opposed indiscriminate fluoridation of the public reservoirs, warning that fluorine could combine dangerously with minerals already there. Cayce first considered the problem in September 1943, when a research dentist asked,

“Is it true, as thought, that the intake of certain form and percentage of fluorine in drinking water causes mottled enamel of the teeth?”

“This, to be sure, is true,” Cayce replied. “But this is also untrue, unless there is considered the other properties with which such is associated in drinking water.”

His sleep voice elaborated,

“If there are certain percents of fluorine with free limestone, we will find it beneficial. If there are certain percents with indications of magnesium, sulphur and the like, we will have, one, mottling; another, decaying at the gum.”

The dentist asked,

“Does too much fluorine cause decay of teeth, and where is the borderline?”

“Read what has just been indicated,” Cayce said.

“It depends upon the combinations, more than it does upon the quantity of fluorine itself.”

Still, an over-supply of fluorine could bring on an adverse chemical reaction within the body, manifested chiefly in the teeth.

“But, to be sure, too much fluorine in the water would not make so much in the teeth, as it would in other elements of activities which may be reflected in teeth; not as the cause of same but producing a disturbance that may contribute to the condition.”

Cayce repeated his admonition about magnesium and sulphur in combination with fluorine, adding another warning about excessive iron deposits. “Where there is iron or sulphur or magnesium, be careful!”

In a rather remarkable passage, considering he had no conscious knowledge of the fluoridation problem, Cayce briefly reviewed the natural appearance of fluorine in water, pointing out that in its beneficial state it could serve as a safety control in artificially fluoridating drinking water.

“There are areas within the United States,” he said, “as in some portions of Texas, portions in Arizona, others in Wyoming, where the teeth are seldom decayed. [And where fluorine safely occurred.] Study the water there, the lack of iron or sulphur or the proportions of sulphur.”

Cayce stressed that the success of any fluoridation experiment hinged completely on the properties of the water to which the fluorine was to be added.

“There are many sections where fluorine added to the water, with many other chemicals, would be most beneficial. There are others where even a small quantity added would be very detrimental. Hence it cannot be said positively that this or that quantity should be added save in a certain degree of other chemicals (forming a beneficial combination) being combined with same in the drinking water.”

He picked out spots in central Texas, northwestern Arizona, and around Cheyenne, Wyoming, where fluorine combined with other natural elements to offset tooth decay. However, supplementary water pumped in from other areas could alter this natural therapy.

“Where there have been contributions from other supplies of water, there will be found variations in the supply of magnesium and other chemicals—as arsenic and such—and these cause destruction of the teeth.”

Asked the best way of protecting teeth, Cayce said iron balance was of primary importance.

“Keeping the best physical health of the body and protecting it from iron or iron products that may become a part of the body-physical in one manner or another. These (iron deposits) are needed, but when their proportions are varied from normal, the teeth do not show the proper relationships, when you lose that quantity of iron needed.”
“What other factors are there,” the dentist inquired, “that control and have an effect on mottled enamel and decay of teeth?”
The empirical Cayce replied, “The general health of the body and the chemical processes that are a part of the digestive system, the process of digestion, the chemical processes through same, and the blood stream.”
The dentist went back to fluoridation. “Should drinking water in certain localities be prepared with a percentage of fluorine for prevention of decay and for preventing mottled enamel in the teeth? If so, how and where?”

Again Cayce stressed that the value of fluoridation depended entirely on the type of water fluoridated.

“This would have to be tested in the various districts themselves, much as has been indicated. There’s scarcely an individual place in Ohio that wouldn’t be helpful, for it will get rid of and add to that condition to cause a better activity in the thyroid glands; while, for general use, in such a district as Illinois (say in the extreme northern portion) it would be harmful. These [possible fluoridation] would necessarily require testing, according to the quantities of other conditions or minerals or elements in the water.”

As remarkable as Cayce was, not all Cayce patients were satisfied. Indeed I had met one, a psychic researcher, who was downright unhappy about the treatment he had received. Even now, twenty-five years later, he argued that Cayce was a fake.

“The treatment nearly killed me,” he told me, with fire in his eyes. “Cayce didn’t know what he was doing.”

As I had already talked to numbers of people miraculously helped by Cayce, I suggested that something may have inadvertently misfired.

“Perhaps,” I said, “you didn’t do everything you were supposed to do.”

My dyspeptic friend had been a victim of ulcers.

“I did what it said I should,” he growled. “Cayce sent me to a chiropractor with my ulcers, and he practically killed me.”

“Maybe,” I suggested, “the chiropractor didn’t do what he was supposed to do.”

The directions were often complex and an error conceivable. It had happened more than once. Be sides that, there was always an allowable margin of error, the claim being that Cayce was right at least 97 percent of the time on his physical readings, a remarkable average if it checked out. The researcher eyed me darkly.

“Don’t buy that tommy-rot,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for the doctors I wouldn’t be here today.”

Subsequently, I saw where my friend had chosen to criticize Cayce to a reporter, who had added a criticism of he own, about the fees exacted by the Cayce people. The las attack was patently absurd, since there is no charge for treatment at the Cayce Foundation today, and no treatment! In view of the charge, I decided to check back on the questioned reading. It was all in the A.R.E. files in Virginia Beach. The original reading was given on November 2, 1938. Cayce found that the researcher, then forty, had “a great deal of disturbance through the stomach, duodenum and throughout the intestinal system.”

The subject didn’t have ulcers yet, but was apparently on the verge. That was pretty good diagnosis, I thought, since Cayce only had a name and address.

“There has not been produced as yet lacerations or ulcerations in the pyloric end of the stomach,” Cayce said ominously, “but there is more of a catarrhal condition in the duodenum and the pylorus.”

He recommended a balanced diet:

“Not too much white bread, not too much of meats, and never fried foods.”

My friend, like myself, was of a choleric temperament, a researcher’s syndrome, it seems, and Cayce suggested,

“Whenever there is great anxiety or stress, do not eat, especially raw apples nor bananas nor fruits of that nature which are acid-producing.”

Additionally, he recommended hydrotherapy, a colonic irrigation, and electrotherapy treatment,

“for stimulation to the system especially across the stomach, the diaphragm and the centers in the cerebrospinal system from which the organs of assimilation and digestion receive their impulse.”

