Edgar Cayce Readings, 5779-1

11/62 Dr. W. H. Ketchum's talk about Edgar Cayce, before one of the A.R.E. Study Groups in California, and especially about reading 5779-1 on 5/31/07 (?) in Kentucky. [No copy of these readings]
One day Cayce and an attorney were in my office, and I remember Cayce saying "If the doctors and the lawyers were permitted to talk, there would be a murder in every block!"
One day [5779], a big contractor, broke his leg. [5779] employed about 400 men, and built railroads to Nashville. He weighed about 240 pounds and he jumped the space of about 4 feet where the steps hadn't been put in yet at the new depot, and he fell and broke his right leg below and above his knee. With his weight of 240 pounds behind the fall, it was quite an injury. [5779] was a very prominent man, and five doctors were called in on the case. It was on the 30th day of May, 1906 or '07, and hotter than ...! It really got hot down there! Anyway, we five doctors got him as comfortable as possible, and sent for a couple of nurses. We had no hospital in Hopkinsville, but [5779] had a beautiful red brick home with all the trimmings. He was a wealthy man. So there we were, the five of us doctors, and I was the only Yankee in the bunch. The doctor standing opposite me said to the rest of us, "Gentlemen, this is a very heavy responsibility, and there's only one way to handle it. Mr. [5779] shall select the doctor who is to carry the responsibility and it will be his case. The rest of us will consult, but the one Mr. [5779] selects will have to shoulder the responsibility." Well, we all agreed, so Mrs. [...] went in and put it before Mr. [5779] and came back to us with the decision that "Mr. [5779] said that he is willing to trust his case to the Yankee boy." Well, that was my first taste of what doctors will do: one of them, Dr. Anderson, turned to me and put his hands on my shoulders and said if there was anything he could do for me to just call on him; the other three didn't say "kiss my foot", "go to hell", or anything else. They just went out and got in their carriages and drove away. They were angry, to say the least, that a damn Yankee intruded; but I had taken the first State Examination of anybody in the county and this qualified me, in [5779]'s opinion, as someone who had brains and know-how.
Well, this [5779] case was a touchy one. With a modern hospital and all the trimmings there would be nothing to it; but back then we had nothing. Patients were either treated at home or in the doctor's office and that was all. Well, we had two dandy nurses from St. Louis, and I went over to this manufacturing concern which built everything from wagons to anything else in the wood line and had them build two wooden affairs about four feet wide and six or seven feet long, and covered this with canvas. This was just a regular traction bed. I had never seen one, but I had seen pictures. I had never treated a fracture case before, and this fracture had pieces all over the place. So, I went down and consulted Cayce. He laid down and went to sleep and told me what to do - what to do and how to do it. He said first to put a nail in there and nail it down. Well, I got a picture in my mind of what he was telling me, and then I went down to the blacksmith shop to get the nail. Cayce had said to bore a hole in there (the knee cap) and nail it down. That was rather radical treatment for those times. It just wasn't done. They had used splints, but not metal screws up to that time. So, after I got the picture in my mind I went down to the old blacksmith and told him what I wanted. He made a nail like a large roofing nail, with a large head on it, made out of iron. Dr. Anderson and I and the two girl nurses went down there and bored a hole in the knee and nailed it. Then we put the leg in traction, with a pulley at the foot of the bed. I thought to myself, 'Well, this doctor business isn't anything to brag about!" As what I had done got noised about there was considerable talk in the town - in the grocery store they would mutter "That damned Yankee - he'll kill ol' [5779] before he gets through!"
