From the biography of Edgar Cayce: There Is A River, by Thomas
Sugrue.
...Edgar Cayce practiced medical diagnosis by clairvoyance for forty-three years. He left stenographic reports of 9.000 of these diagnoses to the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Inc...
...He never made any public demonstrations of his powers; he was never on the stage; he never sought any publicity; he did not prophesy; he did not seek wealth. Often his economic status was quite precarious; at best it never rose above modest security. During the period of the Cayce Hospital he was paid only seventy-five dollars a week for his services.
His unquestioned personal integrity, plus the excellent and voluminous records of his work and the long period that they covered, made him an ideal subject for scientific study. But the scientists shunned him. He and his friends regretted this; it might have been more evidential if they, not I (the author), had made this report...
Chapter One
Uncle Billy Evans huddled in the rear seat of his cab and watched the afternoon train pull into the Louisville and Nashville Railroad station in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. It was a cold, still afternoon in January, 1912.
A stranger stepped off the Pullman. Uncle Billy left his warm seat and went to meet him.
He was a large, tall man, wrapped in a heavy overcoat, with its collar turned up to protect his ears. He let Uncle Billy take his two suitcases and followed him to the cab.
"I am looking for a man named Edgar Cayce," he said while the old colored man stowed the bags away. "Can you take me to him?" He spoke quickly, with a thick, Germanic accent...
"Mr. Edgar's gone home for the day," he said. "And it's a mile and a half out there to the Hill. Miss Gertrude's mighty sick these days, and Mr. Edgar's there with her most o' the time..."
"Now, I can take you to the hotel and first thing tomorrow morning..."
"We will go now to the house," the stranger said. "And tell me, why is it so cold down here in the South?"
"Lord God, sir!" Uncle Billy said. "This ain't the South! The South's way down yonder!" He pointed. "This here's Kentucky, and the Lord ain't got a bit o' use for it!"...
..."You think you'll be warm enough ridin' way out there and back again?" he asked.
"I will be comfortable," the stranger said. "Let us go quickly."
Uncle Billy closed the door and climbed to his box, muttering. The two horses, eager for exercise, started briskly down East Ninth Street, turned left along the park, and headed out East Seventh Street. The town fell behind and the street became Russellville Road. Houses gave way to brown, rolling hills, and bare fields looted of their crops. A single bright spot loomed through the dusk. On a hill higher than the rest and covered with trees, a gray, rambling house stood with its face to the north, the four white columns of its porch glistening in the sidewise glance of the winter sun...Just before the cab reached the carriage entrance leading to the house on the hill, it stopped. A little off the road, almost hidden by a giant oak and some maple trees, was a small cottage, brightly painted in green and white. Uncle Billy got down from his box and opened the cab door.
"In here sir," he said.
The stranger got out, stretched, and looked around him. "He doesn't live in the big house?" he said, as if disappointed.
Uncle Billy pointed to the glistening columns. "That's the Hill, " he said. "It's the old Salter Place, where Miss Gertrude's folks live. This here" -- he pointed to the cottage--"is Miss Lizzie's little place. Miss Lizzie is Miss Gertrude's mother. She lives up at the Hill with Miss Kate."
The stranger changed the subject. "What does this land produce?" he asked, waving his arm toward Hopkinsville.
"Dark tobacco," Uncle Billy said.
"Dark?" The stranger looked thoughtful. He stared at Uncle Billy.
"Dark tobacco," Uncle Billy repeated. "Hopkinsville is famous fo' being the dark tobacco market of the whole world."
"It is also famous for another thing that is dark," the stranger said. Then he added, as if to himself, "Funny place to find it..."
The young man who opened the cottage door was slim and almost as tall as the stranger. Without saying anything the stranger stepped into the hallway.
"You are Edgar Cayce? he asked.
"I am," the young man answered.
"I am Dr. Hugo Munsterberg, of Harvard," the stranger said. "I have come here to expose you. There has been entirely too much written about you in the newspapers lately."
He looked quickly around the hallway and peered into the living room...
"What is your modus operandi?" he said. "Where is your cabinet?"