I kept checking through the file. Four days after the first reading, my friend, duly grateful, had written Cayce that the reading “was remarkable and agreed in every way with the diagnosis of my physician.”

He commented,

“I have suffered great pain for some weeks, as you reported, due to partial closing of pylorus valve under nervous tensions.”

He approached treatment hopefully. A month later, I noted, poring over the file, that he still didn’t report much relief. There was a request for a check reading, with Cayce asked to be more specific: “How much electrotherapy—what kind?”

On December 23, 1938, Cayce gave a second reading, pointing out that “there is still some regurgitation from the duodenum to the stomach through the pylorus.”

He recommended more hydrotherapy, but cautioned against the electrotherapy.

“Not too strong with the electrical forces that have been applied. These have been somewhat severe. Use the same kind, but not so high, so much.”

Three weeks later, on January 17, 1939, my friend wrote Cayce, asking for another check reading.

“You certainly are being grand and most helpful to me.” He asked: “Is former suggested treatment advisable at this time?”

Cayce, disapproving of the electrotherapy as it was being given, ordered its discontinuance.

“The reactions that cause almost an extra flow of blood, or hemorrhage,” he said, “arises from too great a quantity of the electrical forces.”

However, he suggested osteopathic adjustments, and a new therapist My friend was again impressed. Cayce, rather remarkably, had correctly visualized what had happened, though at no time did he meet the patient, who was in New York City all through this exchange.

“Your check reading was excellent,” my friend confirmed. “I had a hemorrhage about two weeks ago, and apparently another one before that while on the table taking a too drastic electrical treatment”

He had now returned to his own doctor, who was sympathetic to the readings and wanted a test reading himself.

“Your own readings,” my friend continued, “have been amazingly accurate and to the point—above all frank—even to censuring certain well-intentioned treatments given. They have also been most helpful.”

My friend now asked for a life reading, and an appointment was made. Two weeks later, he again reported on his condition.

“I’m feeling much better. Had a series of X-rays which confirmed report in your readings. Also confirmed your statement that hemorrhage was caused by too severe electrical treatment.”

My friend was bitterly critical of the therapist, but had only praise for Cayce.

“The ulcerated condition [another confirmation] was present, but with proper treatment a hemorrhage could have been averted, as your readings indicated.”

There was an exchange of friendly letters the next few years between my friend and the Cayces, and then in 1952, seven years after the mystic’s death, came the first indication of criticism.

“I did not blame Edgar Cayce at the time,” he wrote. “I blamed myself for having blindly followed the reading without double-checking.”

If anything had gone wrong—which it obviously had—it seemed clear it had gone wrong in the application of the therapy, always a possibility, at any clinic, hospital or health service, where human frailty must be considered.

The criticism, where there once had been only praise, intrigued me.

“Do you know my friend?” I inquired of a Cayce intimate.
He nodded. “Yes, and I like him.”
“Do you remember his case?”

He hesitated a moment.

“It is my recollection that Cayce recommended electrotherapy, and the therapist may have been more severe than he should have been.” He looked up with a smile. “But I hadn’t thought he blamed Cayce, since he wanted very much to do a book about Cayce later, but Tom Sugrue got to do it instead.”

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10 - The Incurable Diseases

The Cayce file on cancer has been well-thumbed, and the various therapies purifying the system given considerable attention. However, one method of treatment advanced by Cayce made even the faithful wonder. For Cayce, of all things, advocated the use of a serum prepared from the blood of the rabbit. True, this was done in only five cases out of the seventy-eight that he diagnosed as cancer, but it was still rather bizarre.

He apparently recommended the rabbit in instances of glandular cancer, of the thyroid, the breast. In two or three cases, he suggested that the rabbit be freshly skinned, and the raw side, still warm with the blood of the animal, be placed against the affected area, in this case the breast of a woman. In one reading, back in 1926, for a cancer patient in New York, he was quite explicit about the use of the rabbit, both for external and internal application.

He had been asked,

“Should the fur be put on with the raw side next to the body?” and he answered, “With the fur side out, for the animal heat will add.”

And then he gave a description of how an anti-cancer serum should be produced,

“or there may be prepared a serum from the infusion from the pus from this body, injected into the rabbit between the shoulder, and when this brings the infection, this injected or placed on the sore will heal. Or the culture of same may be made and injected in the blood of this body.”

Four years later, he read for a cancerous woman, recommended the rabbit serum, and gave directions for its manufacture. In the question period immediately following the main reading, he was asked, “Through whom may this serum be obtained?”

And he replied, “Hasn’t been made yet”

“How can this be made?”

Answering, he added cattle to the rabbit as a potential vaccine source.

“This should be drawn off—that is the wolve [or wolf of the rabbit]—punctured by a hypodermic. This drawn off, and then a culture made into the flesh of the same animal from which it’s drawn, whether beef or hare. Then the culture applied to the human body, or blood drawn and a culture made for the human body and then applied to the body.

 

There must necessarily be experimentations, with the proper heat, the proper precautions taken as to the character of cell as is destroyed in the culture made, and in the activity of the animal as well as human when being used. But for this character of the condition [apparent breast cancer], this would be most effective in at least fifty percent of such ills.”

Cayce was dead more than twenty years when a startling announcement was carried on the front pages in April of 1966: A team of doctors at Wayne State University in Detroit reported an apparent cure for cancer, a serum formed from the blood of rabbits and the patient’s own cancer cells. It was apparently just what Cayce had anticipated; particularly noteworthy was his warning of “proper precautions taken as to the character of cell.”

Only twenty patients had been treated with the rabbit serum, so the American Cancer Society wisely warned against raising false hopes. Those treated with the new technique were all terminal cases. Still, the research team headed by Drs. Paul L. Wolf and Norbert Czajkowski, reported two complete recoveries, and “stabilization or retardation of tumor growth” for eight. The remaining ten died. Total regression came in a case of breast cancer and of cancer of the skin of the jaw. Arrested were cancer of the skin, lung, and pancreas.

The Detroit doctors had begun their research project four years before.

“The technique,” the New York Times reported, “is one of tricking the cancer patient’s body into recognizing his cancer as foreign matter, and thereby triggering the immune-system to fight it off.”

The process was akin to that described by Cayce.

“The patient’s tumor is removed. The tumor cells are then chemically linked to a foreign protein, gamma globulin, from the blood serum of the rabbits. The gamma globulin-tumor cell combination is injected into the patient at intervals of several weeks.”

