01) Introduction

For over a decade I have been trying to put together a book for laymen, especially artists, on using subtle energy technology. Of all such technologies available today, the one I like the most is called Radionics. My objective is to set forth and explain radionic technology as a platform for understanding and working with Nature in a novel way, especially emphasizing artistic utilization.

The problems in writing such a book are numerous. For one thing, there is a technical component to the discussion that doesn’t square entirely with science. The basic assumption of Radionics is that mind can influence matter in extraordinary ways. We have been taught this is impossible in our materialistic societies. To enhance understanding of the potential, technical and procedural details, schematics, design imperatives and a brief history of Radionics must all be presented in a convincing but simplified manner.

This task also involves translating antiquated or cryptic terminology into comprehensible language. The story of how mind-based devices have been evolving for the last one hundred years in parallel to our familiar electromagnetic technology is fascinating. It also demands a degree of suspended disbelief from even the most generous reader. Upon doing so, details of radionic design and construction will readily reveal their artistic and life-affirmative potential.

While much of the books focus will be on how these devices were invented and work, the real discussion is more about what they imply. Today, Radionics is being used not only to heal people, but also in veterinary medicine, to replace pesticides and fertilizers in agriculture and for environmental re-certification. My hope is that Radionics will soon expand into music, art and design. Radionic tools and techniques are deeply empowering. Understanding their use and application can be personally and professionally liberating in many ways. There are also dangers and responsibilities inherent in developing these skills. They can and probably are being misused by some. There are no laws currently governing the application of mind based technologies, though the danger is sufficiently recognized that initial legislation defining and limiting its use has been put forth before Congress.*

In particular, there is the issue of believability. Does such a technology even exist, given the dominance of rational, mechanistic thought and the inevitable skepticism of the scientific world view? History abounds with fraudulent products with similar claims. Many of the most credible Radionics inventors faced persecution and legal jeopardy. How does one explain why it works? When it does, it is not always consistent, and with success there is the impression more of art or luck at work than careful methodology.

Fortunately, common forms of Radionics exist that everyone can understand. We use them daily without realizing it. Everyone realizes that the good cook imparts something into the food which goes beyond the ingredients and mechanics of cooking. Whether we call it love or an extreme aesthetic sensitivity, the food takes on the character of the cook’s invested energy. We feel it immediately when we put it into our mouth. I would call this a radionic enhancement.

Can that quality be quantified? In a way, it can. People sitting around the table arrive at a consensus that the food is delicious. Yet, there is no actual way to measure how that food actually is better because subjective, aesthetic criteria are involved. We can agree the qualities of the food, how they impact our senses, are wonderful. The evaluation is, in part, self-referential; subjectively we knew the cook was brilliant! The proof, however, was in the food. That’s the way Radionics works; the mind is applied to balancing ingredients to perform a desired outcome.

Whether we are discussing a fine cook or artist, an expert gardener or someone else with a subtle gift, it goes without saying that each brings to their skill something beyond the ordinary, a capacity to insert personal energy into the product of their labor. Radionics is a way to detect, describe and replicate that type of emanation. Much arises from the world around us that eludes mechanistic, scientific interpretation. We don’t say love, pain, happiness are illusions. They are all energetic and very real. They can’t be measured on instruments. We know they are calibrated though; there is more or less of each in every instance. Radionics is a way to calibrate and apply that which cannot be otherwise measured, called subtle energy.

The commonality cooking, gardening or creativity shares with Radionics lies in how intent, directed through tools or instruments, produces an enhanced end product. In the same general sense, we can see the application of love and caring to any situation has the potential to improve the outcome. Radionics also benefits from the care, concern and experience of the operator. In ordinary tasks discrimination becomes a tuning mechanism to guide decision making; mental energy must be invested in improving the outcome. Radionics uses this natural capacity to heal; to learn balance from Nature. The applications are endless.

I do not approach the task of writing about Radionics particularly well equipped. Most of my career has been spent working in glass as an artist/businessman. Until recently, I had little knowledge of electricity or electronic design. As a result, I approached Radionics as though it was an art. That is how I perceive and write about it here. I have also included some papers by early electronics experts that describe the way Radionics originally was designed to function electrically.

Radionics began life within the confines of the bizarre world of 19thC. Medical Electronics. It soon morphed into a completely non-scientific and self referential methodology based upon the empirical art of dowsing.

Today, quantum physics has scientifically demonstrated that the perception of events at the sub-atomic level can alter the outcome of those events. For some researchers, this metaphor has thrown open a door into mind/matter dynamics. Such speculation has resulted in Radionics undergoing a quasi-scientific revival in certain quarters. The computerization of Radionic theory has resulted in a whole new generation of instruments. One senses the stage has been set for a re-appraisal of radionic technology by a more open minded public.