The young man had not moved. He looked dazed. "I don't know what you mean," he said.
Dr. Munsterberg struck the air impatiently with an arm. "The cabinet, the cabinet," he said brusquely.
The young man recovered himself suddenly. He smiled and led the way into the living room.
"Come in and sit down," he said. "I will take your coat. There is a fire in the fireplace. But I have no cabinet. I don't use any apparatus at all, if that's what you mean. I could lie down on the floor here and go to sleep, if I wanted to."
Dr. Munsterberg came into the room but did not sit down or remove his coat. From its inner pocket he took a sheaf of newspaper clippings.
"There's been too much publicity for this thing not to be a fake," he said, putting the clippings on a tea table.
Idly the young man leafed through the clippings. Apparently he had seen them before. One was a full-page display from the Sunday magazine section of the New York Times for October 9, 1910. The headline said, ILLITERATE MAN BECOMES A DOCTOR WHEN HYPNOTIZED--STRANGE POWER SHOWN BY EDGAR CAYCE PUZZLES PHYSICIANS. The first paragraph read:
The medical fraternity of the country is taking a lively interest in the strange power said to be possessed by Edgar Cayce of Hopkinsville, Ky., to diagnose difficult diseases while in a semi-conscious state, though he has not the slightest knowledge of medicine when not in this condition.
There was a photograph of the young man, another of his father, a mustached gentleman named Leslie B. Cayce, who was described as the "conductor" of the hypnotic sleeps; and a third picture showing a physician named Dr. Wesley H. Ketchum, who had reported the phenomena to the American Society of Clinical Research, of Boston...
"All this was done without my knowledge or permission," the young man explained to Dr. Munsterberg. "I was in Alabama at the time. I didn't know anything about it."
Dr. Munsterberg stood with his back to the fireplace, warming himself. "You say you do not have a cabinet," he said. "Do you allow yourself to be seen? Are the lights on?"
"Oh, it's always very light," the young man said. "I give the readings in the morning and afternoon, two each day. If there isn't enough light we have to turn on the lamps, so the stenographer can see to take down what I say."
"And the patient? Where is the patient?"
"Most of them are at home, wherever that is. They just read me the address, and I seem to find the place all right."
"You do not examine the patients beforehand?"
"Oh, no. I don't know anything about medicine when I'm awake. I prefer not to know even the name of the person before I go to sleep. The names wouldn't mean much to me, anyhow. Most of the people are from out of the state somewhere."
"They tell their symptoms in letters to this...Dr. Ketchum?"
"Oh, no. We only want to be sure that they really need help. That's all."
Dr. Munsterberg watched the young man's face while he talked. It was a frank, open countenance. The cheeks were round, the nose straight,, the chin receding but not weak, the eyes gray-blue and friendly. His hair was straight and brown. He spoke with a soft drawl. He looked about twenty-five.
"You are how old?" the doctor asked.
"Thirty-four. I'll be thirty-five in March."
"You look younger..."
"You were born on a farm?" Dr. Munsterberg asked...
"Yes, sir...The Cayces used to own nearly all the land between Hopkinsville and the Tennessee line...But my great-grandfather had four sons and my grandfather had seven sons, so by the time all the land was split up there wasn't a great deal left for my generation. So I'm a photographer."
"But you do not work at that now, of course."
"Oh, yes. That's in the contract I have with my partners. They have to furnish me with a studio and equipment. That's where I make my living. I can only give two readings a day, you see, and some of them are for people who have no money."
Dr. Munsterberg laughed a little and shook his head. "Either you are a very simple fellow," he said, "or you are very clever. I cannot penetrate your ruse."
The young man shook his head mournfully. "I'm the dumbest man in Christian County," he said, "when I'm awake."
"But when you are asleep you know everything. Is that it?"
"That's what they tell me. I don't know. The people say I tell them how they feel better than they know how to tell it themselves. They take the medicines and the treatment I prescribe, and they get better. The stenographer takes it down and gives the patient a copy. Dr. Ketchum adds whatever comment is needed. That's all I know."
"You have no explanation for this? There is no tradition of psychic power in your family?"