The New York Herald Tribune reported that,

“Dr. Wolf set about attaching the patient’s own cancer cells to a derivative of rabbit blood. He [Wolf] got the cancer by cutting away some of the patient’s own disease and breaking it up into individual cells. After treating the cells with the rabbit blood and a Unking chemical, he injected the complex mixture back into the patient.”

And so Cayce had indicated. In the blood of the patients so treated, the medical team detected antibodies against the particular cancer.

“Dr. Wolf hoped that if he could produce an allergy to cancer, that is, antibodies against the cancer, as the body sometimes does against penicillin, he might have a chance of killing off the cancer. He knew, too, that it was possible to stimulate antibody production to an ‘innocent’ chemical by attaching that chemical to a protein totally foreign to the body.”

One of the problems, as Cayce had pointed out in other cancer readings, was that the cancer cell was an uncontrolled growth of normal-like cells; it hoodwinked the body’s immune system into thinking they had a right to be there.

“In these patients,” the Times reported, “the body’s immune system does not recognize the tumor tissue as foreign and does not produce antibodies against it.”

With heightened interest I turned to the Cayce file on cancer. What else did Cayce recommend, and how far-fetched did it seem? Would science take another twenty, thirty to fifty years to painstakingly discover what he only had to go to sleep to learn?

On the cancer file was a warning that the extracts “are not to be used as a prescription for the treatment of a disease” by the layman. However, the information was available to licensed physicians, if any wanted to use it.

Some of Cayce’s readings on cancer were given fifty years ago, the last more than twenty years ago, when relatively little was known of the consuming disorder. In all, Cayce gave 360 readings on cancer, for 78 sufferers, and since his own death these have been consolidated to present an over-all picture of the deadly malady. Cayce said there were many kinds of cancer, nineteen variations, externally and internally, arising from glandular or organic disturbance, or from infectious forces arising from bruises.

Long before the modern concept of cancer, he described the difference between benign and malignant growths.

“Ulcer is rather that of flesh being proud or infectious, while cancer is that which lives upon the cellular force by the growth itself.”

The dread sarcoma, he said, was “caused by breaking of tissue internally which was not covered sufficiently by the leukocyte [germ-killing white corpuscles] due to the low vitality in the system.” Not necessarily hereditary, tendencies were passed on and blood descendants should build up their blood plasma.

In some cancer, he recommended mercury-type ultraviolet ray, refracted through green glass; often combined with a substance known as Animated Ash, taken in water. He urged also two ounces of beet juice, the beets cooked in patapar paper so that the salts and juices were retained. With his therapy Cayce expounded a whole broad concept of cancer origin, linked to toxics overloading the system. The ultraviolet, applied from the upper dorsal to the lower spine, “will produce in the blood stream that which is as the strainer, or eliminator, of the dregs of used tissue.”

He explained what he meant by used tissue: “Each portion of the system uses so much vitality; this [becomes] as used tissue, just as the corpuscles in the blood stream become used.” Normally, there were accumulations of such tissue in bruised areas, but it was either eliminated or so walled in by white blood cells as to contain any potential damage to the body. Many have found interesting what he had to say about X-ray therapy. He found the ultraviolet through green-glass preferable because “green is the healing vibration,” more effective even than the penetrating X-ray that “destroys tissue, but not being enabled to eliminate that destroyed tends to come back upon itself after certain radiations.” la other words, destroyed tissue, too, became noxious “used tissue.”

Cayce was a chronic pioneer. In 1929, the Animated Ash-Carbon Ash was first suggested for a woman with cancer. A friend, seeking information on how to make it, was told:

“Where carbon is used in a near vacuum, if the residue produced by combustion [in a mercury quartz arc lamp] were to be saved, it would prove to be a product which, taken internally, would be more valuable than water treated by radium.”

The friend experimented with the ash, manufacturing it until his death ten years later.

“The product,” he reported, “is secured by taking bamboo fiber and passing a powerful electric current through it to secure partial combustion. The value of the resulting power lies evidently in a vibration in a manner similar to the activated foods being produced by German scientists.”

Vibrations were generally electrical vibrations; they reflected the health and vitality of the individual. And Cayce again was decades ahead of his time, learned professors only recently finding the human body one big magnetic field.

“Life in its expression in a human body,” he said, “is of an electrical nature. The vibrations from low electrical forces, rather than the high vibrations [which have destroyed tissue in this case] produce life-flowing effects.”

For both sarcoma and melanoma tumors, he advised special purifying foods, in keeping with his concept of cancer as a by-product of cumulative waste.

“Live mostly for a while,” he told one victim, “on watermelon, carrots, beets, having these almost daily.” He explained, “The watermelon is for the activity of the liver and kidney, the beets and carrots for the purifying of the blood, as combined with plantain tea and ointment.”

Both the tea and the ointment were to be made from the tender top leaves of the plantain plant, the ointment drying up “warts or moles that become infected and sore, and run,” the tea purifying internally.

An ounce of prevention was clearly worth a pound of cure. Cayce frequently cited the almond as a preventive.

“A form of vitamin may be obtained from certain nuts—as the almond—that would be helpful as a preventive.”

Elsewhere he was more specific. “And if an almond is taken each day, and kept up, you’ll never have accumulations of tumors or such conditions through the body. An almond a day is much more in accord with keeping the doctor away, especially certain types of doctors, than apples.” The almond moved him to poetry:

“For the apple was the fall, not the almond; the almond blossomed when everything else died.”

Almonds were a recurring theme. Somebody once asked if he should resume peanut oil rubs. Cayce replied:

“Nothing better. They supply energy to the body. And just as a person who eats two or three almonds each day need never fear cancer, those who take a peanut oil rub each week need never fear arthritis.”

Another gem was similarly tucked away:

“Also there may be obtained from the turtle egg those influences for longevity that may be created in certain cellular forces in the body.”

Since Cayce’s diagnoses were often unconfirmed, medically, skeptics argued that his cancer “cures” might have been for anything from hysteria to hiccoughs. However, authenticated “cancers” did come to him from doctors, and were helped, according to follow-throughs made over the years by the A.R.E. One such patient, a middle-aged woman, had been referred by a woman doctor, who thought that massive surgery, recommended by other doctors, would be disastrous.

As usual, Cayce gave his reading without seeing the subject, in December 1937.