02) Some Background

For many traditional artists today and going back thousands of years past, the task of art-making involved moving invisible forces. Healing, changing weather, restoring harmony, divination, accessing and making the sacred comprehensible to culture, all were tasks taken on by the shamanic artist. Since the beginning of self-reflection, artistic activity has been a bridge to the invisible world, embodying emotion, spirit, meaning and transcendence.

By examining the methodology of Radionics, I will attempt to introduce the reader to tools and ideas that explain how ancient, traditional art forms worked with energy in Nature to do work. Anthropologists are constantly reminding us that pre-historical and aboriginal peoples viewed the relationship between aesthetics and the forces of the natural world far differently than we do today. Even now, many native peoples employ the creative process for accessing subtle energy for healing and other work.

Some researchers tend to dismiss this functional and energetic component of native art as pure mythology. Only New Age true believers with frivolous, self-deceptive agendas could consider such energies as being real and immanent. Worse, many improbable and fraudulent healing devices have been sold to a gullible public for generations. No doubt there are legitimate complaints made with respect to subtle energy technology, and with good reason. Nevertheless, even valid criticisms have obscured important truths.

Despite the punishing weight of science, it remains our conviction the ideas, tools and techniques outlined in this book will shed light on the ancient energetic approach to art. Note the pictures of what was described as a 12thC. Babylonian geomantic device; this modern looking precursor of a radionics box actually looks like a 1950’s shortwave radio, but with the calibration in dots! Even in pre-historic eras, dots were found in many sacred sites. We don’t know why they found their way into modern Radionics, but the impression that dot patterns played a signifying role going back to the dawn of man is certainly intriguing.

Moreover, we believe the ideas and techniques of subtle energy are scientifically understood better today than ever before. In this regard, the work of one notable scientific researcher studying subtle energy stands out.

Dr. William A. Tiller, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University, Department of Material Science and Engineering holds several patents, has written four books and more that 300 papers, many of them on his avocational field, psychoenergetics, also called subtle energy.

"There is now a large body of experimental data in the general area of psychoenergetics associated with the directed focus of human intention. Remote influence experiments with healers, remote viewing experiments, investigations of psychokinetics, clairvoyance, homeopathy, and other phenomena confound the established picture of natural laws but attest to the existence of processes requiring the involvement of emotional, mental, spiritual, and other inadequately understood domains of nature.

"Because these domains are incompletely understood, they might best be grouped into a category called "subtle energies." Future research may delineate and distinguish the various characteristics of these energies and their usefulness to medicine. For now, subtle energies can be defined as all those energies beyond those presently acknowledged in physics. Four kinds of force are conventionally considered to be responsible for all the observable phenomena in the universe: the strong and weak nuclear forces, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force. Subtle energies and the subtle forces they generate are not necessarily strong or weak with respect to the established forces, but they are difficult to nail down with the standard protocols of today's science. It is useful to reflect for a moment on what the science of physics is able to do. Physics attempts to develop a relative framework of quantitative understanding that is internally consistent across all the various observable phenomena of nature. Physics is not able to provide absolute truth.

"Periodically, the prevailing model of physics is unable to provide internal consistency when incorporating new sets of experimental observations. The choice is then to either deny that the new observations are valid or expand the model of nature sufficiently to allow natural incorporation of the new data. Such a revision in the standard model was required when quantum and relativity phenomena had to be accounted for. Today, the majority of the physics community is in a state of denial with respect to psycho-energetic phenomena. The present model is so neat, powerful, and comfortable that many people feel it would be a shame to have to disturb it. However, evolution moves on, in spite of prevailing paradigms." (SUBTLE ENERGIES, Science & Medicine, May / June 1999, Vol. 6, Number 3)

Dr. Tiller describes six experiments dealing with directed human intention. All produced results that were inexplicable within the prevailing physical model of nature. In Tiller's view, "From these studies and many more like them, it can be seen that belief fuels expectations, and expectations in turn marshal intention at both unconscious and often conscious levels to fulfill the expectations."

Dr. Tiller’s statement suggests that design utilizing "subtle energy" proceeded from belief, which then became form through applied intent.
What much of what the ancient world considered technology; carving, painting, placement of heavy stones on the landscape, etc. we recognize today as the beginnings of art. Yet how these artworks affected consciousness, or how those artists sought to affect natural forces through them, we cannot know. However, by the study and use of consciousness technology, such as Radionics, it is possible to grasp how artistic/technological artifacts can be designed and made. Likewise, it is impossible to imagine how powerful this type of art/technology could become in the contemporary world if put into common use.

It is also important to understand why these ideas have failed to penetrate mainstream thought. Consciousness has evolved along with our needs. We respond to pressures to develop technology in response to specific economic and societal demands, often at the expense of parallel developments. Experiments in consciousness like those devised by Dr. Tiller suggest that given a different cultural orientation, education and motivation, we could be operating in a far different universe of scientific accomplishment.