"They say my grandfather was a water witch. He would walk around with a forked hazel twig in his hand and tell the farmers where to dig their wells. They always found water there, so they said..."
"And you have been doing this business how long?"
"The readings?" Oh, just regularly since all the publicity started a year ago. I didn't pay much attention to it until then. I just did it for friends, and people round about who asked me now and then."
"What have been your studies? Not medicine, you say?"
No. I never got further than what would be first year in high school. I was graduated down in the country, where they have nine grades."
..."Perhaps you would like to see a reading?" the young man said. "The copies are kept at the office, downtown, but I have my wife's readings here. We had a check reading for her the other day. The doctors all said she would die. She has tuberculosis. But she is getting better by following the readings."
...He went into a room across the hall, returning almost immediately with two sheets of typewritten manuscript...
Dr. Munsterberg began to read the sheets. The young man stepped away politely and sat down by the tea table.
"I cannot learn much from this; I am not a medical doctor," Dr. Munsterberg said...
The young man offered another suggestion. "There are some people you might go to see, who have had experience with the readings. They could tell you whether they work or not. You could see Mrs. Dietrich, and some of the others...Mrs. Dabney, Miss Perry...Mrs. Bowles, maybe."
"Good," the doctor said. "You will write down their names and addresses?"...
The young man went to a desk against the wall and wrote on a pad..."Here are the names and addresses. Uncle Billy can take you to all of them. They are too far apart to walk. Are you planning to stay here tonight? We're going to have a reading in the morning. Perhaps you'd like to watch it."
"I intend to stay," the doctor said, putting the manuscript sheets on the tea table. "I will take a room at the hotel. Tonight I will visit these people and question them."
...He tucked the sheets with the names and addresses into an inside pocket. "Well, we meet again, tomorrow, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
"Oh, there is one more thing. To what power or force do you and your associates attribute this phenomenon?"
"We don't know, sir, except for what the readings have said themselves."
"You mean what you have said while asleep."
"Yes, sir. It's here, in this New York Times story." He picked up the clipping and read from it. "This is what I said when they asked me to explain the thing: 'Edgar Cayce's mind is amenable to suggestion, the same as all other subconscious minds, but in addition thereto it has the power to interpret to the objective mind of others what it acquired from the subconscious state of other individuals of the same kind. The subconscious mind forgets nothing. The conscious mind receives the impression from without and transfers all thought to the subconscious, where it remains even though the conscious be destroyed.' "
He folded the clipping and returned it, with the others, to Dr. Munsterberg. The doctor looked him squarely in the eye. "The story of the subconscious mind can be told in three words," he said. "There is none!...Well, I shall continue my investigations."
He went out without shaking hands or saying good-bye. The young man watched through the living-room window until the cab drove away. Then he went into the room across the hall, taking the manuscript sheets with him.
On the far side of the room, on a massive oak bed, lay a frail, dark-haired girl, almost lost in the great expanse of sheets and counterpane. In the twilight only her outline was visible; she was a shadow on the bed. The young man lit one of the lamps on the dresser and brought it to the sick table. Her face leaped up at him like a flame. Her eyes were dark, but a fierce light shone from them. Her cheeks were bright red. Her oval face was like a miniature portrait come to life. Her face was worried, quick, yet the words came softly.
"Who was that man, Edgar? What did he want? You're not going off with him somewhere, are you?"
The young man leaned down and kissed her forehead. "Just a professor from Harvard," he said. "he came all the way down here to expose me."
She seemed relieved. "No wonder his voice sounded so officious. What did he say?"
"Nothing much. He...called me a simpleton."
The girl sighed. "I declare I don't know where people learn such bad manners," she said.
Uncle Billy huddled in his cab outside the large house on South Walnut Street. In the living room of the house his fare sat, overcoat removed, listening to a mild, lovely woman, whose face became radiant as she told her story.
"When our daughter, Aime, was two," Mrs. Dietrich began, "she caught grippe. After apparently recovering, she became afflicted with convulsions. She would fall down suddenly and her body would stiffen until it was rigid. Her mind stopped developing.
