the next he was fast asleep. That’s how he perceived what always took place. As Al Layne liked to remark, Edgar was the only one who never got to experience one of his own readings.
Anxiety became fear when Edgar finally understood the full import of the information that had come through. His sessions with Al Layne and others had been experiments. No one could get hurt. Now he had to face the horrific possibility that the treatment he recommended could—and likely would, according to House and Jackson—result in Tommy’s death. A family member and mere child, no less!
Carrie had more faith in the trance advice than Edgar himself. She believed the sleeping Cayce was an instrument of God’s divine love and compassion. This night God was reaching out to her and her child. If Cayce—in trance—told her to poison her son in order to save his life, she would act on the information.
Dr. House could not say the same. Common sense, along with decades of medical training, taught him that Cayce couldn’t possibly be doing what he appeared to have done. Until now, he had looked at what Edgar was doing as mere entertainment—parlor tricks at best.
Carrie demanded that he prepare the belladonna. Despite his very great reservations and a threat from Dr. Jackson that he would lose his medical license and possibly be brought up on charges of manslaughter, he retrieved the drug from his doctor’s bag. He loved Carrie too deeply to act otherwise. And regardless of how this might end his promising career, he could at least console himself by knowing that his son would surely die if nothing else were done. He would be putting little Tommy out of his misery.
Lynn Evans led Edgar outside to collect the ingredients for the poultice that had been recommended in the treatment. Edgar climbed a peach tree in the orchard behind the barn, opened his pocket knife, and cut the bark away from the freshest growth. He handed the bark down to Lynn, and they took it into the kitchen at the rear of the house where Carrie’s sister Kate had put a kettle on the stove to boil.
Kate prepared the hot poultice and then carried it into the parlor where the others were waiting at the child’s side. Dr. House dissolved the white powder into a spoonful of water. Carrie then opened Tommy’s mouth, poured the liquid inside, and massaged his neck until he swallowed. Then she wrapped the naked child in the steaming hot towels dipped in peach-tree solution.
Edgar remained outside, standing on the veranda in the rain. He didn’t join the others in the parlor because as he later said, he “couldn’t stand the thought of seeing Tommy House die in his mother’s arms.” Gertrude had been right in not coming. He understood this now.
He heard no cries coming from inside the parlor. As the others described what happened, Tommy instantly fell asleep. Dr. House, in his later report, noted that this was the child’s first deep and uninterrupted rest since birth. Tommy awoke hours later, drenched in sweat, cheeks pink, breathing steadily, and nursed at Carrie’s breast. He never had a convulsion again.
The “miracle,” as Carrie and Dr. House would forever describe Tommy’s recovery, impacted the lives of everyone at The Hill that night and many thousands of others to come.
Carrie and her family would receive over two hundred readings in the three decades ahead. She not only continued to champion and defend Edgar but also encourage others to seek his counsel. She became one of the most adept students of the life-transforming messages of love and hope she found in the Cayce readings. She would later join Edgar and Gertrude when they left for Virginia Beach, and she would become chief of the nursing department at the Cayce hospital. In addition to her capacity as an RN, she would help to explain the readings to those who sought Cayce’s counsel, most notably young mothers.
Thomas House Jr., c. 1911.
Both seated, Edgar and Dr. House (with Gertrude’s cousin Raymond Smith).
Dr. Thomas House underwent a personal crisis. What he had witnessed at The Hill that night made it impossible for him to return to practicing medicine as he had been taught. A rising star in the medical community, once under consideration to become head of the American Medical Association, he left his practice at the Hopkinsville asylum, turned his back on standard allopathic medicine as practiced by his colleagues, and embraced a type of holistic treatment put forth in the trance readings. Along with his wife, he moved to Virginia Beach where he became the Cayce hospital’s chief physician.
Tommy House Jr. would grow healthy and strong and also make his home in Virginia Beach. A gifted engine mechanic and repairman, he personally built the health equipment recommended in the readings. Today, patients still use the batteries he first assembled for the electromagnetic therapy prescribed to treat a wide variety of illness, including conditions that were similar to his own at birth. Often times, at great personal expense, he would drive hundreds of miles to deliver readings and medical equipment to patients unable to come in person to receive Cayce’s help.
Carrie House, Gertrude, Gladys Davis, Hugh Lynn, Edgar Evans, and Tommy House in Dayton, Ohio, 1924.
Equally profound was the impact Tommy House Jr.’s reading had on Edgar. He had proven to himself and others the life-saving potential of his work. Regardless of how unusual and sometimes altogether unbelievable the information that came through in his readings, he would never again doubt the good that could result. From this day forward he would dedicate a portion of his time each day to giving readings. No one who genuinely needed and wanted help would be refused. And though it would still be several years before Gertrude herself would become his partner in what he was now beginning to call the work, thanks to Carrie’s courage and example, she would conduct more readings than anyone else.
WESLEY KETCHUM:
THE PSYCHIC PARTNERSHIP
As news of the success of the Tommy House reading circulated through Hopkinsville, ever greater numbers of ill and dying people turned to Edgar for help. Among them was Gordon Putnam paralyzed from the waist down. Cayce—in trance—recommended osteopathic treatments which were able to effect a cure. There followed successful readings for a woman suffering from glaucoma and a young girl with a throat inflammation. The only readings which were judged by Edgar to be a failure were those given to Joe Dickey who was intent on using trance advice to lay bets at the Latonia Race Track. Edgar correctly picked the winning horses but in the process suffered severe migraine headaches and temporarily lost his ability to go into trance. Only by trial and error would he discover how the readings were to be used or what, in fact, the rules were.
Just as more patients came to him for help, so did several Hopkinsville physicians. Among them was Dr. Wesley Ketchum, a short, thickly built, well-groomed thirty-one-year-old homeopath from Ohio. Ketchum was not only better educated than any others Cayce had worked with but despite the criticism and veiled threats he received from colleagues, was fearless in applying the recommended therapies. And while a few other physicians also consulted Cayce, Ketchum was the only one willing to admit it and seemed to actually enjoy the controversy this created. He told his patients that he was consulting Cayce and would deliver lectures at medical conferences in which he described the trance process in detail. It was one of these lectures, delivered to the American Association of Clinical Research that would result in a front page New York Times article which turned Cayce into an overnight sensation.
The New York Times, October 9, 1910.