Then, just to make it tough, one night Mrs. [...] called me that he had got terrible pains in his back. Along about midnight I went over and watched him there for awhile and pretty soon he passed a kidney stone! That kidney stone had left his kidney, come down through the urethra and passed out through the bladder, and I got the stone! All while he was lying on his back. I kept him on his back for six weeks, and all this time I would have readings from Cayce every few days to get directions. Cayce would tell me how the thing was progressing. We didn't have antibiotics in those days. You just had to trust to God and use your horse-sense. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I had the only X-ray in the town. Well, I wasn't too exactly sure that my two points were right. It was the night before I put the nail in. So, I said to [5779] that we would have to take him down and take an x-ray of him that night, about nine o'clock when it was cool. He called his brother and got four of his "huskies" and they carried him - traction bed and all - down the stairs and out through the yard right down the middle of the street and up into my office. I got some pictures of it (the knee) and then his boys picked him up on the bed again and carried him back home. This method of carrying the patient was the easiest on the patient, but the town had never heard of it before. It was all new to the populace, and those other doctors! Why, they could have drowned me if they could have figured out how! At that time I was carrying my double-barrelled shotgun in my buggy. I carried it for two years. This was all before the incident with the medical board. This was just shortly after I got to Hopkinsville. This was one of my first cases and I wouldn't have taken it on a bet if I'd have known what it was! Talk about "sweating blood"! The townspeople thought I was just lucky and that was all there was to it; but at the end of about two months that leg was just as solid as can be. Inflammation all gone. That iron nail was still in there - never did take it out - but it was all skinned over and everything was lovely. He took that nail to his grave with him, about 30 years afterward.
Well, after about three months one day I was examining him and I decided I wanted to see that leg straightened up. "I want to see you get a good hinged movement there," I told him, "and I'm not as good at that as an osteopath. If it was the blackest nigger, if he was better than I was at anything I would step aside and let him do it, because it is for your own good." [5779] didn't know what I meant by an osteopath. I told him it was a new school just started up over here in Missouri. All the other doctors would truss them up and damn them and everything else; but they (the osteopaths) know something that we (the medical men) weren't taught! Dr. A. T. Still started osteopathy in Missouri. We had an osteopath [Oldham] in our town, and one day I met him on the street and gave him the high-sign. I told him I had a case for osteopathy and told him who it was. He said, "Do you suppose [5779] will have me?" I said he surely would, and that I would go up there with him. So, we went up and I told him I wanted him to in there and see, just gently, if he couldn't break down some of that tight tissue. Cayce hadn't recommended this - this was my own idea. I wanted somebody that would go just so far and no farther. Well, in another six months [5779]'s right leg was just as good as his left. He had thirty-odd years after that without any trouble at all. But if he had died - well - they would have combined to run me out of town. You can see what a mess it has been. Any one of these other four - all natives, born and raised there - why, they would have "taken" Cayce. Then when that N.Y. Times article was published - 1909 - !!!
Well, on top of all that I put my application in to belong to the Elks Lodge. (Then followed repeat of what had been typed before re. Elks episode.)
After the N.Y. Times article came out, when I would walk down the street people that I didn't even know would whisper "That's the man that goes to Cayce!" And those are the same people who, if they like you, there's nothing too good for you. Clannish!
No doctor that I have ever met would ever endorse Cayce. Except Dr. House. House did. He was the one who went with me the first time I ever went there. T. B. House.
One time I asked Cayce (in a reading) what the shortest muscle in the human body was. He answered ---. Can't even remember it myself, hardly! Then I asked him what the longest muscle in the body is and he said "sartorius". The shortest was "nevare-labei-superadoris-alaquenazi." That is right in the upper lip. And that is true. And with no medical knowledge, he got that off when he was in one of his spells [trances].
His diagnoses were marvelous because they were so simple. A little child could read it. Or listen to it. No fuss nor feathers.
Occasionally he put me in mind of a hound that had lost the trail. He'd look around for awhile and then seem to find a fresh, hot trail, and then he'd go on at top speed! You would have to tell him where the body was: You would say "you will have before you the body of [...]" and tell him where to find it.
It was "out of place", I suppose it will be called in the years to come. But think what the doctors are doing today. Look at these psychiatrists, right now, today. Thirty years ago the mere mention of it would have been scoffed at as "rot"! Palo Alto alone has 12 or 14 of them right now.

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