"We had all sorts and kinds of doctors. They did her no good, and after two years of futile experimentation we took her to Evansville, Indiana, to see Dr. Linthicum and Dr. Walker. They said it was a type of nervousness, and they treated her for months, but she didn't improve.
"We brought her home. We had treatments here, but she got worse---twenty convulsions a day, sometimes. Her mind became a blank.
"We took her to Dr. Hoppe, in Cincinnati. He said she had a rare brain affliction that was invariably fatal.
"We brought her home to die. Then one of our local friends, Mr. Wilgus, told us about Edgar Cayce."
"...Mr. Wilgus had readings, and on the advice of one of them went to Cincinnati for a minor operation, which he said vastly improved his health.
"He urged us to give the young man a chance---you understand, of course, that he was not in the business of giving readings at that time. This was in the summer of 1902, nearly ten years ago. Edgar was then working in Bowling Green, in a bookstore."
Dr. Munsterberg nodded. "I understand," he said. "We will proceed."
"My husband asked him to come here, and he did. He wanted no other remuneration than the railroad ticket. He said the trip gave him a chance to see his girl. The were married the following year, I believe.
"He came with Mr. Al C. Layne, the local man who was at the time conducting the readings and giving some of the treatments."
Dr. Munsterberg interrupted again. "He was a doctor, this Layne?"
"He was studying osteopathy at the time. Later he was graduated in the profession...
"Mr. Layne put Cayce into a trance," Dr. Munsterberg said. "Did either of the men examine the child?"
"No. They saw her, but I remember Edgar saying how he did not see how it could help him. I remember how young and boyish he looked. I thought to myself, "How can this boy be of any help to us when the best doctors in the country have failed?' You see, we knew his family and we knew Edgar. He had very little schooling."
"You were skeptical, then?" Dr. Munsterberg asked.
"I hoped for a miracle, as any mother would."
The doctor nodded.
"He removed his coat and loosened his tie and shoelaces. Then he lay on that sofa there"---she pointed and the doctor looked---"and apparently went to sleep. After a few minutes Mr. Layne spoke to him, telling him to have before him the body of our child, who was in the house, and to examine her and tell what was wrong with her body.
"I could not believe my ears when the sleeping man began to talk and said, 'Yes, we have the body.' His voice seemed different. It seemed---well, authoritative."
Dr. Munsterberg nodded. "Exactly," he said.
"He told us that on the day before she caught grippe she suffered an injury to her spine, and the grippe germs had settled in the spine, causing the attacks. He then told exactly where the lesion was and gave instructions for correcting it osteopathically.
"He could not possibly have known of the injury to her spine beforehand. I alone knew of it, and had not considered it serious---or even an injury."
"But you are sure it happened?"
"The day before Aime caught grippe she was getting out of the carriage with me. She slipped and struck the end of her spine on the carriage step. She jumped up as if unhurt, and I thought no more of it."
"The lesion was discovered where he described it?"
"Yes. Mr. Layne gave Aime a treatment that night. Next day we took another reading. He said the adjustment had not been properly made."
"Very interesting," Dr. Munsterberg said. "He told the man, Layne, his own conductor, that he had not carried out instructions?"
"Yes. Then he told what had been done that was wrong, and explained how to do it the right way. Layne tried again that morning. In the afternoon another reading was taken. Still the correction had not been made. Layne tried again. The next morning a reading was taken and the treatment was approved.
"Edgar returned to Bowling Green, and Mr. Layne, who lived in Hopkinsville, continued the treatments. He came every day for three weeks.
"At the end of the first week Aime's mind began to clear up. She suddenly called the name of a doll of which she had been fond before the attacks occurred. A few days later she called me by name; then she called her father. Her mind picked up just where it had left off three years before, when she was only two."
"She advanced rapidly then?"
"Quite rapidly. Soon she had the mind of a normal five-year-old. After the three weeks of treatment we had a check reading. At that time he said the condition had been removed. There was never any more trouble. Aime today is a normal girl of fifteen. She'll be finished with her lessons in a few minutes and I will bring her in."
