Читать книгу True Tales from the Edgar Cayce Archives - Sidney D. Kirkpatrick - Страница 21

Edgar and Gertrude were married on Wednesday, June 17, 1903, in a small ceremony held in the bride’s rose garden. Among those present was Carrie Salter, herself recently married to the debonair Dr. Thomas House—a rising star in the Kentucky medical community. And it was she, not Gertrude, who championed Cayce’s psychic gifts when Edgar partnered with Al Layne, and she who steadfastly remained at his side and encouraged him to continue providing medical advice when Layne, under investigation by the board of the American Medical Association, left Hopkinsville to pursue a formal medical degree.

In contrast to Carrie, Gertrude was frightened by Edgar’s strange trance abilities. Better that her husband risk losing his voice than his sanity, she believed. She was also concerned about sharing Edgar with what became a growing number of physician researchers who, in secret, were experimenting with her husband and treating him as if he were some strange and exotic specimen, not a flesh and blood human being. Nor did she want this third other—the Source—interfering in their lives. She couldn’t very well have a fairy-tale marriage when her mate might suddenly drift off into a coma-like sleep and become some other person or worse still, might not wake from that sleep. And what of their children? Would they inherit this weird ability?

Carrie had no such concerns. She believed that Edgar was touched by the Divine and that a heavenly spirit spoke in and through him when he was in a trance. Her faith in him had also proven its value. In what may have been his earliest trance reading for a female, conducted by Al Layne, the Source advised Carrie not to undergo an abdominal surgery recommended by her doctors, which indeed turned out to be unnecessary. After Carrie’s marriage to Dr. House, the chief physician at the Hopkinsville’s mental asylum, the Source had also predicted that she would become pregnant, something that Dr. House and two specialists had said was physically impossible. Further, the Source had accurately foretold the date of birth and said she would deliver a boy. And the spiritual message that had accompanied Cayce’s prophetic trance discourses—that God’s love and forgiveness must be foremost in her heart—had inspired her to give up her position at Anderson’s Department Store and minister to the patients at the asylum as an RN working alongside her husband.

Most compelling of all was a reading Edgar subsequently gave to three-month-old Thomas House Jr. in November 1909. As Cayce had suggested in a previous trance session, the child’s delivery might be difficult with complications setting in. This turned out to be the case. Born prematurely, her child suffered from severe infantile spasms, nausea, and vomiting. His condition had deteriorated to a critical point when Carrie sent word to fetch Edgar in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where he and Gertrude were operating a photography studio. Little Tommy Jr. was too weak from malnutrition to nurse from Carrie’s bosom or to even wrap his tiny hands around her fingers. She needed Edgar as never before.

Carrie’s husband, Dr. House, and two other physicians—Dr. Jackson, a general practitioner in Hopkinsville and Dr. Haggard, a pediatric specialist from Nashville, who had been attending the child since birth—believed that Thomas House Jr. had little or no chance of living through the night. Carrie wasn’t sure Edgar or anyone else could help her son—no more than Edgar himself was—but she wanted him to try.

Like most physicians in Hopkinsville, Dr. Haggard wanted no part of what he deemed “trickery.” Dr. Jackson shared his colleague’s skepticism, but as the family’s longtime physician, he had seen the inexplicable. Cayce, with Al Layne’s help, had provided trance advice that had helped a child recover from whooping cough and had correctly diagnosed a case of scarlet fever.

Caroline (Carrie Salter) House, c. 1907.

Edith Estella Smith, (Gertrude’s cousin), old Salter home place.

Western State Kentucky Hospital (the Lunatic Asylum built by Gertrude’s grandfather) where Dr. and Carrie House worked and where Gertrude feared Edgar might one day become a patient.

In what was deemed to be an even more startling trance discourse, Cayce had detailed the location of blood clots in a patient’s lung. And along with more routinely recommended treatments, he advised the use of state-of-the-art electromagnetic therapy. Physicians hadn’t followed up; such therapy had never been used before in Kentucky and was considered experimental at best. Jackson had been left wondering if the treatment might have helped. But it was too late now. The patient had died.

Dr. House also didn’t believe that Edgar or anyone else could diagnose illness in his sleep, but he, like Jackson, knew Cayce too intimately to believe that he was a charlatan. His in-law didn’t charge for his services, seek publicity, or encourage anyone to obtain trance readings. After Al Layne had left for medical school in 1904, people found their way to Cayce’s Bowling Green photo studio by word of mouth. House believed that the people who came to Cayce were predisposed that Cayce could help, and hence the people heard what they wanted to hear. Physicians working with Edgar did the rest.

Only a dying child, such as Tommy Jr., was another matter altogether. The child was beyond help. The only reason that Dr. House reluctantly agreed to wire Cayce in Bowling Green was to indulge headstrong Carrie, who to his mind was overcome with fear and unwilling to accept what he deemed to be the inevitable.