The essence of our argument revolves around such a possibility. A few individuals, utilizing the alternative technologies examined in this text and others, are presently altering the basis of the way we approach design. They are evolving a creative approach to changing consciousness itself. The overview is that it will be far easier to disengage from the destructive aspects of our technology today, if we design systems for tomorrow based upon a deeper understanding of consciousness. By examining the ideas and appliances reviewed in this book, artist-inventors conceivably will be able to do just that.

It does sound impossible or improbable. Certainly many of the marvels we enjoy today would have seemed equally improbable a few generations back? Here is the rub; we have been educated and conditioned to believe the magic of consciousness cannot exist; not now, not ever. We are told consciousness is only the byproduct of chemical and electrical reactions in the brain. We can fathom our consciousness mechanically and electrically, but basically we are alone with it in ourselves. Everything in our scientific world view today stands against any truly magical technology; free energy, mind over matter, telepathy, spontaneous remission of disease, anti-gravity, and life beyond death. Yet in all instances, independent researchers report such phenomena do exist and are a matter of record, some accompanied with patents and appliances. If true, then how can they be just impossible dreams?

The simple fact is that most of our science and technology comes from a study of the world around us, from matter and natural forces, and not from anything to do with consciousness. When we evolved to the point that we needed machines that compute, only then did we really begin to study how the brain and the mind works processing signals and information.

Science has been unable to study consciousness effectively for at least two very good reasons. First, consciousness is not part of the physical, material reality that lends itself so well to the tools of scientific investigation. Secondly, in matters of consciousness it is difficult to separate the observer from the observed, which is a primary requirement of scientific objectivity and repeatability.

Art, on the other hand, has always been a discipline that is intertwined with consciousness. How can one begin to render even the most direct simulation of nature, say a line drawing of a tree, without grappling with some basic problems of consciousness? Determining how the view of the tree is selected, then rendered, involves an ability to transfer a signal from the eye to the mind to the hand. Then, there are the qualitative issues surrounding the drawing of the tree, how representational or abstract is the image; what are the aesthetics? Without due consideration to consciousness at every juncture, no human art can be made.

It would seem that artists are well qualified by virtue of the inherent demands of the profession to evaluate, design and use technology that requires consciousness to work. Under examination presently will be a number of technologies that utilize consciousness, in the form of directed intent, as the active operating force in the circuit. Ultimately, as with art, the only proof available to sanctify the methodology is the results.

03) Defining Radionics in Art

Radionics is the name given to a largely forgotten medical technology that employs directed intention to cure illness. Radionics is based upon the supposition that all matter gives off radiation, in frequencies particular to the object or substance under observation. By devising a methodology to identify and measure these radiations in both healthy and unhealthy tissue, the operator of a Radionics device can send a signal to the body of the patient to restore itself to health. This is accomplished both by neutralizing the frequencies of the disease and by importing healing frequencies, called ‘rates’ into the patient, by use of a device, called a Radionics box.

In the context of this book, I have chosen to expand the notion of ‘Radionics’ beyond the purely medical context. I look at it more as a metaphor for how human intent can be employed to move energy and do work. In the simplest sense, Radionics is a methodology by which Information can be used to move Energy, abbreviated as “I>E”.

The existences of technologies that employ consciousness to move energy have been explored in numerous contexts, mostly outside of science. In examining how the observer may affect the outcome of any observation, there is an implied contamination of objectivity. How does one objectively examine consciousness and its effect upon the world? The design and application of any Radionic technology operates on the premise that by changing the nature of the information our consciousness utilizes to effect reality, in effect we implement the energy necessary to alter that reality. So far, what appears to be changed by radionic treatment exists deep within the semiotics of the body/mind connection

Due to the growth of media based technology we have adapted to the rapid rate by which one type of Information changes into another type of Information, abbreviated here as “I>I”. In this sense, a picture of the ocean becomes pixels re-assembled on your TV screen, and a song becomes bits and bytes on the hard drive of your computer. Information is in a fluid process of constant transformation, before and after it reaches the brain of the observer. It is not hard to imagine how certain types of information can precipitate huge energetic changes within us. We loose all our money on an investment and fall into suicidal despair. The person we love agrees to marriage and suddenly we are walking on air. Information moves Energy, I>E; it is a common fact of everyday life. Yet, when we say that we can design a piece of technology to effectively optimize I>E, it sounds like magic.

In fact, the magic we all know that routinely does change Information into Energy is Art. Many people have experienced a life transformative moment (I>E) as a result of being impacted by the power of a work of art.

This is the reason for the book you are holding. It is a manual on how to understand and apply the way I>E works in nature. The method is Radionic technology. Radionics has to its credit survived over an hundred years of being ostracized by mainstream medicine and science. It is still widely used throughout the world to cure people and animals. Recently, Radionic technology has become computerized, and with the increased processing speeds, has also been successfully applied to healing large tracks of land decertified by environmental contamination. Other inspired uses await the creative practitioner.