"Yes, yes. I would like to see her."
"I don't know what this strange ability is," Mrs. Dietrich went on. "We have only our own experience and the experiences of our friends by which to judge. But so far as we know it always works. Edgar Cayce is certainly no charlatan. He's one of the pillars of the Christian Church, and so far as anyone knows he has never taken advantage of anyone. It's just the other way around. People are always taking advantage of his good nature and his generosity."
"Of course," the doctor said, "of course."
..."Are you a medical doctor as well as a Ph.D?" Dr. Ketchum asked. He was a smiling, quick-moving, bright-eyed man, in his middle thirties.
"Oh, yes, " Dr. Munsterberg said, "I have a medical degree. I studied both at Leipzig and Heidelberg."
"Then may I tell you of some of my cases?" Dr. Ketchum said.
"I am most interested to know what school of medicine he endorses," Dr. Munsterberg said. "For the Dietrich child he prescribed osteopathy."
"He uses all schools," Dr. Ketchum said, "and often for the same case. He sometimes gives osteopathy along with electrical treatments, massage, diet, and compounds to be taken internally.
"He sometimes calls for herbs that are hard to get or for a medicine we haven't heard about. Sometimes it's just come on the market, sometimes it's been off the market for a while."
"Always he seems to know everything," Dr. Munsterberg said. "You would say that he was...quoting from a universal mind, perhaps?"
Dr. Ketchum nodded sagely. "I have often thought so," he said. "In one of the earliest readings I conducted a preparation was given called 'Oil of Smoke.' I had never heard of it, nor had any of our local druggists. It was not listed in the pharmaceutical catalogues. We took another reading and asked where it could be found. The name of a drugstore in Louisville was given. I wired there, asking for the preparation. The manager wired back saying he did not have it and had never heard of it."
"This was given for what?" Dr. Munsterberg asked.
"For a boy with a very obstinate leg sore," Dr. Ketchum said. "We took a third reading. This time a shelf in the back of the Louisville drugstore was named. There, behind another preparation---which was named---would be found a bottle of 'Oil of Smoke,' so the reading said. I wired the information to the manager of the Louisville store. He wired me back, 'Found it.' The bottle arrived in a few days. It was old. The label was faded. The company which put it up had gone out of business. But it was just what he said it was, 'Oil of "Smoke.' "
"Very interesting," Dr. Munsterberg said. "Very interesting."...
The young man sat at the kitchen table of the Cayce home...looking miserable...His mother,...sat opposite him, looking at his downcast head and bent shoulders.
..."It's nice to see you. I know you're working too hard, staying at the studio all day and being up with Gertrude at night. You shouldn't bother even to talk with these people who come here to do their so-called 'investigations.' If you ask me I think most of them are bigger fakes than the poor soul they try to bedevil. They go and get a little learning and then run around being superior to everybody else."
"He didn't bother me, mother, except to start me bothering myself again. I could see his viewpoint: standing there, asking me questions, and comparing the answers with what he knows to be true in science. I kept realizing more and more that the only answer that to me would answer the whole thing satisfactorily would just make him certain that I'm crazy."
His mother nodded. "Everybody takes it for granted---even the best Christians, the ministers and missionaries---that the things that happened in the days of the Bible and the days of the saints, can't happen now," she said.
He shook his head gloomily, agreeing with her.
"Suppose I had said to him," 'Dr. Munsterberg, when I was quite young I became attached to the Bible. I resolved to read it once for every year of my life. When I was twelve years old I finished it for the twelfth time..."
" 'I had built a little playhouse for myself in the woods on a creek that ran through the old Cayce place,...Every afternoon I went there to read my favorite book. One spring day when I was reading the story of Manoah for the thirteenth time, I looked up and saw a woman standing before me.
" 'I thought it was my mother, come to fetch me home for the chores. Then I saw that she was not my mother, and that she had wings on her back. She said to me, "Your prayers have been answered, little boy. Tell me what it is you want most of all, so that I may give it to you." I was very frightened, but after a minute I managed to say, "most of all I would like to be helpful to other people, especially children." Then she disappeared.'