“While the conditions are very well understood, the causes, and that which would counteract, are not.”

He identified the cancer, and its nature.

“This we find is a sarcoma, an insidious condition, that is feeding upon the lymph and the blood circulation.”

He described a sort of tug-of-war between the cancer and the system’s natural resistance.

“Yet there is in the system that which has at times gained upon the rebuilding and replenishing system, and at other times the disturbing factors or humor in the cellular destruction, which in its distribution [through the body] have gained upon the physical forces of the body.”

He traced the origin of this particular cancer.

“They [the cancer] arose first, primarily, from too much of meats that carried an infectious force and that, working with the mammary glands, produced, through irritation, and through the breaking down of cellular forces, the beginning or hardening in those glands in the breast.”

From there, as he explained it, the cancer drained into the system, with various nodules, or little lumps arising in the breakdown of certain cellular forces in the lymph, in turn affecting the blood stream.

With all this, there was a weakening of the organs. Cayce recommended for this particular cancer a course of treatment stimulating the natural resistance forces of the lymph, and improving both circulation and elimination.

“Stimulate those centers in the cerebrospinal system, that make for the drainages from the lymph through the eliminating systems.”

This was to be done through electrical therapy, of a low vibratory force. Then:

“At least once a week give a maximum amount of atropine, giving it through the electrical anodes [wet cells] attached to the ninth dorsal plexus and to the lacteal duct (where the lymph forms) and umbilicus center (the navel). The current should not pass through the area for more than a minute in the beginning. The atropine taken vibratorially in this manner will stimulate the resistances in the lymph, from which arises [the stress was Cayce’s] that producing the breaking of cells in the body, thus destroying their effective activity within themselves.”

There was a delicacy of treatment.

“The maximum amount of the atropine, though it may be begun with the minimum amount in the anodes. Take the vibration, not injections, for the age or conditions would prevent the injections from working with the lymph.”

The disorder was attacked on other fronts. Cayce suggested a purifying, low-carbohydrate diet, which the most recent physician had already prescribed. Again he stressed the importance of elimination.

“This should bring much nearer normal conditions, and with proper precautions, without infectious forces or cold or congestion or other conditions arising, should bring relief.”

In other words, cancer was an affliction connected with the body’s general condition.

“When may improvement begin?” he was asked.
“During the first cycle, within twenty-seven days.”

A week later Cayce expressed the humility he felt about his gift in a letter to the referring doctor.

“There is little use in trying to comment on the information,” the waking Cayce said. “It speaks for itself. Hope you will find it in some ways at least in keeping with good judgment”

In six weeks, the sleeping giant received a report from the treating doctor.

“As soon as I could get the machine working [the wet cell appliance], I carried out the instructions. The patient felt almost immediately that the treatment was helpful. We really feel that the case is progressing exceedingly well and I am hopeful of a complete cure.”

She added a grateful footnote.

“I am most happy in feeling that I am, in a sense, working with you.”

Six months after the initial reading the patient asked for a check reading. Miraculously, she felt better than she had in years.

“At the present time,” she wrote, “I am feeling far better and am grateful for your suggestions to the doctor, to whom enough praise and credit cannot be given for her faithful and untiring efforts in bringing about a most marvelous cure in a potentially incurable case.”

She had a number of questions for Cayce:

“How much of the cancer condition is left in bloodstream at the present time? Are further injections of atropine advisable? Has the malady affected any organs or internal parts? If so, what course of treatment is advised? Will there be a recurrence of the disease at any future time? If so, how will it manifest itself?”

Cayce’s check reading was to the point.

“There are great improvements in the general physical forces of the body. The infectious forces have been eliminated. However, there are still inclinations or tendencies. The system in combating same will need more of the vibratory forces that have assisted in eliminating those causes of disturbance.”

Treatments with the electrical appliance could be gradually eased, then eliminated, The atropine could be discontinued, unless there was a feeling of irritation in the lymphatic circulation. But until the patient felt fully recovered, she was not to extend herself physically or expose herself to mental strain.

Cayce had not specifically commented on the question regarding a recurrence. It was put to him again. His reply was rather conditional.

“This depends altogether upon the amount of irritation, or how well the elminating is completed before there is a resuscitation of the condition.”

The tendency lingered, but once the condition was knocked out, and the health forces built up, so that there was a normal balance in the system, the patient would be over the hurdle. It all seemed to work. Four years later, the cancer had not reappeared, and the patient, apparently fully recovered, had moved to sunny California. Repeatedly, Cayce stressed there was nothing incurable provided one got to the primary cause.

There was no point to treating symptoms. I had discussed Cayce’s healing philosophy with a dear friend in Los Angeles, a voice teacher, who had suffered from the disfiguring skin disorder of psoriasis most of his life. The disorder had marred his personality, giving him an inferiority complex with accompanying defensive ness and insecurity.

Sometimes, he wore long sleeve shirts even in the warmest weather to hide the angry red scales or his arms; other times—when his resentments got the better of him—he wore clothing which displayed the inflamed sores to their greatest disadvantage. It was a way of showing he didn’t really care. But one way or the other, it was obvious he was never very far emotionally from his affliction.

“It doesn’t really matter,” he told me once sardonically. “I am a fat old man, and nobody would love me anyway.”

Psoriasis was one of the first things I looked for in the Cayce readings. I had stumbled through a thin file on the skin disorder, when somebody mentioned that a local osteopath had been treating psoriasis successfully from the dead psychic’s readings.

I made plans to see the osteopath, Dr. Olis M. Wakefield, a respected practitioner, who had relieved my own sciatica three years before with a series of simple adjustments. Meanwhile, I turned back to Cayce on psoriasis. One reading was for a twenty-five-year-old woman, bothered with the disorder for years.

Her mother, a naturopathic physician, had asked Cayce:

“What is the cause of psoriasis? What remedies will cure it, or what kind of treatments will do the work? How long will it take until complete cure [of daughter] is effected?”

The mother came to the obvious conclusion:

“If you can give this reading, it will not only help our daughter but many others afflicted with the same condition, for which medical science apparently has not found a cure.”

As usual in health readings, Cayce got quickly to the point, picking out conditions of a complex nature leading to incoodination in the eliminating system.

