7/52 Elsie Sechrist's reply to questionnaire, transcribed
from tape:
"As I recall, I met him [
3100] in about 1932, just after
I was married, and at that time, his condition was just
beginning to show. As time went on, he got worse and worse.
I was with Bellevue [Hospital] at that time, and through some
of the doctors there, we had him made a patient. They went
through all the treatments, etc., and then they declared him
to have this [tape inaudible]. Then as years went on, in
1943 when I contacted Edgar Cayce, we were still friends and
I was so thrilled with my own results from the readings and
my husband's, that I talked to him about it and told him that
I thought that this was a terrific opportunity for him; to
get a reading and find out if there was an opportunity for
him to be helped. Whether it was a karmic situation or not,
I didn't know. So through my discussions with him - "
Question: Well, what actually was his physical condition?
Describe his physical condition when you first knew him.
Answer: "1931? Well, even that and 1943. In 1943 it was
quite advanced then. He had that shuffling gait and there
seemed to be a tremor and inability to control the nerves on
one side of his body. I don't recall whether it was his
right or left side. There was a shuffling, a dragging of
the leg and a rotating treatment of the arm, and his head
had begun to shake just a little bit."
Question: He wasn't that bad off when you first met him?
Answer: "Oh, no, but there was a stoniness that had begun
to appear already in the face and the eyes, which is so
important a part of this illness."
Question: What treatments had the doctors given him?
Answer: "Well, merely a treatment of checking because
there's really no treatment. He was at Bellevue Hospital for
a couple of months. I was head nurse in the TB ward there,
and I used to go downstairs twice a day and when they really
- I don't know if they told him definitely there was no hope,
but in the mind of medical science: there was nothing that
could be done for him apart from [tape inaudible]."
Question: Generally, what was his attitude towards life and
painfulness? Would you consider him a spiritual man?
Answer: "No. He was so much of an introvert that there was
very little discussion. But I knew from his attitude toward
women that he was very sexually inclined, oversexed, as a
matter of fact, and didn't seem to care too much about what
he left in his wake."
Question: Did he express any particular attitude with regard
to his mother?
Answer: "All we knew is that he worshipped his mother. His
mother and father had separated early because he and his
mother lived together and there was great consideration for
his mother. Everything seemed to revolve more or less around
his mother. Not that he was what we would call hanging on to
his mother's apron strings, because he was a positive person,
but after I got to know him, I knew that he was also a very
selfish person."
Question: After he got the reading, did you go over it with
him?
Answer: "We went over it together."
Question: What was his reaction to it?
Answer: "He was very hopeful. He thought that maybe
something could be done for him. I went into, especially,
that passage there about having to change and I tried to
analyze with him: What is your attitude toward this, what is
your attitude toward that, toward women, etc. But he seemed
to be so reticent in exposing himself that I was sort of
frustrated. I didn't feel like I could get to help him
really in that particular angle. I know I told him over and
over again, I said, 'Now, [
3100], judge yourself, analyze
yourself, pray and meditate and see what, it is that you are
doing, or not doing, that you should do."
Question: What was his attitude regarding the comments on
the prenatal condition?
Answer: "At that time, nothing. But since then, he spoke to
my husband. He's very bitter that the Edgar Cayce records
blamed his mother for such a thing, because he can't believe
that his mother was anything but an angel. She was a fine
person."
Question: Can you tell me what period of time he followed
through with the physical suggestions; the use of the
B Battery, for example?
Answer: "He ordered it almost immediately and he was
diligently trying to use it, but he kept being burned. I saw
those burns and my husband saw those burns. They were black
burns. They weren't just red areas or blistered areas. I
think I told you yesterday that he called me and told me
about the burns and I told him to write the Association and
send the machine back, and tell them that they must have made
an error in making it up. So it was sent back and then sent
back to him in New York, and again it did the same thing;
these violent burns, deep-seated burns. But my husband took
the amp meter, I think it was called, and tested it and the
voltage was so low that after my husband tested it, I took it
and even put in on my mouth and my tongue, and left it on a
long time, and didn't even feel the vibration. When I put it
on him it began to burn immediately and he followed
implicitly the instructions. We were there. We tried to
help him on it, and always he was burned badly."
Question: Did he attempt to use this for, say, a couple of
months? Or just a half of dozen times?
Answer: "No, I don't think I'm capable of judging how long
a period he tried to use it, but I know he had dozens of
burns on both his legs and arms."
Question: What about the massage? He was also told to be
massaged after the use of this battery.
Answer: "They gave him those massages diligently."
Question: And then there were certain suggestions regarding
diet. Did he take those seriously?
Answer: "Yes, he did. He followed all those physical
measures accurately. The only place where he fell down,
whether through inability to find that which was wrong or
lack of desire to even examine himself, because he felt so
superior, I don't know. But the physical thing he did
follow."
Question: The last time you saw him was when?
Answer: "I saw him in New York in January, 1952, and my
husband had seen him just before I did. He was in a pitiful
state. I saw him at the lecture at the Psychology Forum in
New York. He was in a most pitiful state."
Question: Able to get around on his own?
Answer: "Yes, he was able to get along on his own, but he
was hunched way over and he was dragging both feet. The
tremors in his whole body were terrific and that stoniness of
his face, and the eyes; he was scarcely able to emote at all.
And then the last report that I had was through my husband.
I wrote to him, I had a date with him on Saturday, as a
matter of fact. We wanted to talk together and he didn't
appear. Later on, we found that he had fallen in the street
and was picked up by an ambulance and was rushed to a
hospital where they said he had had a heart collapse. I've
had a letter from him since, saying that he was feeling
pretty good, but was never going to a hospital again, and
after that - very bitter. I think this may show something
regarding this mental condition - suggestion that he change.
He walks the streets, as he told my husband, and sends out
thoughts of hate towards these other older people because he
can't understand why they should be walking the streets, why
they should be living, when his own mother was taken, a good
and beautiful and pure woman. So with this bitterness in his
heart, I feel that his [tape inaudible] on this earth plane
are very [tape inaudible]."
3/30/53 Elsie Sechrist's letter:
"...My friend, [
3100] who had a Physical reading in '43 or
'44 and was burned so badly with that machine EC prescribed,
died a week from last Saturday, March 21, 1953, of coronary
thrombosis. I told you about his case last summer, how
the reading warned him not to use the Wet Cell Appliance [B
Battery] unless he changed first, lest he be worse off than
before. He did, and he was. His mother passed on 8 months
before he did. They were inseparable. He never married and
she separated from her husband when he, [
3100], was a child.
Now they are together again..."
10/06/55 Elsie Sechrist's letter:
"...Bill and I were shocked at how desperately he [
3100]
reacted after his mother's illness. He was so very bitter,
wondering why other old people were left walking around and
his sweet mother taken. She was about 86 when she died..."
7/10/67 Mrs. Sechrist in studying some readings ran across
Case [
606] which said "Alcohol won't work with Gold". She
told GD she felt this might be the reason why the Appliance
carrying the Gold continually burned [
3100], because he did
not give up his alcohol.
Edgar Cayce Readings © 1971, 1993, 1994, 1995 by the Edgar Cayce Foundation