Artists who did not want to make products could use Radionic technology as an alternative artistic venue. We see this in traditional societies. Navajo sand painting is used to treat disease. Likewise, the Hopi Indians routinely perform ritual dance to invoke rain. I personally witnessed such an occurrence. Within half an hour following the dance (on a 90 to 100 degree dry day), huge thunderheads rolled in and soaked fields and villages which only receive as a rule, six to nine inches of rain a year.

Radionic technology, coupled with art, provides amplification and tuning characteristics. Both may incorporate electronics, but are not dependent upon electricity to work. Tuning allows pinpointing, allowing the operator to target an objective in a more precise fashion. An artist using radionic tools can learn to work with nature in much the same manner as a shaman, but on a world-wide scale.

04) The Origins of Radionic Technology in Dowsing

Arguments arise from time to time about the meaning of the terms Radionic and Psychotronic. I have loosely defined them as mind/matter or subtle energy interface technology in order to apply them in as broad a metaphorical fashion as possible. By doing so, it is possible to understand many ordinary events that focus mind into matter to produce a singular outcome.

Take cooking; given identical ingredients, stoves, utensils, etc. a good cook will produce food which is far superior to someone without the same skill and care. Everyone realizes that the good cook imparts something into the food which goes beyond mechanical skill. Call it love or an extreme aesthetic sensitivity, the food takes on the character of the cook’s invested energy. We recognize it immediately when we put it into our mouth. Can that quality be quantified? In a way, it can. People sitting around the table arrive at a consensus that the food is delicious. Yet, there is no actual way to measure how that food actually is better because subjective, aesthetic criteria are involved. Instead, we can describe the experience in terms of qualities or emanations arising out of the food and how they impact our senses.

Radionics is a way to detect and describe emanations that arise from the world around us that elude a strictly mechanistic interpretation. The most familiar method of radionic detection is dowsing.

Author Christopher Bird, in an article on dowsing defined it as…"a word for the art of searching, with a hand held instrument such as a Y-shaped rod, a pair of L-shaped rods, a wand or a pendulum---for anything. In all probability it comes from the German word: Deuten, for which a good dictionary gives the following meanings: to explain, to expound, to interpret, to point at, to signify, to bode, to auger--depending upon exactly how it is being used."

Please note, that Bird’s definition of dowsing includes signification. The understanding is that the dowser uses a simple device to locate a signal emanating from a source that he determines through focus of mind. Dowsing is therefore a semiotic process, whereby invisible signals are represented in the movement of a dowsing instrument and interpreted by the mind of the dowser. This procedure is identical to the way a radionics instrument is used today. The difference is mainly in the radionic devices capacity to finely calibrate the emanations under observation into numerical rates.

Noted Etymologist and Author Philip S. Callahan, in his book EXPLORING THE SPECTRUM, Wavelengths of Agriculture and Life (Acres U.S.A., 1994) contributes the following insights into the art of dowsing:

"The scope of low level energies is difficult to comprehend by those not schooled in the grammar of the subject. The ruby throated hummingbird--all of three inches long--trips from Panama to the east coast of the United States and back again. The Pacific golden plover makes a seasonal non-stop flight of 3,000 miles from Alaska to the Hawaiian Islands with no landmarks whatsoever. Solid science has established that birds can detect minute radiant changes in the earth's magnetic field which may well help their orientation during migration.

“Dowsing is the art of detecting low-level energy. Focusing intent is a primal attribute. Arthur Middleton Young, the inventor of the Bell Helicopter, held that one of the most amazing examples of animal behavior is the motion of an amoeba, which can reach out by extending a pseudopod, devoid of any musculature, from any place in the body. Author Christopher Bird quoted Young as posing the question—“What causes the projection if it is not attention and intent?”

“Like amoebas, dowsers project an intent to find, or a request for the location of a given object or target. What is projected? Perhaps a mental or psychic pseudopod of possibly infinite length? Whatever it is called, an answer to the request seems to be fed back via their bodies in the form of molecular movements which--because they are usually not consciously perceived--are called involuntary. The muscles cause the dowsing rod or pendulum to move, thereby objectifying the muscular action that, self-generated by the requester, cannot really be termed automatic. “

In the case of radionics, the finger moving across the stick-pad is made to stop at a particular point. This point, on a dial or in the motion of a wand, indicates an answer to the question is being provided. Dr. Callahan then adds:

“Dr. Juan Merta, a Czech-born physiologist, psychologist, gifted psychic and professional deep sea diver worked oil rigs in the North Sea. He became very interested in the water dowser's art as it related to the extrasensory---map dowsing, for instance, location of lost children and successful searches for missing objects. Merta did a lot of experimental work at McGill University in Montreal. His findings caused him to suspect that the movement of the dowsing device had to be directly connected to musculature contraction in the body---specifically in the arms or hands. He therefore reasoned that if he could build an apparatus that could simultaneously record both the movement of the dowsing device and any muscular contraction, he would be able unambiguously to determine which came first, the contraction or the movement of the device.