“While there is the thinning of the walls of the small intestines and there are poisons absorbed through the system that find expression in the attempt to eliminate through superficial circulation, we find that there are pressures also existing in the areas of the sixth, seventh dorsal that upset the coordination of circulation through the kidneys and liver. These contribute to the condition causing the abrasions which occur as red splotches or spots at times.”

He suggested osteopathic adjustments, twice a week, for three weeks, and then gradually spread out.

“There should only be required about twelve adjustments, if properly made, coordinating the muscular forces in areas where the sympathetic and cerebrospinal systems coordinate in the greater measure.”

After six osteopathic treatments, he recommended a compound prepared with equal tablespoons of sulphur, Rochelle salts, cream of tartar.

 “Take a teaspoonful every morning, either in water or dry on tongue, until the whole quantity has been taken.”

Other recommendations followed:

“Then begin with yellow saffron tea, a pinch in a cup of boiling water, allow to stand for thirty minutes, strain and drink each evening when ready to retire. Occasionally, about two or three times a week, drink elm water, a pinch of ground elm [between thumb and forefinger] in a cup, filled with warm water [not boiling water]. Stir thoroughly and let set for thirty minutes. Drink this preferably in morning rather than at the period when the saffron is taken.” There was some diet advice. “Eliminate fats, sweets, and pastries. Do have a great deal of fruits and vegetables.”

The mother inquired if psoriasis always had the same origin.

“No,” Cayce replied, “more often from the lack of proper coordination in the eliminating systems. At times, the pressures may be in those areas disturbing the equilibrium between the heart and liver, or between heart and lungs. But it is always caused by a condition of lack of lymph circulation through alimentary canal and by absorption of such activities through the body.”

The reading was given in April 1944, and I read along rapidly to see how the patient fared. Unfortunately, the girl never followed the treatment. Years later, the mother reported in response to a followup query,

“The reading was never carried out. She went to two osteopaths, and they both made fun of it, so she quit.”

Cayce had better luck with his second psoriasis patient, a woman, twenty-eight. The diagnosis was similar.

“The conditions that exist through the thinning of the walls of the intestines allow the poisons to find expression in the lymph circulation, producing the irritation to and through the epidermis itself. Through the warm weather these show the tendency for greater activity in the perspiratory system, causing greater irritations.”

Again Cayce prescribed the yellow saffron tea, but alternated this with mullein tea, gathered fresh.

“Use an ounce of the flower and leaf of the mullein to a quart of boiling water. Let this steep as ordinary tea, and it may be kept for a period of a week, provided it is put in the ice-box or kept very cold.”

He also recommended treatments externally.

“In the evenings when the bath is taken, we would apply Cuticura ointment followed by Resinol, both applied, you see, one following the other. Apply these especially over the areas of the abrasions. Do not apply it in the hair, but around the edges, and on all other portions of the body where the skin is irritated.”

His dietary advice was a little more complex than before as there was an obesity complication.

“Cut down on the foods that give the great quantity of calories, increasing those that give the greater vitamin content, especially B-l and B-4, as in all foods that are yellow in color. Yellow corn meal made in bread, cakes, mush or the like; carrots both raw and cooked; yellow peaches, let these be practically the only sweets taken.”

He advised repeated use of grape juice, prohibited carbonated beverages and sugar. After the saffron and mullein teas had been used for three weeks, he suggested holding an ultraviolet ray rod applicator in each hand for about three minutes at a tune, to step up electrical vibrations. With all this went “patience, persistence, and right thinking also.”

The woman began the treatment at once. In a week, she responded with a happy testimonial.

“I just can’t tell you how much better I feel, body and mind. The places on my body are fading away and I have lost seven pounds in six days.”

There was a progress report five months later:

“The psoriasis condition cleared up completely, except in places of scalp; there was some flareup, when careless of diet.”

I was now ready for Dr. Wakefield. I recalled Wakefield as a down-to-earth practitioner, with one of the busiest practices on the Virginia cape. He was a tall, spare, yet ruggedly built man, reminding one of a middle-aged Gary Cooper. He had just returned from a Rotary Club meeting, and was preoccupied with detail work as president of the Virginia Osteopathic Medical Association. He soon made clear his own views.

“If something helps a patient, even if the treatment is not medically authenticated, I am for it. After all, my chief concern is helping people, not establishing the superiority of one concept of medicine over another.”

Recently, he had had some luck with psoriasis, clearing up the scales of a twenty-two-year-old college student, son of a prominent Virginia Beach attorney, who had vainly consulted specialists around the country. The treatment had come out of the Cayce readings, and in a strange way, as Wakefield recollected. In April 1962, a patient walked in with angry red scales on his knees and elbow. It was a clear-cut case of psoriasis, as to both location and appearance.

The patient was Lewis Love, an engineer. Dr. Wakefield told him he was suffering from psoriasis, adjusted his spine, and prescribed a mercury ointment. Spinal adjustments were helpful, but provided only temporary relief. In all his experience, Wakefield had never before cured a case of psoriasis. Love left, and he heard no more from him. Eight months later, in January 1963, the patient returned to the office, this time for treatment for a shoulder dislocation.

As he examined him, gently probing his body, Wakefield looked up with a start. Love’s knees and elbow, he suddenly realized, were completely clear.

There was not a mark of any kind on him.

“What happened to your psoriasis?” the doctor asked.
Love smiled enigmatically. “It’s cured.”
Wakefield fairly beamed. “You mean the treatment did that?”
Love shook his head. “I never tried your treatment.”

Instead, knowing now what he had, he had gone to the A.R.E. library and studied the readings on psoriasis. He had then used the Cuticura soap and the Resinol on his skin, and taken the yellow saffron and mullein teas. Almost immediately, the scales had begun to disappear. The next day, the open-minded osteopath was running through the Cayce psoriasis file himself. And soon, with startling results, he began to apply the Cayce treatment. Where patients followed the treatment faithfully, relief was nearly always immediate and total.

The osteopathic adjustments helped, the osteopath meanwhile noting that Cayce’s recommended adjustments so often named the third cervical and the ninth dorsal, at which point the spinal nerves branched off to major glands.

“Apparently,” Wakefield said, “stimulation of the glands was vital to the Cayce therapy.”

It was four years later now, and I wondered how the Cayce therapy had stood up. And so I phoned the Love home. His wife answered.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “Lewis isn’t troubled anymore, except for an occasional flareup, when he gets in a swivet. I suppose what happens then is that he builds up an overload of toxics, and they permeate through the thin walls of the intestines, like Cayce said, and show up on his skin, where his weakness obviously lies.” She laughed. “But he keeps calm, since he knows what’s good for him.”

