that she didn’t move her hands and feet without their knowledge. What Palladino didn’t know was that Münsterberg had an accomplice hidden in the room.
After the séance had begun, Münsterberg’s accomplice, not spirit guide John King, made his presence known. Palladino was caught having stealthily slipped her bare feet out of her shoes and using her toes to raise the table around which they sat. She had also surreptitiously placed Münsterberg’s right hand on top of his colleague’s left hand. With her own hands thus liberated, she was then free to move objects and make the instruments play. The mysterious wind, Münsterberg further revealed, was the result of a rubber bladder secreted into the palm of one of her hands which she used to release sudden jets of air to blow through the room.
Eusapia Palladino, Italian medium, 1898.
Münsterberg’s success in exposing Palladino and the laudatory press that followed surely contributed to his decision to investigate Cayce. The event that triggered the professor’s departure for Hopkinsville was the presentation of a scholarly paper written by Ketchum delivered at Harvard to the American Association of Clinical Research in 1911. The presentation, attended by upwards of four thousand physicians, clinical researchers, and university scientists, reportedly sent Münsterberg into a blind fury. “I will expose Cayce to the world!” he grandly announced.
Fellow faculty members in Cambridge were not so quick to dismiss Ketchum’s report or rally behind their headline-grabbing colleague’s efforts to debunk Cayce. They believed that Münsterberg, who was in the process of rewriting the Harvard curriculum, had betrayed the legacy of his now-deceased mentor William James, who had encouraged the open-minded study of paranormal and extrasensory phenomenon and had been a prominent supporter of the Society for Psychical Research in England. In striking contrast to James, Münsterberg denied the existence of the unconscious mind and any supposed powers associated with it. He bridled at the notion that a psychic could correctly diagnose illness in a hypnotic state and was determined to destroy the careers of physicians and scientists entertaining such claims.
Three months after Ketchum’s presentation, on January 20 after attending a formal state dinner in Washington D.C., Münsterberg arrived in Hopkinsville by train and checked into Cayce partner Albert Noe’s hotel. As Münsterberg’s archived correspondence makes clear, he didn’t alert the press of his visit because he condescendingly believed that his mere presence in Hopkinsville would give credence to the “humbug” he believed to be psychic phenomenon. Rather, he would catch Cayce in an act of fraud, compile his findings, and go public at a time and place of his own choosing—Harvard’s Emerson Hall.
The following day Münsterberg hired a carriage which took him down the Russellville Road to the modest single-bedroom cottage at the furthermost edge of city limits to where the Cayces had now moved. As Münsterberg learned from the carriage driver, Edgar owned no property. Even the cameras in his Hopkinsville photo studio belonged to others in the partnership. Edgar and his wife Gertrude had moved into a cottage near The Hill belonging to his mother-in-law to save money and to make it more convenient for family members to care for bedridden Gertrude recovering from tuberculosis.
The train coming into Hopkinsville.
Münsterberg’s unexpected arrival, his thick German accent, trademark silver-handled cane, and ankle-length beaver coat caught Cayce by surprise. Though taken aback, Edgar was cordial. He invited the forty-eight-year-old professor into his home, introduced him to three-year-old Hugh Lynn, and briefly showed him into the bedroom to meet Gertrude.
The Harvard professor expressed no pleasantries nor excused himself for arriving without an invitation. He immediately asked to see the table, lights, crystal ball, or any of the “modus operandi” that were the accoutrements of psychics such as Palladino. Cayce truthfully said he didn’t know what Münsterberg was talking about. He needed no darkened room to go into trance, could not levitate tables, move objects, or conjure unearthly gusts of wind. He described how he could go into trance whether he was lying on the floor in the living room, outside in the yard, or in the middle of the road. He also informed Münsterberg that his readings were now recorded by a stenographer and that typed transcripts were available from Dr. Ketchum for his inspection. He would be pleased to accommodate.
As an example of Cayce’s trance-induced diagnoses, Münsterberg was shown a transcript of his latest trance session, a follow-up health reading Edgar had given his wife the previous day. Münsterberg studied the reading and with permission, briefly examined Gertrude. He also heard the dramatic story of how, on her deathbed, the Source had recommended she be given the combination of drugs and charred oak keg filled with apple brandy which had saved her life. Unbelievable as it all seemed, Münsterberg could see for himself that Gertrude was on the path to a full recovery.
After further discussion of Gertrude’s case and examining the readings that had been given her, Münsterberg abruptly left without shaking Edgar’s hand or saying goodbye. He would, however, return several days later, this time by appointment and accompanied by Dr. Jackson with whom he had discussed Gertrude’s medical history and conducted a more thorough physical examination.
Münsterberg’s investigation was underway, but it was not Cayce who was being tested. What the Harvard professor hadn’t revealed to Edgar and Gertrude was that he had lost family members to tuberculosis. As a highly trained medical professional he knew the disease as only a specialist did. As the bereft stepson of a mother who had died from it, he also knew the agony of those who had contracted it. He had, as a result of his experience, been inspired to found a tuberculosis institute in Berlin. Until he sat at Gertrude’s beside, he had never personally examined a patient whose dramatic recovery was so miraculous.
Despite what he had seen and heard at the Cayce household, Münsterberg was unwilling or unable to make the creative leap necessary to take the next step: admit the possibility that Edgar’s trance readings had cured his wife of tuberculosis. Pride, not scientific inquiry, was the reason. The same was likely true of Harry Houdini, who would witness and investigate Cayce a decade later in New York. In the case of both men, no evidence would be convincing enough for them to publically call into question assumptions which contributed to their popularity. Houdini would try and fail to prove Cayce a fraud in 1921 at the McAlpin Hotel but would never go on record as having witnessed a Cayce reading, despite evidence otherwise.
Magician Harry Houdini, c. 1905.
The McAlpin Hotel in New York where Houdini performed and Cayce sometimes stayed when in New York.
Unbeknown to Cayce, Münsterberg’s undeclared purpose in exposing Cayce as a fraud was to gather ammunition that would remove the last vestiges of James’ influence on the Harvard curriculum. A sharp-tongued man with a well-deserved reputation for lashing out at his perceived enemies, Münsterberg knew he would have a mutiny on his hands back in Cambridge if he publically changed his position. And yet, here in front of him was a possible cure for one of the world’s most dreaded diseases. He was in a position to save hundreds and thousands of sufferers—perhaps even millions—yet in doing so he would undermine the foundation upon which he had built his career, endanger his Harvard professorship, and expose himself to rebukes from the many colleagues and perceived enemies he had cowed into silence.
Münsterberg was further