“He electrically wired the carpi radialis flexor in the wrist area of the forearm. The instrument translated what was happening to ink and paper. After the several tests were finished, Merta concluded that the dowsing devices react only after the human beings operating them pick up the signal, which then stimulates a physiological reaction. He further concluded that if the dowsing device were only an amplifier magnifying a sensation, then dowsers should be able to teach themselves to pick up such sensations without recourse to any dowsing device whatsoever.

“He suggested that a projected request for information in dowsing is analogous to the number selection, the bodily reaction to the workings of the vast telephone switching system, and the final muscular twitching or neural response to the ring of an appropriate telephone on the other end of the line. In other words, a successful search depends chiefly on accurate formulation of the requests. Or, as the computer people have it, garbage in, garbage out, the recipe for failure.”

As dowsing became more universally practiced and accepted, it acquired a formal name: Radiesthesia. Bird goes on to define Radiesthesia as…"a word coined in the 1930's by the Abbe Bouly in France. It is taken from a Latin root for 'radiation' and a Greek root for 'perception' and thus means literally the 'perception of radiations.' At one time the Journal of the British Society of Dowsers was called RADIO-PERCEPTION. The word has been adopted all over the European continent with the exception of the so-called 'socialist' countries, which have adopted a newly coined Russian word: 'Biofizicheskii Metod' or 'biophysical method.' ”

As to the exact nature of the radiations themselves, Bird and the Radiesthesiologists leave us with no conclusions. Instead, Bird refers those frustrated with the lack of scientific explanation to be consoled by Thomas Edison's answer to the question: "What is electricity?"

"I don't know," replied the inventor, "but it works."

Whatever future explanation arises for dowsing and Radiesthesia, so too will be solved the mysteries of Radionics. The fact still remains that these tools can be learned and employed without the benefit of adequate scientific explanation. The introductory techniques of dowsing are simple enough for a child to learn. Many people do learn them, in fact, at gatherings in Vermont at the American School of Dowsing, every June. The attraction of dowsing is its practical application. One need do nothing more than learn the basic theory and technique, and begin to practice. Whether one wants to locate water or missing objects, or go deeper into the metaphysical possibilities opened by this training, the very experience of dowsing successfully is wondrous to many!

Within the arts, dowsing and Radiesthesia are generally not recognized for the intrinsic role they play in developing artistic discipline. In creativity, one is constantly searching for an impulse, idea, tone, melody, color, context, or the myriad of other experiences necessary to develop a theme. The creative process employs a form of internal dowsing; it is a self-referential technique for locating the next component of the work in hand. Intuitively, this "divining" impulse is nurtured and developed throughout the artist’s career. That the practice of ordinary dowsing or similar techniques like Radionics might augment the artistic impulse is not ordinarily considered.

Dowsing and Radiesthesia are often postulated as proceeding from the psychokinetic (read psychic or psi) energy of the mind, resulting in an involuntary muscle reflex. When examining the various approaches to subtle energy, one encounters a position that the operator’s mind primarily determines the dowsing effects. Psi researchers do not generally accept the position of the dowsers, that these radiations are external to the mind and imbedded in Nature’s intelligence. Under the latter scenario, Nature provides a signal, while dowsing, that is received by the mind and interpreted by the body as a muscular reflex.

Psychokinetic effects (also termed PK) were widely studied in the former Soviet Union. Many individuals of great PK ability required little or nothing in the way of supporting appliances. The study of their psychic ability, with or without the help of a device, has been generally referred to as Psychotronics. This loose definition however, has not stopped psychotronic inventors from producing impressive mechanical and electronic devices. The difference in meaning between psychotronic and radionic is still a gray area for many familiar with this field.

Radionics, for our part, is a specific type of technology with both a founder and an historical line of progression into the current era. Most notably, Radionics grew from the application of dowsing diagnostic techniques to medicine, and is still in practice by that name today.

It is the author’s opinion that radionic sensitivity is acquired from Nature on a primary, non-verbal level. That is to say, the radionics practitioner learns how to recognize and interpret signals from an intelligent, guiding source beyond their own personality or ego. I refer to this source as “Nature” because it seems to be part of our environment and entirely natural. It could just as easily be called a “higher power” or by any familiar name conveying the same impression.

Either way, the practitioner’s consciousness becomes linked to this source during a successful radionic transaction and functions like a transceiver. Due to the delicate nature of the communications, it is always possible that information passing from Nature intelligence to Human mind can be distorted or otherwise corrupted by the manner by which it is interpreted. Distortion can include the very real problem of the practitioner believing their own ego to be the actual source of the healing information. The special nature of this linkage is also vulnerable to pressure from outside observers and circumstances, and must be cultivated carefully. Like the other subtle gifts of nature that we are more familiar with, such as love, friendship and beauty, success in practice requires patience, openness and a suspension of disbelief.