What had Cayce said? Right-thinking. That appeared to be the antidote for a variety of human ailments.

Though he never came up with anything like a Salk vaccine (so far as anybody knows), Cayce was also ahead on poliomyelitis, advancing the fortified-blood concept of gamma globulin, as well as recuperative manipulation and massage.

In May 1934, he gave an emergency reading for a ten-year-old girl at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Without being told anything of her condition, he diagnosed it as infantile paralysis, discussing the “wasting of those centers of bulb gland or plexus forces along the spine, attacking principally the locomotory centers.”

As part of the therapy, he recommended a “transfusion from a body that has been cured or relieved of that known as infantile paralysis.” In other words, years before its introduction, he was advocating gamma globulin to step up the body’s resistance to the infection. Because of the girl’s critical state, he sent a telegram listing the treatment There was internal as well as external medication.

“Give three to five drops Atomidine thrice daily,” he advised. “Begin immediately massaging not too briskly but to redden skin from base brain downward on, not upward, even on lower limbs with compound as follows, adding ingredients in order named: Russian White Oil, two ounces, oil of cedar wood one-half ounce, oil of mustard twenty minims [drops], tincture of benzoin one ounce, oil of sassafras three minims.”

His directions were explicit: “Shake well each tune, massaging what will absorb once daily or oftener if suffering continues.” If a fever continued, he recommended the transfusion of the built-up blood.

The doctors in New York had meanwhile diagnosed the child’s ailment as spinal meningitis, whose symptoms are often similar to polio. Cayce’s recommendations were resisted, though the child lay dying, without any other help forthcoming.

The end with all its pathos was related by a family friend, who had handled the request for a reading. Ironically, a transfusion was effected, but of normal blood. “I got to the hospital at 3 P.M.” the Mend reported. “It took me until 8 P.M. to get the doctors to give the Atomidine, and to allow the rubbing, but only a transfusion of ‘pure blood’ was given. She passed away at 9:15 P.M., one hour later.

I was sorry that you didn’t get the reading for the little girl sooner. She was beautiful; ten years old, sick nine weeks, and looked just like Alice in Wonderland. They [the family] all appreciated your [Cayce’s] willingness and aid, but it’s almost impossible where doctors are so arbitrary.” Actually, the child had little chance, as Cayce had said it would take from twenty-four to thirty-six hours to respond to his treatment. Too little, too late, a familiar story.

Of late, Cayce has been getting more attention from the doctors than he did when alive. Quietly, many physicians have delved into his readings, searching for clues to conditions which resist orthodox therapy. Only recently an enterprising young physician affiliated with the Harvard University faculty studied extracts from the Cayce record on such incurables as epilepsy, leukemia, and multiple sclerosis, and summarized the Cayce-given etiological or causative factors and treatment program. His abstracts in no way implied approval of the Cayce approach, but were an effort to see whether a pattern could be worked out which would lend itself to large-scale medical research. The doctor reviewed ninety-five cases of epilepsy.

In a majority, he found lesions (impairing injuries) of the lacteal duct (supplying the lymphatic vessels) and the spine given as the basic cause.

“The lesions in the spinal segments and the lacteal duct lesion,” he observed, “produced what was described as an incoordination between the cerebrospinal and the autonomic nervous system. From this data, it can be implied that there was a type of reciprocal action between lesions in the spinal segments and the lacteal duct.”

The endocrine or ductless glands were involved in some twenty-five percent of the cases.

“Because of the disturbances in the lacteal duct area and the spinal segments, the adrenals and the gonads would be affected. These glands in turn would cause a response in the pineal and pituitary glands in the brain. The end result of these disturbances was an overflow of neuronal (nerve cell) discharge via the central nervous system in the case of grand mal seizure, or the temporary loss of consciousness in a petit mal seizure.”

The medical investigator stressed the explanation was incomplete, unverified by present medical knowledge.

“The readings were more concerned with treatment than cause,” he observed, “and usually only gave as much theory as was necessary to understand and carry out the treatments.”

Nevertheless, the Cayce readings tended to dissipate the notion that epilepsy was inevitably tied up with a malfunction of the brain.

The doctor briefly quoted from one reading:

Q. Do you find any condition existing in the brain, or is it reflex?

A. The accumulations that have been there are rather reflex, produced by the condition in the lacteal duct [abdominal] area.
Q. Of what nature was the injury that brought about this condition in the lacteal area?
A. This was a pressure, or a licking.

In another diagnosis, Cayce was considerably more explicit in tracing the background:

"The causes arise from an injury received some years ago, in the coccyx area [base of spine], and then contributory causes later above the lumbar axis of the spine. These caused a slowing circulation through the lacteal duct area, producing a cold area there that has produced a partial adherence of tissue. When there is the lack of proper eliminations through the alimentary canal, coordination between the sympathetic and cerebrospinal system is affected, governing impulses to the brain, or a form of spasmodic reaction that might be called epileptic in nature.”

He warned that ordinary treatment would only make things worse, increasing the attacks that “occur from this deflection of impulse.” Asked the nature of the original accident, his Universal Mind promptly replied: “Striking the end of the spine on a banister.”

In a minority of cases, brain damage was listed as a cause; even fewer were involved with mental retardation. Where incoordination between the autonomic and cerebrospinal nervous systems was mentioned as a definite factor, the doctor found that Cayce usually recommended castor oil packs, together with additional therapy.

“In order to break up the lesions and adhesions in the lacteal duct area,” the physician noted, “a combination of hot castor oil packs, massage, olive oil taken internally and manipulations of the spine were employed. In addition, proper elimination and diet also were supposed to have their effect upon the lacteal area. The hot castor oil packs were usually given in a three-day series, and were kept on from one to three hours over the entire right abdomen.”

The doctor, school trained for half a lifetime, was as technical as the unschooled Cayce in describing how the pack was applied:

“Both anterior and posterior from the right costal margin to the crest of the ileum and covering the area of the caecum and the umbilicus.”