Edgar arrived by train to Hopkinsville in the midst of a rainstorm. Gertrude’s brother Lynn picked him up at the station and drove him the mile and a quarter to the house. Both were drenched head to foot when they stepped into the house. Carrie, holding her infant son, was seated in the parlor by the fireplace, surrounded by family members. There were no pleasantries, only an awkward silence as Dr. Haggard, disgruntled that Cayce was to be consulted, packed his bags and left. He encouraged Dr. Jackson to do the same lest he was investigated as had been Layne. “Let the child die in peace” was the message he conveyed to House family, whether he spoke the words or not.

Carrie asked if Edgar wanted to examine Tommy. Edgar demurred. In his conscious state he could no more diagnose the child’s condition than he could speak a foreign language or play a musical instrument. Besides, he was anguished to see Carrie and her child in such distress. Gertrude likely hadn’t accompanied Edgar to The Hill that night for this same reason. Perhaps, too, she was protesting the fact that Edgar, despite his promise to her, was back experimenting with his gifts.

Dr. House, accompanied by Jackson, conducted the session in the master bedroom adjoining the parlor. The process, previously developed by Layne, was for him to read from a small leather-bound pocket notebook. He had only to sit beside Edgar as he went into trance, watching for his in-law’s eyelashes to flutter, before putting the suggestions to him.

Similar to the routine he practiced with Layne and would do without significant variation for the next thirty-six years, Edgar took off his jacket and shoes, removed his tie and collar, and lay down on a large oak bed. He pulled a down comforter over his stocking feet, adjusted himself on his back. Then, with feet together and finger tips at his temples, Edgar concentrated on a spot on the ceiling. When he felt himself about to drift off to sleep, he slowly lowered his hands and crossed them over his chest.

With the rain pounding on the roof and the weak cries of the dying child in the next room, Edgar’s breathing deepened and his eyelashes fluttered.

“You have before you the body of Thomas House Jr. of Hopkinsville, Kentucky,” Dr. House said, inserting his son’s name into the paragraph he read from the pocket notebook. “Diagnose his illness and recommend a cure.”

Edgar looked fast asleep, only Dr. House knew better. He had once seen his in-law go into a trance so deep that fellow physicians, conducting an experiment, had removed one of Cayce’s fingernails, and another had stuck a hypodermic needle into his foot. Edgar hadn’t so much as stirred. Yet the “sleeping” Cayce answered questions as if he were fully conscious.

Edgar began to speak in his normal voice. Here, and in many instances to come, his first words were garbled, almost a hum, as if a musical instrument were being tuned. Then his voice cleared and his words became well-modulated and easy to understand. “Yes, we have the body and mind of Thomas House Jr. here,” he said.

Cayce proceeded to recite the infant’s temperature and blood pressure. As House and Jackson would note, the information was correct. They had taken Tommy’s vitals a few minutes before Edgar’s arrival at The Hill. Only Edgar had not examined the child. How would he know?

Cayce—in trance—next described the condition of Tommy’s organs, doing so in such a detailed and detached manner that House and Jackson were left with the impression that he was a physician conducting an autopsy. In this case, however, the physician looked to be asleep and his patient was cradled in his mother’s arms in the next room. This information, too, appeared to be correct or to conform to what House and Jackson supposed. Only there was no way to know such things for certain. Was Edgar somehow reading their minds, picking up on what the two physicians were thinking?

House and Jackson soon dismissed this possibility when Cayce described an epileptic condition which he declared was causing the child’s severe infantile spasms, nausea, and vomiting. Further, Cayce explained that this condition was the outcome of the child’s premature birth, which in turn had been the result of his mother’s poor physical condition during the early months of her pregnancy. In conclusion, Cayce recommended that the child be given a measured dose of belladonna, administered orally, to be followed by wrapping his body in a steaming hot poultice made from the bark of a peach tree.

The session ended as mysteriously as it had begun. “We are through for the present.”

Reading from the same notebook, House instructed Cayce to regain consciousness. Cayce dutifully followed the command and awoke.

In the few minutes that it took Edgar to regain consciousness, stretch his arms and legs, and then sit up from the bed, the two physicians had already left the room. Edgar was alone. Worried that the trance session had been a failure and wondering whether the reading was successful, he walked across the room and peered through the partially open door. House and Jackson were in the parlor, deep in discussion and obviously agitated.

The two physicians both agreed that the diagnosis sounded reasonable. The recommended cure was what upset them. Belladonna, a toxic form of deadly nightshade, could be lethal. Even if the peach-tree poultice could somehow leach the poison out of the child’s system, administering a large dose of the drug to an infant in little Tommy’s condition was murder. Jackson made his feeling clear to Carrie: “You’ll kill little Tommy for sure.”

Dr. House concurred. Homeopathic belladonna could be used to treat lung and kidney ailments, but pure belladonna, as Cayce had recommended, was used only in topical ointments.

