by William A. McGarey, M.D.

Thymosin is a hormone produced by the thymus gland and has been directly related to the aging process by University of Texas medical researchers. Allan Goldstein, director of the biochemistry division of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston reported on his work recently at the annual meeting of the American Societies for Experimental Biology (Arizona Republic, 4/17/73).

Apparently thymosin levels in the blood decrease dramatically with age – “significantly between the ages of 25 to 45 in normal individuals,” Goldstein said. Thymosin is also directly related to immunity, and injecting this hormone into mice increases their immunity and resistance to disease. (The thymus is the master gland of the immune system – the reticulo endothelial or the lymphatic system – and it has been known now for more than ten years that cells from the thymus migrate to other portions of the body and become centers of lymphatic activity. It has not been shown, as far as I know, whether these centers of lymphatic activity – such as Peyer’s patches – also produce the same hormones that come from the thymus.) Goldstein reported that patients with Hodgkin’s disease and chronic leukemia have low blood levels of thymosin, and that “failure of the thymus gland to function properly is a major factor in a number of debilitating and often fatal diseases of children and adults.”

The interesting correlation with the Cayce material is that Cayce attributed much importance to the Peyer’s patches – a series of aggregated lymph nodules in the lining of the small intestine. Gray’s Anatomy says of these so-called Peyer’s patches that they “form circular or oval patches, from twenty to thirty in number, and varying in length from 2 to 10 cm. They are largest and most numerous in the ileum. In the lower part of the jejunum, they are small, circular, and few in number. They are occasionally seen in the duodenum. They are placed lengthwise in the intestine, and are situated in the portion of the tube most distant from the attachment of the mesentery. Each patch is formed of a group of solitary lymphatic nodules covered with mucous membrane, but the patches do not, as a rule, possess villi on their free surfaces. They are best marked in the young subject, become indistinct in middle age, and sometimes disappear altogether in advanced life. They are freely supplied with blood vessels, which form an abundant plexus around each follicle and give off fine branches permeating the lymphoid tissue in the interior of the follicle. The lymphatic plexuses are especially abundant around these patches.”

The readings suggest that these patches tend to become fewer in number as the body grows weaker, and that the regular use of castor oil packs over the abdomen tends to rejuvenate these glands and thus be a major factor in the rejuvenation of the entire body. They also suggest that the packs were primary therapeutic tools to use for Hodgkin’s disease. a disease of the lymphatic system, according to the readings, where the system has in a sense lost its integrity of function.

Thus the Cayce material concerning Peyer’s patches is strangely consistent with Gray’s traditional information and Goldstein’s modern research report.

When there is over-exercise physically, or especially the mental forces as of worry or anxiety, to be sure it calls on the necessity of these emunctory activities – or those patches that are called by a man’s name. These are then lessened in their number and thus make a quickening, or an anxiety, causing the flow of blood in the heart, as an organ, to dilate. (294-212)

Now, in the physical forces of the body (as seen and understood, in the nervous systems of the body), there are those glands that secrete fluids which in the circulation sustain and maintain the reaction fluid in the nerve channels themselves.  (271-5)

Merging all these bits of information together, one might say that lack of tensions, or not being able to handle them properly, might be directly related to the number of Peyer’s patches present in one’s body, which in turn could well have a strong influence on how one lives. Castor oil packs, one might postulate, could well have an influence on the length of one’s life.

Note: The preceding report was provided by William McGarey, M. D. and is excerpted from The A.R.E. Journal, November, 1973, Volume 8, No. 6, page 265, Copyright © 1973 by the Edgar Cayce Foundation, Virginia Beach, VA.