It is interesting to note that when I studied manipulative therapy back in 1916 and 1917, I could have taken my degree in osteopathy, before going on to get my master’s and doctorate in physiotherapy. However, osteopathy, which had been founded by a Kansas physician, Dr. Andrew Taylor Still, about 1878 or 1879 was so little thought of that I snubbed that degree and took my examinations and degree as a doctor of massotherapy, which was then accepted by medical doctors. Here again we see Cayce’s powers of precognition at work, for today osteopathic medicine is not only recognized in most states, but both former Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York and former President Richard M. Nixon have taken regular treatments from Dr. Kenneth W. Riland, a noted osteopath. Dr. Riland has traveled all over the world with his famous clients and even accompanied the former president to China and the Soviet Union.
. . . [blood is] that criterion through which most any condition existent in the system may be found. (108-2)
. . . nerve force to the body . . . is the attribute to the mental man, same as circulation [is] to the physical [man]. (34-5)
In animals under emotional stress, fats are drawn from body deposits, emptied into the blood and deposited along artery walls. Presumably the same thing happens in man, producing those top killers, atherosclerosis and coronaryartery disease.
—Dr. Hans Selye
The strain between the physical and mental, with the spiritual attributes of the individual, finds expression not only in the brain itself, but in that of the sympathetic [nervous] system for the brain manifestation of soul forces in the body. (4566-1)
Relaxation
Millions of people in the so-called civilized world are suffering from “future shock.” The last half-century has tremendously increased the speed, quantity, and range of sensory stimuli that strike the brain. Our senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are assaulted by human-made pollution at every waking and sleeping moment. The increase of tension in modern life—the competitive strains in work, worry, and insecurity all adding up to stresses, even in so-called recreation and leisure—are being discussed ad nauseam with appropriate alarm in all the media, and fill the psychiatrists’ offices with patients. The consequences can be observed in the increase in mental disease, drug addiction, and alcoholism, and in a population of pill-poppers living on tranquilizers, stimulants, and sleeping pills, swallowed like candy in the search for peace of mind and soul.
Dr. Hans Selye, whose studies on “stress” have won worldwide acceptance and acclaim, attributes a great many physical as well as mental ills to stress: “The body’s ductless glands—mainly the pituitary and the adrenals—strive to maintain an unchanging environment inside the body. Let any threat—any stress-be applied and these glands react instantly. The response is exactly the same whether a rat is subjected to extreme fatigue or a boss bawls out his secretary. Blood pressure and blood sugar rise, stomach acid increases, arteries tighten.”
In The Stress of Life, Dr. Selye calls this the “alarm reaction”: “In animals under emotional stress, fats are drawn from body deposits, emptied into the blood and deposited along artery walls. Presumably the same thing happens in man, producing those top killers, atherosclerosis and coronary-artery disease.”
Other stress diseases are skin disorders, including psoriasis and eczema; disorders of the respiratory system; sterility; diabetes, colitis, ulcers, and other gastrointestinal troubles; fall of the stomach and intestines; glandular disorders; backache and muscular aches and pains; and arthritis, to name just a few.
Although the beginning of the twentieth century—when Cayce lived and started work—seems by hindsight a quieter and more serene time, his generation did live through two world wars and the worst depression in the history of this country. He was quite sensitive to the effect of stress on people, and according to Gladys Davis Turner never dismissed anything as “just nerves.” Each reading contained a detailed analysis of the two nervous systems and a great deal of importance was attributed to their delicate mechanism.
The activity of the mental or soul force of the body may control entirely the whole physical [body] through the action of the balance in the sympathetic system, for the sympathetic nerve system is to the soul and spirit forces as the cerebrospinal is to the physical forces of an entity . . . (5717-3)
Cayce often recommended in nerve conditions that rebuilding properties be carried into the system through vibration rather than through some other means, and to this end he invented (while in trance) two appliances—the wetcell battery and the impedance device, giving precise directions for their construction:
The vibrations aid in producing that vibration necessary, not only for coordination of the glandular system, but for the ability in the nerve itself to be rejuvenated . . . This works directly upon the glandular system—the thyroid, the adrenals and the thymus, all the glands of the body; thus enabling them to react as assimilating forces.
For that is the process or the activity of the glands: to secrete that which enables the body, physically throughout, to reproduce itself. (1475-1)
The wet-cell appliance was prescribed in 609 cases for ailments such as arthritis, multiple sclerosis, paralysis, Parkinson’s disease, nerve deafness, and incoordination of the nervous systems, where it was necessary for the body to rebuild tissue and restore lost body functions. The impedance device was recommended predominantly as an instrument of relaxation in cases of nervous tension, poor circulation, insomnia, neurasthenia, debilitation, etc.
It would be too complicated and take too much space to explain how they were built and operated, but suffice it to say that the wet-cell battery produced a very low electrical current that could not be felt but could be measured on a meter. It was passed through solutions that might be gold chloride, silver nitrate, Atomidine, or camphor, depending on the individual’s requirement and the Cayce prescription. It was attached by plates to the body and the placement of these also varied depending on the individual’s needs and complaints. Sometimes specific instructions were given for the placement and sometimes Cayce sent people to me to teach them how to use the device.
The impedance device was a gadget that had two steel poles in a small steel case lined with glass and charcoal which was to be set in ice for thirty minutes and then wired to the wrist and opposite ankle, and it stimulated circulation and relaxed the user—in fact, it usually put the person to sleep immediately. It was especially good for insomnia.
For a time, from 1933 to 1935, the appliances were made at my farm in New Jersey under the supervision of a relative of the Cayce family and then under Robert Ladd. My colleague, Betty Billings, used it with great success on her mother, who was paralyzed and suffered from degeneration of the spinal-cord nerves. Mrs. Billings had spent many years in a wheelchair and she suffered keenly from extremely cold hands and feet. The impedance device seemed to improve her circulation dramatically. “After only two days she was so warm that the family thought Mother had a fever,” Miss Billings recalls.
Actually it has been very difficult to make a scientific assessment of the appliances, because we do not have enough clinical data and follow-up on them. My own feeling is that if and when the appliances are tested for research purposes, this should be done in a medically supervised research center, where the patient comes for the treatment and the treatment itself is administered by trained professionals. The answer to this Cayce therapy still lies in the future and I hope some day it will be researched.
The impedance device was a gadget that had two steel poles in a small steel case lined with glass and charcoal which was to be set in ice for thirty minutes and then wired to the wrist and opposite ankle, and it stimulated circulation and relaxed the user—in fact, it usually put the person to sleep immediately. It was especially good for insomnia.—H.J.R.
While the theory behind this device was little understood when Cayce gave it, great advances have been made in modern times since his death in the use of electricity in healing, and scientists are finding