For several years Dr. Reilly studied at Battle Creek, Michigan, with Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of breakfast cereals and the electric cabinet, and pioneer in preventive medicine. Also during his varied career Dr. Reilly ran a health farm for the rehabilitation of alcoholic and drug addicts in Sullivan County, New York. In 1924 he established in New York City the Physicians Physiotherapy Service at 1908 Broadway, and in 1935 opened the famous Reilly Health Institute in Rockefeller Center.
Dr. Reilly’s impressive educational and professional background encompassed eight degrees, including doctor of science from Eastern Reserve University, master in physiotherapy from Ithaca College, and doctor of physiotherapy from Van Norman University of California. In addition, he was a fellow of the College of Sports Medicine, fellow of the Emerson University Research Council, diplomate of the National Board of Physical Therapy, and director of physiotherapy and rehabilitation of the Edgar Cayce Foundation.
He served fourteen terms as president of the New York State Society of Physiotherapists, was chairman of the Council of Licensed Physiotherapists of New York State, and legislative chairman of the Physiotherapy Grievance Committee appointed by the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York. He was licensed in four states and Canada.
For more than thirty years, the Reilly Health Institute in Rockefeller Center was a health mecca for prominent people: government leaders such as the late Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, former Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Congressman James Delaney, and ex-Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller; business tycoons such as the late David Sarnoff, Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, L. Victor Weil, and Jack Kriendler, owner of the 21 Club; and labor leaders such as George Meany, David Dubinsky, Alex Rose, and John L. Lewis. These represent just a few of the many notables who repaired the ravages of responsibility and stress under the direction and healing hands of Dr. Harold J. Reilly, the institute’s founder and director.
Dr. Harold J. Reilly was one of the leading exponents of drugless, natural physical therapy. He was recognized as one of the most outstanding physiotherapists in the world, and doctors came from all over the globe to study with him.
—Introduction
For several years Dr. Reilly studied at Battle Creek, Michigan, with Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of breakfast cereals and the electric cabinet, and pioneer in preventive medicine.
—Introduction
Treated by Dr. Reilly
Sonja Henie
Gloria Swanson
Mae West
Gypsy Rose Lee
Shirley Booth
Glynis Johns
Dorothy Sarnoff
Leslie Caron
Joan Fontaine
The Duke and Duchess of
Windsor The Dowager Empress of
Egypt
Cobina Wright, Sr.
Bob Hope
Eddie Albert
Phil Baker
Burgess Meredith
Bert Lahr
George Jessel
Paul Whiteman
Vincent Lopez
Harry Salter
Fred MacMurray
Walter Huston
Boris Karloff
Hume Cronyn
Jessica Tandy
Mickey Rooney
Paul Douglas
Beniamino Gigli
Helen Jepson
Rose Bampton
John Charles Thomas
Charles Kuhlman
Greta Stuckgold
Giulio Gatti-Casazza
After the fine conditioning of Harold J. for eighteen years, I feel that everyone should live the life of Reilly.
—Bob Hope
The inscription on Bob Hope’s photograph, which hung among many others in Reilly’s office, read, “After the fine conditioning of Harold J. for eighteen years, I feel that everyone should live the life of Reilly.”
“Oh, there’s nothing so bad, but Reilly can fix it,” said Burgess Meredith on his photograph.
From Eddie Albert: “Dr. Reilly had a lot to do with my enjoying life as far back as 1935. He still has.”
Many writers and poets—Robert Frost, John Erskine, Bob and Millie Considine, Morey Bernstein, and Fannie Hurst—eloquently expressed their admiration and appreciation in photo inscriptions or in their books. For example, Maurice Zolotow, author of Marilyn Monroe: A Biography, wrote: “To Harold J. Reilly, who would have made me as voluptuous as Marilyn Monroe if I had been a woman.”
Jess Stearn, in the first edition of his book Edgar Cayce—The Sleeping Prophet, wrote: “For my Dear Friend and Mentor, Harold J. Reilly, without whom this book would have been far less.” Stearn’s book was inspired by Dr. Reilly and largely written at Reilly’s farm.
Thomas Sugrue autographed his There Is a River with these words: “To Harold J. Reilly, the best doctor on the face of the earth—even some of the arthritic angels must yearn for his ministrations. But above all, I am proud that he was Edgar Cayce’s friend and that he is mine.”
“Builder of happiness and more effective people” is how the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale described Dr. Reilly, while Hugh Lynn Cayce, in his book Venture Inward, wrote as follows: “To Harold—who has helped many people start this Venture Inward as Edgar Cayce conceived it.”
Nor were all his clients celebrities. Many were simply suffering human beings referred to him by one or more of the 3,000 practicing physicians, osteopaths, and dentists who sent their patients to him.
Despite his own impressive credentials and record, Dr. Reilly is best known for his unusual and close association with Edgar Cayce, the “sleeping prophet” of Virginia Beach, who began sending cases to Dr. Reilly in 1930—almost two years before the two men met. At the time, Reilly had never heard of Edgar Cayce and did not suspect that the referrals were coming from a psychic.
By the time Cayce died in 1945, he had referred more than a thousand patients to Dr. Reilly and had mentioned him hundreds of times by name in the trance readings in which he diagnosed and prescribed treatment for a wide variety of medical complaints.
In Edgar Cayce—The Sleeping Prophet, Jess Stearn describes Dr. Reilly as a “portable repository of practical Cayce therapy.” Certainly he was the unquestioned living authority on the health secrets in the Cayce “readings.” Most of the dozens of books on Cayce, totaling millions of dollars in sales, celebrate Dr. Reilly’s rare skills and understanding of the Cayce treatments and his success in applying them. Dr. Reilly was not only a “master” of the Cayce theories, but had clinically tested and sifted them in over forty-five years of active practice. The ultimate fusion of Cayce’s psychic powers tapping some source of “universal