Early “percussive” techniques in diagnostic medicine required the doctor to tap parts of the skin primarily over the major organs. The sound produced by the tapping enabled the doctor to determine to some extent the health of the organ. To the doctor, the sound of the organ being tapped could demonstrate a healthy frequency pattern or one of disease, and all the gray areas in between. The doctor makes his assessment according to his own self-referential criteria gained from both experience and his medical training. The doctor brings all the ability he has, both learned and intuitive to the service of his patient. Though every tool is at his disposal, Nature must stimulate our body from within to truly heal.

Radionics devices have been constructed over time utilizing many different methodologies. Since the days of percussive measurement, other radionic techniques to extract and analyze the patterns of disease have evolved. Some radionics operators give much more importance to the design and engineering of the instrument than others. Many radionic practitioners valued the tuning capacity and calibration of the instrument. They also wanted these instruments to be incorporated into mainstream medicine.

As a consequence, more emphasis tended to be placed upon the instrument than the mind operating it or the role of Nature in the cure. The design efforts of the early radionic inventors contain fascinating insight into how these priorities were assigned. For the artist interested in using radionics, each invention will seem like a new work of art.

05) Science and Scientism

In an article titled “Alternative Medicine and the Appropriation of Scientific Discourse: The Cases for Homeopathy and Radionics” writer Steve Mizrach defines scientism as:

“Scientism is the belief that science is the ultimate authority to which all questions and problems can be directed, and that scientists therefore should be an intellectual elite 'ruling class' of society, since most people lack the scientific expertise to govern their own affairs. Scientism assigns science a greater role than all other knowledge systems, and scientists a superordinate position within society.

“In painting the picture of how Radionics and other similar healing methodologies evolved, Mizrach eloquently describes in broad strokes the rise of scientism to the position we find it today.

“The origins of (Western) science lie in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries. This event was connected in many ways with other ongoing 'revolutions' - the Protestant Reformation, the rise of mercantile capitalism, the Enlightenment, and the dawning of the Industrial Revolution. During the Enlightenment, there developed a sincere belief that reason would now come to govern human affairs, thereby replacing "superstition and sentiment." This led people to think that perhaps rational scientific authority would come to supplant 'arbitrary' religious and political authority, and that all that was needed to achieve human liberation was to conquer 'irrationality,' ignorance, and lack of education. This doctrine is what Foucault calls the episteme of the Enlightenment.

“Comte advanced in his doctrine of positivism the idea that humanity, having passed through ages of increasing knowledge, had now reached the culminatory epoch, where governance would be by scientific and technical experts rather than arbitrary elites. The success of science in so many domains sincerely led people to believe that it might solve many of the problems that beset society. By the 19th century, the notions of progress, social advancement, and scientific discovery were firmly linked. Even before the rise of Big Science after World War II, science was already starting to have a great influence on the State, which increasingly relied on scientific expertise for pressing questions of policy and statecraft, and on technology for intelligence and national defense.

”Scientism is, then, the doctrine that science has a greater ability than any other human endeavor (art, religion, philosophy, whatever) for the resolution of disputes and questions; and that science has a special privileged status. (Most Marxists generally believe that science, unlike other forms of 'false' knowledge, belongs in the infrastructure, since it emerges directly from the material 'base,' rather than being mediated through culture, society, or ideology.) Under the doctrine of scientism, science is the ultimate authority for answering questions, and such things as rationality, reality, and truth are thought to be singular and singularly possessed by scientific inquiry - any deviation being clearly 'irrational' rather than exemplifying a different rationality.”
A bit further he adds:

“Despite science's apparent antiauthoritarian origins (many of us are familiar with the story of the brave heretic Galileo confronting the dogmatic Church with his discoveries), it nonetheless deploys authoritarian structures for the evaluation of knowledge. Science possesses five practical types of authority: political, formal-professional, collegial-elite, patronage, and authorship. It utilizes a discursive space (scientific journals, symposia and conferences, scientific honors organizations, etc.) which maintains the boundaries between 'insiders' and 'outsiders,' but the 'outsiders' seek to imitate this space in order to try and 'borrow' some of the 'symbolic capital' and prestige commanded by science. Since scientism guarantees the authority and power of science, it is inevitable that extrascientific fields will seek to appropriate some of that authority as well.”

Big science, once a challenge to religious authority, has replaced much of that authority today with its own set of assumptions and structures. Like the Church, it has its own language and jargon that reinforces its technical expertise and competence; its own complex support system in industry and government; its own media apparatus; its own system of reward and punishment. As such, Scientism guarantees the power and authority of science, while maintaining the ability to neutralize competition from outside its hegemony, which could challenge that authority.