He explained how it presumably worked:

“These hot packs were described as being able to start the breakup of the lacteal lesions and adhesions. The heat alone would tend to increase the circulation to the area. It was also implied that castor oil itself would have a beneficial effect by absorption through the skin. In some cases, kneading of the right side of the abdomen was advised immediately after the removal of the packs, to help in the breakup of the lesions and adhesions. This massage was done with either peanut oil, or a mixture of olive oil and myrrh, and sometimes a combination of all three.”

The doctor summarized the balance of the treatment, so effective in some cases:

“The olive oil which was given internally [usually two tablespoonfuls] was to be taken at bedtime on the last day of the series of packs. The olive oil as a fat would be absorbed through the lacteal ducts and might help to increase the flow through them. Osteopathic massage and manipulation on and around the spine followed the day after the series of castor oil packs was finished.

 

The manipulative treatment was supposed not only to correct any mechanical abnormalities in spinal segments, but also to stimulate the autonomic nervous system to help overcome the imbalance between the autonomic and the cerebrospinal nervous system, by an increase in circulation and a relief of nervous tension. The hot packs seem to be an essential preliminary step, that the manipulations would have their maximum effect”

Cayce’s treatment extended to diet, elimination, herbs, exercise. Olive oil was described as a natural laxative. Colonics were recommended for those with a difficult problem, diet was designed to be easily digestible, aiding elimination,

“The diet was low fat in nature,” the Harvard man reported “with definite prohibitions of fried foods, pork, fat meats and sweet milk. Alkaline forming foods and vegetables were recommended but most tuberous vegetables were excluded Acid-producing foods such as meats, sugars, starches, and condiments were discouraged.”

In one respect, the treatment was exotic. Cayce recommended a boiled concentrate of the Passion Flower to replace the use of normal sedatives.

 “Although in various places the readings approved the temporary continuance of sedatives such as Dilantin or Phenobarbitol,” the doctor observed, “the ultimate goal of successful treatment was the elimination of the need for such drugs which acted as poisons in the system.”

He had a word about the Passion Flower.

“This fusion was described as a nonhabit-forming herb compound and not a sedative itself, though it was supposed to have a calming action on the nervous system and to aid the eliminations, as well as to help retard muscular contractions.”

Outdoor exercise was recommended both as an outlet for excess energy and obtaining the fullest relaxation during rest He quoted Cayce,

“The body should take as much physical exercise, in the open, as is practical each day, but not to be overstrenuous. Calisthenics or anything which has to do with the general movement of the body in the open is well. Walking is one of the best of exercises, swimming, tennis, handball, badminton, any of these activities.”

The aim of the treatments, the doctor noted, was complete cure.

 “Therefore, all traces of the underlying difficulties had to be eliminated, as well as factors which would set up new tendencies. In most cases the treatment recommended was at least six months.”

The cure was not easy—but neither was epilepsy. Leukemia was one of the more intriguing studies tackled by the Harvard doctor.

There were only eleven authenticated blood cancer cases in the Cayce readings, and many of these were terminal, but Cayce did indicate a cause and suggested treatment.

“The cause of leukemia was not given in a detailed way,” the doctor observed, “but a disturbance in body catabolism [normal breakdown of tissue to waste] was noted along with loss of the energies of anabolism [normal food change to living tissue]. Infection through the spleen was linked with an excess of destructive forces of the lymph.”

The spleen has the function of modifying the structure of the blood, and this is perhaps the first time it has been pinpointed as the culprit in leukemia.

“It is a medical fact,” the doctor pointed out, “that the red cell count decreases and the white blood cell count mounts in leukemia. In the readings this destructive process chiefly of red blood cells was linked to an over activity and infection of the spleen.”

Oddly, the doctor noted, in one of the four cases of Hodgkin’s disease in the readings (confirmed by autopsy), the described cause and treatment was similar to that in the leukemia readings.

“These similarities,” the doctor suggested, “hint that perhaps there are some similar underlying biochemical mechanisms having to do with the endocrine glands and the spleen in various diseases of the blood.”

The sufferers invariably turned to Cayce too late—if they could have been helped at all. Treatment, quite complex, was summarized: Ultraviolet light (mercury quartz lamp) was to be. used forty inches from the body with a green stained glass plate (at least ten by twelve inches) suspended between the source of the light and the body. The light was to focus for not more than one to one and a half minutes in any one, spot with special emphasis on the spleen and rib area, and not more than an allover total of five minutes.

Infrared light (thirty to forty minutes) was to be applied every other day to the cerebrospinal area, particularly along the rib zone. Also recommended was massage, osteopathic manipulations, iodine trichloride (Atomidine), supplementary diet of beef juice, rare calves liver, massive intake of fresh orange juice.

The treatment was at least geared to where Cayce said the cause lay.

“The whole process of the disease,” the doctor indicated, “was said to be caused by a glandular disturbance from unbalanced chemical reactions in the body. This could point toward a biochemical cause of the disease. One reading specifically mentions iodine deficiency. This could be the reason for Cayce’s advising iodine trichloride as a gland stimulant. In one case the thyroid gland was mentioned in particular.

A lack of proper activity of the structural portions of the body could refer to the red blood cell producing capacity of the marrow, especially the ribs [which are mentioned specifically]. These portions of the body could in turn be affected by the glands. Mention was also made of the activity having become static in the cerebrospinal system centers which control the marrow production from the ribs. Apparently an attempt was made to stimulate these centers through ultraviolet and infrared light, as well as manual massage.”

The same distinguished medical authority researched Cayce’s treatment of multiple sclerosis.

However, he made the same reservations as with other abstracts, in proposing controlled clinical trial.

“The summary of treatment is not to be taken as an endorsement,” he warned, “the validity of the data can only be decided by careful research in the form of controlled experiments by qualified physicians. The etiological [causative] mechanisms described are meant to be considered as theories to be proved.”

The doctor pondered one hundred readings for sixty-nine subjects, but was particularly impressed by one reading made at the request of a physician, Dr. Charles Goodman Taylor, since this could be scientifically validated as a case of multiple sclerosis. In postulating how the disease formed, he integrated the material from other readings with this specific reading.

“The basic biochemical mechanism stated in the reading was that multiple sclerosis was a result of a lack of gold which caused a glandular imbalance which in turn resulted in a hormonal deficiency or imbalance. This hormone was said to be necessary for proper functioning of the nerves.”

The normal balance of metals in the system was out of equilibrium due to a lack of gold primarily. In forty cases, gold was mentioned as a factor which needed to be added to the system.

