5/34 READER'S DIGEST article "Young Doctor Heat" by Paul de
Kruif, pp. 13--16, condensed from Ladies' Home Journal:
Old Doctor Sun is the best physician I know. He burns me
brown and keeps me strong. But when he is not on the job I'm
beginning to bank on his young assistant, Young Doctor Heat.
Till a very short time ago, Doctor Heat had no skilled human
hand or brain to help him. Today a widely scattered cohort
of medical pioneers - they're still unorthodox and gently
disapproved of! - are helping to set him up in world-wide
practice.
There is, for instance, Charles Robert Elliott, saver of
mothers. In our country childbed fever - an infection which
starts in the naturally wounded womb of mothers who have just
had their babies - kills one out of every 400 mothers
delivered of full-term children; and for every mother it
kills, it leaves incurable invalids ten times this number.
Now Elliott had no thought of daring to try to CURE these
deadly childbed infections. It was only his aim to try to
quiet the pain that brought him into his portentous
partnership with Young Doctor Heat. The whole business began
ridiculously, by Elliott's fussing with an inflated toy
balloon, which gave him the hunch to try to kill pain by the
heat of a hot-water bottle placed internally!
If heat gives some relief when placed on the outside of these
tortured women, how much more powerfully it would act if you
could let it do its pain-killing work internally. So 11
years later you see Dr. Elliott in a San Francisco hospital,
standing at the bedside of a woman desperately sick with
peritonitis, racked with pain. He pours hot water into a
reservoir, from which it flows through a tube down into his
newfangled rubber water bottle comfortably distended inside
her. Minutes pass. She opens he eyes to murmur, "No more
pain now, doctor."
Elliott keeps pouring hotter and hotter water into that
reservoir, till he can't believe his eyes seeing a
temperature of 135 degrees registered on his thermometer.
The woman stands it.
He repeats it day after day while each day, much better than
mere relief from pain, he sees the woman weirdly getting
better, till she walks out - strong - from that hospital.
Then from 1921 till 1929 he does it over and over on pelvic
inflammations, post-childbirth, post-abortion, all the way
from mild infections to acute malignant spreading peritonitis
given up to die. He loses not one out of hundreds. He now
believes that heat does something new and powerful. Hotter
and hotter heat brings more good blood flowing through the
threatened part of the body. This healthy blood tips the
balance in this deadly battle.
At Bellevue Hospital in New York City, Elliott's treatment
has now been confirmed brilliantly. Across America Elliott's
microbe-burning science is spreading, tested by Surgeons
Graham of Brooklyn; Gellhorn of St. Louis; Counseller of the
Mayo Clinic. They've all of them found that Elliott hasn't
told it too big. Elliott himself believes that his new heat
treatment may wipe out 80 percent of all pelvic operations on
women, may restore thousands from wrecked health to vigor,
return many to the hope of having children. Elliott himself
using his own invention has never lost a case of childbed
fever, not one.
The finest thing about Elliott's science is that it makes it
possible for every good wide-awake family doctor to be a
specialist in these tremendously prevalent and tragic
diseases of women; and Doctor Harry Eaton Stewart, of New
Haven, Connecticut, is now making your general practitioner
a successful fighter of pneumonia.
Physicians have watched pneumonia victims get hot and sick
and very hot and then die. But if their fevers broke, right
afterward they've seen such folks get suddenly better. They
argued, naturally, that the lives had been saved BECAUSE the
fevers cooled. Very few took the opposite view - that the
fever cooled because the sick man's body didn't need it any
longer.
In 1922 such an idea was absolutely unorthodox. At that time
Stewart was consulting physio-therapist to U.S. Marine
Hospital 21 on Staten Island. The hospital was having a
nasty run of pneumonia cases in merchant sailors brought in
at the height of their sickness, and the mortality was
frightful.
"Is there anything in your bag of tricks to ease these boys?"
Colonel Young, the commanding officer, asked Stewart. And
Stewart remembered an old country doctor who had pulled
himself through pneumonia. "I put a poultice on my chest to
kill the pain," said that old doc. "Then I killed the
pneumonia."
Instead of a hot poultice on the outside, why not electrical
heat, generated inside your sick man's chest? Stewart,
again, thought only of pain-killing. Why not high-frequency
electric current, zipping back and forth through your sick
man's lungs? Colonel Young said yes, try it; but only if
there was no apparent hope for recovery.
So one winter morning Stewart and his nurses bent over a
sailor in the 11th day of pneumonia, face blue, breath coming
in shallow gasps, pulse beat fast and thready, and family
notified by telegram that -
Two wires led to big flat electrodes, one over that dying
man's chest, one under it. An electrical humming could be
heard. Taut minutes passed. Then a murmur from the sick
man: "Doc .. that .. feels .. better." Stewart bent over;
yes, the breathing was a little deeper, less gasping.
That man's relatives did not have to come to take away his
dead body. After every diathermy his pain left him. He
slept. His fever dropped, little by little; gradually his
strength came back to him. To 20 other extremely sick
pneumonic sailors Stewart now gave his electric internal
heat. The fever of all of them went down gradually - of all
excepting one, who died.
This seemed a phenomenally low mortality, since many of these
sailors had been stricken at sea and had been brought to the
hospital 'in extremis'. Stewart thought it must be a mild
variety of pneumonia. So next winter, for every bunch of
three seamen with pneumonia, he gave two the diathermy
treatment, and left one without, as a check. Almost half - 9
out of 21 - of these mariners died. And of those given the
electrical aid of Young Doctor Heat, out of 36, 29 recovered.