In approaching the notion of 'alternative science' and its resulting technology, it is important to differentiate between the initial goals of true science and the cultural imperatives dictated by Scientism. One must ask if the pursuit of empirical inquiry into areas deemed 'irrational' by Scientism automatically becomes 'pseudoscience' in the pejorative sense of the word, or whether scientific inquiry can remain intact in an unfamiliar intellectual terrain, even one void of a familiar rationality. One needs only to follow scientific rationalism into the world of quantum reality and modern astrophysics to determine just how far this slender thread can be stretched.

At every step into the world of alternative science one encounters what is said to be an 'appropriation' of scientific method and terminology into what would otherwise be a scientifically unsupported inquiry or discussion. Instead of posing a direct challenge to the ideology of science, many of these inquiries appear only to mimic scientific discourse in furthering what appear to be irrational objectives. To the naive, this appropriation of scientific terminology adds credence to the argument they are bogus. More cynically minded observers would see in this appropriation of scientific terminology an unfulfilled desire to obtain the approval of science, or a crass appropriation of the prestige afforded science in the public mind.

That alternative medicine in general, with Radionics being a prime example, should ultimately be found lacking by careful thinkers like Mizrach is not too surprising. His tough stance is moderated in part by a better understanding of the problems besetting scientism. In that respect, he leaves the door open to the possibility that “clues” to unsolved issues of human health may yet be found outside mainstream biomedicine. Mizrach sums up his thoughts as follows:

“The founders of alternative medical practices often have had very standard medical training. They are not ignorant of the scientific orthodoxy of their time. The reasons for the "rebellions" against medical orthodoxies may be more sociological than intellectual. Unfortunately, their followers have chosen to try and justify their particular heterodoxies while still trying to win the approval of orthodoxy. This is an unstable position which is bound to collapse. Rather than mounting a direct challenge to scientism (e.g., there are "ways of healing" which may not be scientific in the strict sense, but they still work nonetheless) by appealing to pragmatism, alternative medical practicioners have tried to beat biomedicine at its own game, with deplorable results.

“Looking at the genesis and trajectory of alternative medicines is an interesting avenue into the more general problem of examining scientific heterodoxies (Velikovskyanism, etc.) and the accomodations they have tried to make in justifying their existence. Alternative medical practicioners, 'traditional' medical practicioners, and medical anthropologists might consider an alliance against scientism. The Dictatorship of Reason, governed by Voltaire's Bastards, has been allowed to run the West unchecked for too long. Anthropology, itself seeking to betray its origins by aping a long-dead postivism, and taking on the appearance of scientificity through patently unscientific doctrines like cultural materialism, is facing a similar problem. The Horatios of science, with their single reducing lens of scientific analysis, need to be reminded that there is, indeed, more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in their philosophy.

“As science meets anomalies it cannot explain, according to Kuhn, increasingly it starts to enter "crisis" periods where assumptions are revised and paradigms are surrendered. Biomedicine may be entering one of those "crisis" periods right now, as it confronts anomalous conditions (chronic fatigue syndrome, etc.) for which there seems to be no biomedical solution. Alternative medicine could go on aping a failing biomedicine, or seek to uncover terrain it has left untouched. Homeopathy and radionics may contain clues to things about human health which have, up till now, been left unaddressed in 'scientific' biomedicine; but they won't discover those things if they let themselves continue imitating the surface of a vanishing paradigm. It remains to be seen what will happen.”

Mizrach is justified in condemning elements of 'alternative science', especially those hoping to win approval for non-scientific methodologies through mimicking scientific procedure and instrumentation.

Other forms of alternative science, particularly areas like research into consciousness, suffer from the limitations of scientific method as it is applied today, such as observer independence. We argue within these pages that alternative science like Radionics may better be represented as an art form. Other alternative healing modalities, like shamanism, go completely beyond art and science altogether into pure mystical experience. How do you quantify something like that?

Whatever the proclivity for delusion, not all alternative science is without scientific merit. Consider the fate of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory, (excerpt from the New York Times, article by Benedict Carey, 2/10/2007):

“PRINCETON, N.J., Feb. 6 — Over almost three decades, a small laboratory at Princeton University managed to embarrass university administrators, outrage Nobel laureates, entice the support of philanthropists and make headlines around the world with its efforts to prove that thoughts can alter the course of events.

“But at the end of the month, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory, or PEAR, will close, not because of controversy but because, its founder says, it is time.

“The laboratory has conducted studies on extrasensory perception and telekinesis from its cramped quarters in the basement of the university’s engineering building since 1979. Its equipment is aging, its finances dwindling.

‘“For 28 years, we’ve done what we wanted to do, and there’s no reason to stay and generate more of the same data,” said the laboratory’s founder, Robert G. Jahn, 76, former dean of Princeton’s engineering school and an emeritus professor. “If people don’t believe us after all the results we’ve produced, then they never will.”