Edgar joined the others in the parlor but couldn’t contribute to the ensuing discussion. He didn’t remember anything that he had said in trance. One minute he was wide awake, the next he was fast asleep. That’s how he perceived what always took place. As Al Layne liked to remark, Edgar was the only one who never got to experience one of his own readings.

Anxiety became fear when Edgar finally understood the full import of the information that had come through. His sessions with Al Layne and others had been experiments. No one could get hurt. Now he had to face the horrific possibility that the treatment he recommended could—and likely would, according to House and Jackson—result in Tommy’s death. A family member and mere child, no less!

Carrie had more faith in the trance advice than Edgar himself. She believed the sleeping Cayce was an instrument of God’s divine love and compassion. This night God was reaching out to her and her child. If Cayce—in trance—told her to poison her son in order to save his life, she would act on the information.

Dr. House could not say the same. Common sense, along with decades of medical training, taught him that Cayce couldn’t possibly be doing what he appeared to have done. Until now, he had looked at what Edgar was doing as mere entertainment—parlor tricks at best.

Carrie demanded that he prepare the belladonna. Despite his very great reservations and a threat from Dr. Jackson that he would lose his medical license and possibly be brought up on charges of manslaughter, he retrieved the drug from his doctor’s bag. He loved Carrie too deeply to act otherwise. And regardless of how this might end his promising career, he could at least console himself by knowing that his son would surely die if nothing else were done. He would be putting little Tommy out of his misery.

Lynn Evans led Edgar outside to collect the ingredients for the poultice that had been recommended in the treatment. Edgar climbed a peach tree in the orchard behind the barn, opened his pocket knife, and cut the bark away from the freshest growth. He handed the bark down to Lynn, and they took it into the kitchen at the rear of the house where Carrie’s sister Kate had put a kettle on the stove to boil.

Kate prepared the hot poultice and then carried it into the parlor where the others were waiting at the child’s side. Dr. House dissolved the white powder into a spoonful of water. Carrie then opened Tommy’s mouth, poured the liquid inside, and massaged his neck until he swallowed. Then she wrapped the naked child in the steaming hot towels dipped in peach-tree solution.

Edgar remained outside, standing on the veranda in the rain. He didn’t join the others in the parlor because as he later said, he “couldn’t stand the thought of seeing Tommy House die in his mother’s arms.” Gertrude had been right in not coming. He understood this now.

He heard no cries coming from inside the parlor. As the others described what happened, Tommy instantly fell asleep. Dr. House, in his later report, noted that this was the child’s first deep and uninterrupted rest since birth. Tommy awoke hours later, drenched in sweat, cheeks pink, breathing steadily, and nursed at Carrie’s breast. He never had a convulsion again.

The “miracle,” as Carrie and Dr. House would forever describe Tommy’s recovery, impacted the lives of everyone at The Hill that night and many thousands of others to come.

Carrie and her family would receive over two hundred readings in the three decades ahead. She not only continued to champion and defend Edgar but also encourage others to seek his counsel. She became one of the most adept students of the life-transforming messages of love and hope she found in the Cayce readings. She would later join Edgar and Gertrude when they left for Virginia Beach, and she would become chief of the nursing department at the Cayce hospital. In addition to her capacity as an RN, she would help to explain the readings to those who sought Cayce’s counsel, most notably young mothers.

Thomas House Jr., c. 1911.

Both seated, Edgar and Dr. House (with Gertrude’s cousin Raymond Smith).

Dr. Thomas House underwent a personal crisis. What he had witnessed at The Hill that night made it impossible for him to return to practicing medicine as he had been taught. A rising star in the medical community, once under consideration to become head of the American Medical Association, he left his practice at the Hopkinsville asylum, turned his back on standard allopathic medicine as practiced by his colleagues, and embraced a type of holistic treatment put forth in the trance readings. Along with his wife, he moved to Virginia Beach where he became the Cayce hospital’s chief physician.

Tommy House Jr. would grow healthy and strong and also make his home in Virginia Beach. A gifted engine mechanic and repairman, he personally built the health equipment recommended in the readings. Today, patients still use the batteries he first assembled for the electromagnetic therapy prescribed to treat a wide variety of illness, including conditions that were similar to his own at birth. Often times, at great personal expense, he would drive hundreds of miles to deliver readings and medical equipment to patients unable to come in person to receive Cayce’s help.

Carrie House, Gertrude, Gladys Davis, Hugh Lynn, Edgar Evans, and Tommy House in Dayton, Ohio, 1924.

Equally profound was the impact Tommy House Jr.’s reading had on Edgar. He had proven to himself and others the life-saving potential of his work. Regardless of how unusual and sometimes altogether unbelievable the information that came through in his readings, he would never again doubt the good that could result. From this day forward he would dedicate a portion of his time each day to giving readings. No one who genuinely needed and wanted help would be refused. And though it would still be several years before Gertrude herself would become his partner in what he was now beginning to call the work, thanks to Carrie’s courage and example, she would conduct more readings than anyone else.