"Suppose I told him that, and then, how the next day in school I couldn't spell a word, and was kept after school, and how that night I slept on my spelling book and knew everything in the book when I woke up. What would he say to that?"
Wistfully his mother looked at him. "I reckon they'd have the wagon after you and send you up the road to the asylum," she said. "But to me it's the most beautiful story I've ever heard. I remember the first day you told it to me...the day it happened, before you even knew it meant anything. And we never told it to anyone else...You were so solemn, and so worried about what it meant. And you looked so angelic. I prayed then that you would always remain that way."
..."That's the trouble," he said. "If it had happened to an angel it would be all right. But I'm no angel. There are so many people who are better than I am. Why did it happen to me, unless it's the work of the Devil?"
His mother got up and took her Bible from the kitchen shelf. "Good men," she said, "always worry about that. You'll find it in here"---she tapped the Bible---"everywhere you look. You know that. It's the people who are actually the tools of the Devil who never worry about whether they are wrong or right. They're sure they are right."
"But we're sure the readings are right..."
"So long as you are right, son, they will be right. The Devil cannot speak through a righteous man. I saw the Dietrich girl on the street yesterday. She's a beautiful girl, and as bright as can be. There's proof on every street in this town that the readings are right."
She opened the Bible and turned to the Gospel of St. John. "We read this together the day you had the vision. I found it for you, remember? It's in the sixteenth chapter. " 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.' "
"Yes, I remember," he said. "St. John: 'Let not your heart be troubled...In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you...that where I am, there ye may be also...' "
...When he left she kissed him and patted his shoulder. "As long as I'm sure of you, I'm sure of the readings," she said, " and I'm still sure of you..."
During the night the snow stopped. Only a light covering was on the ground next morning when Dr. Munsterberg left the hotel and walked to North Main Street...A sign pointed the way upstairs to the "Cayce Studio."...One door led to the studio, another was labeled, "Edgar Cayce, Psychic Diagnostician."
The doctor opened this door, entering a small reception room. Beyond it was a large office room...Leslie Cayce waved him in.
"Our patient ought to be here soon. Due on the ten-o'clock train from Cincinnati," he said. "Sit down."
..."Where will the reading take place?" the doctor asked.
There was a small room opening off the large one. In it was a high, bare couch, like a doctor's examination table. Near it was a small table and chair. Straight chairs sat against the wall. Leslie pointed to the room.
"In there," he said. "Edgar lies on the couch. I stand by him to give the suggestion and read the questions. The stenographer sits at the table and takes notes."
"And on the couch he will put himself into this state of self-hypnosis, only waking when you suggest it?"
"Yes."
"That will be very interesting. That is what I wish to see," the doctor said.
The door opened and Dr. Ketchum came in. With him was a sallow-faced man who identified himself as the patient...In a few minutes a young lady entered, took a pad and some pencils from the stenographer's desk, and went into the small room, seating herself at the table.
"And here is the young man himself," Dr. Munsterberg said as the door opened again.
The young man smiled and shook hands. Then he took off his coat and loosened his tie.
"You are going to lie on that couch and sleep?" Dr. Munsterberg asked, pointing into the small room.
"Yes," the young man said...
The young man went into the small room. Sitting on the side of the couch he unfastened his cuff links and loosened his shoelaces. Then he swung his legs up, lay flat on his back, closed his eyes, and folded his hands on his abdomen.
Leslie Cayce escorted the patient into the small room and gave him a straight chair...Leslie Cayce stood by the couch, at his son's right hand, and prepared to read from a small black notebook.
Dr. Munsterberg watched the young man keenly. His respiration deepened gradually, until there was a long, deep breath. After that he seemed to be asleep. Leslie Cayce began to read from the black notebook.
"...You will have before you the body of"---he gave the patient's name---"who is present in this room. You will go over the body carefully, telling us the conditions you find there, and what may be done to correct anything which is wrong. You will speak distinctly, at a normal rate of speech, and you will answer the questions which I will put to you."
For several minutes there was silence. Then the young man began to mumble in a voice that sounded faraway and haunting, as if he were speaking from a dream...