“The reason for the lack of gold,” the doctor commented, “was tied to a defect in the assimilating system [by this was probably meant the digestive system] which in turn was kept in proper working order by the proper hormonal balance from the glands.”

It was all part of a delicate relationship on which the well-being of the body depended.

“Because the glands were in turn dependent upon the proper amount of gold in the system, this would apparently lead to a circular feedback relationship between gold, the glands and the assimilating system. Though not explicitly stated, it could be assumed that the disease was not caused from simply a lack of gold in the diet, but perhaps from a lack of the capacity of the digestive system to assimilate gold or perhaps inability of the body to use the gold assimilated.

In this reading, a genetic factor was suggested as the underlying cause of the imbalance between these three factors: gold, glands, and assimilation.”

There was a way of checking this out.

“A connection of the normal balance of metals in the system could be discovered in the male by a lack of sperm [i.e. some degree of sterility]. However, it was not clear whether this was simply a decreased sperm count or a lack of potency of the sperm due to a lack of metals, most notably gold, in the sperm.” The doctor then observed, “There is no medical data to confirm the theory that sterility is a result of multiple sclerosis.”

However, as he pointed out, impotency has been reported. Some type of glandular disturbance was mentioned in numerous cases. In this case, in response to the question “Which glands are involved?” the Cayce reply was:

“Those about the liver and gall duct”

The liver was repeatedly described as the direct link to the malfunctioning of the nervous system in multiple sclerosis. There was a hormone deficiency but the lacking hormone was not named. This missing substance from the glands was supposed to be a nutrient to nervous tissue, and the nerves were repeatedly said to lack proper balance of nervous energy or stamina.

Some of the apparent pathology was then noted.

“The reading stated that this lack of nervous energy caused a poison to form in certain nerve cells, and then other surrounding cells were poisoned. A description was given of the pulling apart and elongation of originally round cells. Perhaps this was the same process referred to in one case in which the hormonal lack was said to cause a breakdown of the cellular forces in the nerve walls and led to an inflammation and irritation via an action on the nerve plexuses and ganglia between the central and the autonomic nervous systems.”

This was analogous to what medicine has since learned about the disorder. ‘This breakdown of nerve walls coupled with wasting away or dissolving of the nerves could be taken as a description of the pathological loss of myelin sheath or white matter in multiple sclerosis. Pathologically, there is damage to both the ‘white’ myelin sheath and the ‘gray’ axone in this disease.” Cayce remarkably mentioned a lack of “gray” matter.

The doctor analyzed three treatment approaches: addition of the atomic effect of gold through a wet cell battery, massage and diet.

“The atomic effect of gold was said to be necessary for the glandular production of the hormone which maintained the proper structural condition and functioning of the nerves. However, gold was not to be added directly to the system by ingestion or injection, but vibratorily through the use of the wet cell battery.”

The wet cell was a weak battery composed of two poles, with a wire from one pole suspended in a solution of gold chloride and then attached to the body. The readings indicated that the vibration given from the gold in solution would be electrically transmitted into the body and have the [needed] glandular effect The vibration did not act directly but only enabled other elements [perhaps gold already in the body in an inactive form] to become active and have the desired effect.

The wet cell was to be recharged [new solutions added] every thirty days and to be used each day, preferably before retiring, for thirty to sixty minutes.
Massage with nourishing oils was an important part of the Cayce treatment. Curiously, years after the first Cayce readings, massage became current medical treatment (as supportive therapy) for multiple sclerosis.

As the doctor pointed out:

“It certainly helps to maintain the tone of muscles which have lost their normal innervation [active nerve network], the advantage being that when and if function returns, the muscle will not have atrophied and shortened.”

However, there was a basic difference between the medical and Cayce concept of the function of the oils. Where medicine attributes chiefly a lubricating effect to the oils, Cayce said the oils nourished weakened tissue, as borne out in his own cases, and by Hotten in California, McGarey in Arizona, Reilly in New York.
 

There were two basic blends.

“The simple mixture,” the doctor noted, “was usually a combination of equal parts of olive oil and peanut oil plus melted lanolin in this ratio: two ounces of olive oil, two ounces of peanut oil, one-quarter ounce of lanolin. The complex mixture had an olive oil base plus peanut oil, various combinations of Russian white oil, oil of Cedarwood, oil of sassafras root, oil of pine needles, lanolin, oil of wintergreen, tincture of benzoin, tincture of myrrh, spirits of camphor, spirits of turpentine, mutton suet and/or oil of mustard.”

The directions varied.

“In the majority of cases, it was suggested to massage from the spine to the distal [farthest] portions of the extremities, but in some from the tips of the extremities to the spine. Although the spine and extremities were mentioned most, the chest and abdomen were also suggested. A circular motion for the massage was recommended.”

With Cayce dead, of course, it was not quite clear what treatments, even if generally effective, should be applied to a specific case. As Dr. McGarey had said, commenting on his own research, it entailed an almost intuitive rapport with Cayce’s subconscious to know when to do what to whom, a la Cayce.

The recommended diet was consistent with Cayce’s normal diet for the ailing, or well, for that matter, low-fat, non-constipating.

“Foods containing B vitamins were stressed,” the doctor found, “and sometimes brewers yeast or wheat germ was advised. Seafood, liver, wild game and fowl Were recommended as the meats, but broiled and not fried. The bones of chicken and fish were to be chewed. Fried foods were generally prohibited.

Raw vegetables such as watercress, carrots, celery, beets, and salads with gelatin were stressed. Vegetables, fruits and cereals were to be eaten much more than meat. None of the emphasized foods were designated as providing gold in any form. Seafood was explicitly mentioned as being especially important because of its iodine content—the Cayce readings stating that iodine has an effect on all the endocrine glands, not only the thyroid.”

The experienced Cayce reader had something to learn from the fact that gold was not mentioned. Obviously, the problem was not so much a lack of gold intake, but of activation of this gold, and this apparently was provided by the wet cell’s vibratory influence. The Harvard researcher pointed out that Cayce’s treatment was connected, the massage immediately following the wet cell treatment, when the body was extremely susceptible to external impulses.

But, scientifically, he added, almost regretfully, the Cayce readings could,

“only hope to give hints and point the direction for further research which perhaps may unravel some of the present unknown in the etiology and treatment of multiple sclerosis.”

After all, it only worked.

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