The Oil That Heals. William A. McGarey M.D.
wherever I found myself. The experiences that came about during those years taught me how to communicate, but one cannot communicate unilaterally. To write a story for the newspaper, I had to ask questions and listen to those who knew what was happening. Then I put my talents to work.
It must be that way, to some extent, as we work with our physical body. If we pay no attention to what our body is telling us, we may end up with a perforated ulcer of the stomach instead of the earlier overacidity. Listening will tell us that something is wrong, something is burning in our stomach. Why not listen and give the communication a response—change our diet, our life style a bit, and introduce some antacid preparation?
One of the most frequent criticisms I hear about today’s physicians is that they don’t listen. Patients tell me this, their voices ringing with resentment and anger, for they all believe they know something about their own body. It is, after all, their body. They know how they feel. And to them, how they feel is important. If their doctor won’t listen, frustration results and there is further disruption of the physical body because of the emotional upheaval.
Communication is always a two-way street. Knowledge of our body requires a sensitivity to what is going on and a response to that need. It doesn’t always take a doctor to know when something is happening inside, and then what our conscious response brings about in the way of correction.
Sometimes, like a rumor that a reporter catches on the fly, there is a hint of something going wrong inside the body that comes in an instructive dream. Both the rumor and the dream need investigation. Once investigated and interpreted, the rumor may become fact that can be published in the paper and the dream may become a therapy that can be instituted in the body. The key is to listen, appraise, then act.
Chapter Two
Medical School and Early Practice Years
Experts abound in all medical schools, and my classmates saw them as the fountainhead of all knowledge—gurus, in a sense. Much knowledge, but little philosophy. Philosophers are rare indeed in medical halls of learning. They are present, but their voices are outnumbered, unheard, or discounted. Existence of a Higher Power, a Creative Energy, a God, was not acknowledged in my four years of medical schooling. Except, perhaps, in the form of profanity.
I recall clearly a particularly wild argument I had with John Miley, one of my classmates. He was saying, “That’s what the experts say in the textbooks.” I was telling him why their statements did not make sense to me, and questioning why I should accept their point of view. Common sense—philosophy—does not often find its way into medical literature.
Early in my practice of medicine, a pathologist was looking at a section of the appendix which had been removed. He told me it showed appendicitis. I looked at the specimen and asked the doctor how many lymphocytes had to be there to designate it as appendicitis instead of a normal appendix. He shrugged off the question, but I persisted because normally the appendix does have lymphocytes present when nothing is wrong. Such a presence is, in fact, a part of the immune system, which encompasses all the lymphatic tissue in the body. It appeared to me that the number of lymphocytes present simply gave the pathologist an opportunity to make an educated guess. His guess was “appendicitis.” My pathologist was unhappy with me, but he didn’t know that I used to smell dandelions.
I found out from these two experiences that all things are not really as they seem. The experts are not always right, as we often assume, and disease is not an on/off phenomenon, but rather a process found active within the physiology of the human body.
Medical school did teach me, however, about the structure of the body, about physiology, something about the various specialties, a great deal about pharmacology, much about pathology—the end point of a disease process—but most significantly we were taught about diseases, how to recognize them when they appear (sometimes as if by magic), and how to do battle with them. We were not taught that the body frequently has amazing abilities to overcome the beginning stages of a disease process, if given a bit of help here and there. And we were not given any instruction about nutrition, dietary practices, or the effect of these upon the health of the body. Nor were emotions and their direct effect upon the functioning of the body given credence.
I was impressed by the work which Richard Vilter, one of my professors, had done in the field of vitamins, and I could not understand why the use of vitamins as an aid to the body was not more widespread. I tested vitamins early in my medical school career, and I found that I had more energy and simply felt better when I used them. Another insight—something good might be happening within the body tissues when you simply feel better. But arguments still rage about what vitamins do and do not accomplish.
A good night’s sleep will often make one feel better. Seeing someone you love will do the same. A good hug—or a bunch of hugs—will enhance that same feeling. Recent work has shown that one feels worse when one frowns, feels better if one puts a smile on one’s face—no matter how “down” the person may feel prior to the smile. And, if things get worse, laugh! That’s another way to move toward happier, feeling-better times. To a degree, those happier times spell healing of the body.
It was shortly after I began my practice of medicine in my home town of Wellsville, Ohio, that I discovered another way to gain an insight into myself—another way to smell the dandelions. It was a very busy time, and house calls were still a way of life in that mid-Western town.
After an especially busy day including house calls, surgery in the morning, and a full day at the office, I finally climbed into bed. When the phone rang shortly after midnight, I groaned. I was summoned on another call, and I grumbled all the way to my car, vowing to charge five dollars instead of the usual three.
When I returned home, more like a pussy cat than the roaring lion, I tried to sneak into bed without waking my wife. But she heard me and said, “Well, did you charge them like you said you would?” I told her I didn’t—that the little girl was really sick, and besides, they didn’t have any money to pay me for the visit. We went to sleep again.
It was at that point that I became aware that service was what I was there for and I chose it. My later years emphasized that concept of service and enlarged on it, for how is the quality of Divine Love best manifested, unless it is in helping those who need help, caring for those who are anxious and insecure, those who are sick in body, mind, or spirit?
Chapter Three
A Chance Encounter
(If Chance Is Yet a Reality)
Nothing really happens by chance, does it? at least that was what i was to find repeated over and over again in the Edgar Cayce readings. I was now in the practice of medicine in Phoenix, Arizona, having started over again after a stint in the air force as a flight surgeon.
It was 1955, and I had been in town just a few months. I had started an exploratory adventure into the field of parapsychology with a friend of mine, Dr. Bill Rogers. We had come across a wonderful story about Edgar Cayce—a man who could lie down on a couch and enter an altered state of consciousness—and really tell what was happening inside the body of another individual who could be 2,000 miles away. It was as if he were communicating with the unconscious mind of another person, while his own conscious mind was set aside. I was fascinated, but thought—“Well, that’s just another event in the past, for Cayce died in 1945.”
Then, one day, my receptionist came rushing into the office and gave me the phone number of a man who was going to talk about Edgar Cayce. It was Cayce’s oldest son, Hugh Lynn Cayce, and I was excited.
That was the beginning of the adventure that was to take me through time and space, in a sense, and demand my time and attention, my thought processes, and my writing and speaking abilities for the rest of my life. For there is still much to be done, some thirty-eight years after that “chance encounter.” It was Hugh Lynn Cayce who captured my imagination that day after I made the phone call. And the world was a different place from that point onward.
Hugh Lynn told about his father’s