Suddenly he cleared his throat and spoke distinctly and forcibly, in a tone stronger than that he used when awake.
"Yes, we have the body," he said. "There is a great deal of trouble in this system. Along the spine, through the nervous system, through the circulation (which is perverted), through the digestive organs, there is trouble...also inflammation in the pelvic organs, trouble with the kidneys and slight inflammation in the bladder. Seems that it starts from digestive disturbances in the stomach. The digestive organs fail to perform their function properly...there is lack of secretion along the digestive tract...
"The pancreas and liver are also involved..."
The voice went on, continuing the diagnosis. Dr. Munsterberg hunched forward in his chair, listening intently. His eyes went back and forth from the young man to the patient.
How did the patient feel?
"There is dryness of the skin and disturbed lymphatic circulation, aching in the arms and legs, particularly noticeable under the knee, on the side of the leg...he feels stretchy when he gets up...pains in the arms, pains and a tired feeling between the shoulders and back of the head..."
How to cure all this?
Many things were to be done. First: "Get the stomach in better shape...we have some inflammation here. Cleanse the stomach: when this is done we will stimulate the liver and the kidneys...drink large quantities of water, pure water...hitherto we have not had enough liquids in the system to aid nature in throwing off the secretions of the kidneys...
"When the stomach is cleansed, not before, give small doses of sweet spirits of niter and oil of juniper...use vibrations along the spine...not manipulation but vibration...all the way up and down from the shoulders to the tip of the spine, but not too close to the brain..."
There were other things: exercises, a tonic, a diet. Then the voice said, "Ready for questions." Leslie Cayce read a few which he had written down in the notebook. They were promptly answered. Then the voice said, "We are through for the present."
From the notebook Leslie Cayce read the suggestion that, "Now the body will have its circulation restored for the waking state, and feeling refreshed and with no ill effects, you will wake up."
After about a minute the deep, long, sighing breath that had preceded the sleep was repeated. The young man's eyes opened. He stretched his arms over his head, yawned, rubbed his eyes, and sat up.
The stenographer got up from her seat and came into the large room, where she sat at her typewriter, preparing to transcribe her notes. Leslie Cayce stood by his son, waiting for him to get down off the couch. The patient stood up and stared at him, smiling awkwardly. Dr. Munsterberg suddenly surged up from his chair and walked into the small room.
"What do you think of this man?" he said to the patient.
"Well, he's described my condition and the way I feel better than I could possibly do it myself."
"Then if I were you"---Dr. Munsterberg was measuring his words carefully---"if I were you I would do exactly as he says. From what I have heard, and from the people I have talked with who claim his readings have helped them, I would say that some extraordinary benefits have come from these experiences. Where did you hear of this man?"
"I read about him in one of the Cincinnati papers. I wrote and asked for an appointment. Then I decided to come here for the reading."
"You told, in your letters, of your condition?"
"No, not a thing. I just said I wanted a reading."
"Remarkable, remarkable."
Dr. Munsterberg retreated within himself. His eyes glazed. He stood lost in thought.
The patient turned to the young man on the couch and offered his hand.
"Thank you very much," he said. "I don't know how to express my appreciation, but I'm going to follow all of your suggestions."
The young man shook hands and laughed.
..."That's the best way to make me happy," he said. "If this thing works, we want to know about it. If it doesn't work we want to know about it, even more so, because if it's a fake we want to stop doing it."
...Dr. Munsterberg watched the young man tie his shoelaces. When the bows were knotted he said: "Young man,...I have never encountered anything like it. I would hesitate to pass any opinion without a long and thorough examination. But if it's a trick, I am convinced you are not yourself aware of it."
"If it's a trick, doctor, I would like to know about it before I go too far and cause some harm," the young man said.
"I do not think it will cause harm," the doctor said...
Quickly he thrust out his hand, seized the young man's hand and shook it.
"Well, I must be going," he said. "Keep your feet on the ground. Someday you may find yourself. However, if you never accomplish anything more than you did in the Dietrich case, you will not have lived in vain. I must go now."
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