In 11 years Stewart has driven the pneumonia mortality in
more than 1000 he's treated down below 12 percent. Out of
150 he's been able to reach within the first two days of
pneumonia, only 4 have died. Scores have been saved, 'in
extremis', and absolutely given up for lost by physicians and
nurses. Best of all, other doctors have reported death rates
even lower than those of Stewart. And his science can be
applied any place your physician, familiar with diathermy,
can plug his portable diathermy machine into a light socket.
It was, of course, the great fever master, Wagner Jauregg of
Vienna, who gave Young Doctor Heat his first real start by
burning general paralysis of the insane out of folks by
infecting them with malaria. And it was Physicist Whitney
who stumbled on the astounding fact that anyone who's placed
in the concentrated field of short-wave radio gets hot.
General paralysis of the insane vanished before this
artificial fever as well as before malaria.
The heat treatment thus developed is proving of inestimable
value in the treatment of syphilis, and of that sleepy death
known as encephalitis. Heat has been brought to bear on
multiple sclerosis, slow murderer of men and especially of
young women in their prime, an illness of the spinal cord and
brain. Osler's textbook of medicine gives you this hopeless
news about multiple sclerosis: "Ultimately ... the patient
becomes bedridden. In 200 cases the average duration was 12
years; three recovered." Now Dr. William Schmidt, of
Philadelphia, has fevered many of these doomed people. He's
brought many - not too far gone - to strength and daily work.
Some are without a sign of their sickness for two years now -
though careful Schmidt says it's still too early to speak of
cure. From Detroit comes news of the powerful healing effect
of fever on chronic infectious arthritis, and from Chicago
comes report of how fever can relax - for a time, at least -
the air tubes in serious asthma.
It is the beginning of a revolution in medicine. Instead of
cold baths, and ice packs, the new death fighters are giving
desperately sick people more heat. In spite of all that has
been accomplished, it is plain that the surface of the new
hot healing art has just been scratched. And of course heat
is no cure-all. There's doubtless many a sickness that would
be made worse by it. But it is offering to the general
practitioner a simple but powerful tool that he can learn to
use.
2/24/38 Letter from wife: "Has had bladder infection which
has cleared up and recurred at intervals, for about 3 yrs.
Supposed cause was teeth. All but 2 teeth have been
extracted. Tonsils showed negative culture.
"X-ray taken 3 weeks ago shows good sized stone in prostate
gland and number of smaller ones in bladder. Prostate gland
is swollen, urine shows blood and pus. Difficulty in holding
urine, burning feeling after voiding. Has severe varicose
veins of many years standing. Also pain in knees.
"Is surgical operation for removal of prostate gland and
bladder stones advisable in a man almost 59 yrs. of age?
"Would varicose veins increase danger of blood clot forming
after surgery? Will condition get worse without operation?
Will kidneys become affected also?"
REPORTS
3/19/38 Wife's letter to EC:
Detroit
Dear Mr. Cayce,
Thank you very much for the reading for my husband. I am
herewith enclosing cashier's check and application blank. I
had hoped to send it sooner, but some money that had been
counted on, was slow in coming in.
My husband has begun taking the treatments you suggested.
The Osteopathic Hospital here has no Elliot machine. It
seems there are very few in use here. However, we finally
located one and Mr. [
1547] had a number of treatments. I
would like an interpretation of the line in the reading which
says that the Elliott machine should be used for a few
minutes every day. Just what length of time would a few
minutes cover? I ask this because the operator of the
Elliott machine tells my husband that the treatments should
be given for 30 minutes to start and then continued for a
longer period each day until they reach 60 minutes duration.
However, Mr. [
1547] has not allowed him to continue the
treatment for more than 20 minutes until he hears from you as
to your advice. The operator also says that the literature
on the Elliot machine says that the treatments should be
given for 20 consecutive days and then every other day until
30 treatments have been given.
If you can let us know what to do about this, we shall
appreciate hearing from you as soon as possible.
Very sincerely yours,
3/21/38 EC's letter to [
1547]'s wife:
Dear Mrs. [...]:
Thanks for yours of 19th with enclosure. Am surely glad Mr.
[
1547] was able to get the applications of the Elliot
machine, feel sure he will get results. As I understand from
the information - they would begin with a few minutes and
gradually work up to an hour or there about, think Mr. [
1547]
was right in not beginning with more than 20 or 25 minutes,
and should in the course of a 10 days or two weeks work up to
the hour treatment. Then after the 20 or 30 days make them
farther apart, say every other day for two or three weeks,
then a rest period of 20 days or there about and if necessary
begin again - do not know Mrs. [...] of a single case where
the readings have suggested the use of this machine that
haven't gotten results, and there have been quite a number of
them, some very serious.
Know we are anxious to be of help, and will appreciate your
letting us hear often as convenient, and can we help please
let us know.
With all good wishes
Sincerely, Edgar Cayce
5/10/85 GD's note See Edgar Cayce Foundation index cards on
ELECTROTHERAPY:ELLIOTT Treatment for Pelvic Disorders,
prostatitis, etc.
Edgar Cayce Readings © 1971, 1993, 1994, 1995 by the Edgar Cayce Foundation