EDGAR CAYCE REVISITED
(LETTER TO THE EDITOR, ALTERNATIVE THERAPIES) Eric A. Mein, MD; David L. McMillin, MA; Douglas G. Richards, PhD; Carl D. Nelson, DC Meridian Institute
[NOTE: This letter was published in Alternative Therapies (December, 2000).] Dear Editor: We enjoyed your interview with Alan Abromovitz, M.D., in the July issue. His description of his initial entry into the field of integrated patient care with learning about the Edgar Cayce readings seems to coincide with the experience of many of us that became involved with spirit/mind/body healing work in the 70's and 80's. While Cayce seems to be less discussed or even known by those newer to these concepts, it caught us by surprise that the misspelling of Cayce's name (spelled Casey in the article) made it past your editors. While Edgar Cayce lived in the first of half of the 20th century, his ideas helped create the holistic health movement of the past 30-40 years. The founding of the American Holistic Medical Association in 1978 by Bill and Gladys McGarey, Norm Shealy, and others was a direct outcome of their knowledge of the Cayce information (1). This influence was recognized in the first JAMA acknowledgement of this movement, an editorial titled "Holistic Health or Holistic Hoax" published in 1979 (2) which stated "The roots of present-day holism probably go back 100 years to the birth of Edgar Cayce in Hopkinsville, Ky." Even the modern-day use of the word "holistic" traces its origins to a paper presented in 1969 about the Cayce approach to mental illness (3). Any new movement does well to recognize its historical grounding. For those unfamiliar with the Cayce legacy, the readings continue to be worth exploration. As they did for Dr. Abromovitz, the Cayce readings remain a source of knowledge and inspiration, helping to develop a deeper recognition of the interplay of spirit with mind and body in our daily experience of health, dis-ease, and disease. They also still contain many "pearls" that need to be further explored and researched as our understanding of integrated medical approaches matures. Readers interested in pursuing the subject may want to start with exploring the web pages of Meridian Institute (4), a group trying to research the Cayce health approach, and the Association for Research and Enlightenment (5), the organization founded by Cayce during his lifetime. 1. Personal comment from Gladys McGarey, M.D.
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