“Princeton made no official comment.

“The closing will end one of the strangest tales in modern science, or science fiction, depending on one’s point of view. The laboratory has long had a strained relationship with the university. Many scientists have been openly dismissive of it.

‘“It’s been an embarrassment to science, and I think an embarrassment for Princeton,” said Robert L. Park, a University of Maryland physicist who is the author of “Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness to Fraud.” “Science has a substantial amount of credibility, but this is the kind of thing that squanders it.”

“PEAR has been an anomaly from the start, a ghost in the machine room of physical science that was never acknowledged as substantial and yet never entirely banished. Its longevity illustrates the strength and limitations of scientific peer review, the process by which researchers appraise one another’s work.

‘“We know people have ideas beyond the mainstream,” said the sociologist Harriet Zuckerman, author of “Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States” and senior vice president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,”but if they want funds for research they have to go through peer review, and the system is going to be very skeptical of ideas that are inconsistent with what is already known.”

“Dr. Jahn, one of the world’s foremost experts on jet propulsion, defied the system. He relied not on university or government money but on private donations — more than $10 million over the years, he estimated. The first and most generous donor was his friend James S. McDonnell, a founder of the McDonnell Douglas Corporation.

“Those gifts paid for a small staff and a gallery of random-motion machines, including a pendulum with a lighted crystal at the end; a giant, wall-mounted pachinko-like machine with a cascade of bouncing balls; and a variety of electronic boxes with digital number displays.

“In one of PEAR’s standard experiments, the study participant would sit in front of an electronic box the size of a toaster oven, which flashed a random series of numbers just above and just below 100. Staff members instructed the person to simply “think high” or “think low” and watch the display. After thousands of repetitions — the equivalent of coin flips — the researchers looked for differences between the machine’s output and random chance.

“Analyzing data from such trials, the PEAR team concluded that people could alter the behavior of these machines very slightly, changing about 2 or 3 flips out of 10,000. If the human mind could alter the behavior of such a machine, Dr. Jahn argued, then thought could bring about changes in many other areas of life — helping to heal disease, for instance, in oneself and others.

“This kind of talk fascinated the public and attracted the curiosity of dozens of students, at Princeton and elsewhere. But it left most scientists cold. A physics Ph.D. and an electrical engineer joined Dr. Jahn’s project, but none of the university’s 700 or so professors did. Prominent research journals declined to accept papers from PEAR. One editor famously told Dr. Jahn that he would consider a paper “if you can telepathically communicate it to me.”

“Brenda Dunne, a developmental psychologist, has managed the laboratory since it opened and has been a co-author of many of its study papers. “We submitted our data for review to very good journals,” Ms. Dunne said, “but no one would review it. We have been very open with our data. But how do you get peer review when you don’t have peers?”

“Several expert panels examined PEAR’s methods over the years, looking for irregularities, but did not find sufficient reasons to interrupt the work. In the 1980s and 1990s, PEAR published more than 60 research reports, most appearing in the journal of the Society for Scientific Exploration, a group devoted to the study of topics outside the scientific mainstream. Dr. Jahn and Ms. Dunne are officers in the society.

“The study of telekinesis and related phenomena, Dr. Jahn said, will carry on.

‘“It’s time for a new era,” he said, “for someone to figure out what the implications of our results are for human culture, for future study, and — if the findings are correct — what they say about our basic scientific attitude.”’

Apparently, PEAR’s data and protocols were rejected by mainstream science without ever being given reasonable peer review, despite the status of the scientists and the university involved. In many areas of alternative science, only a hostile intellectual climate, not faulty reasoning or distorted facts prevent serious in depth study of important topics that concern us all.
Rejection of knowledge is as much a social and political process as its acquisition. Scientific and academic taboos can be created where popular culture weights in heavily upon the topic of study, trivializing it in the minds of serious researchers. Research on psychedelic drugs and the widespread reporting of UFO's have suffered from similar constraints. Were this not the case, alternative research might often improve our lives and stimulate our curiosity for knowledge.

A challenge to making studies like Radionics palpable to a broader audience will lie in whether it can be reinterpreted as a creative tool. Radionics was conceived as a diagnostic and treatment technology at a time when modern bio-medicine had not become the dominant science it is today. Radionic devices incorporated early radio and electronic ideas which have since been lost and/or discarded. As Mr. Mizrach has noted, Radionics has continued to appropriate the methods of orthodox science into its design and terminology.

We will examine this appropriation in a spirit of tolerance, given the state of electronics and medicine, circa 1910 when Radionics was first discovered. We will do so in order to shift the focus of this interesting technology from the scientific to the metaphysical, where it can be evaluated by the reader outside of scientific approval. The aim is to provide the reader with a reasonable means of evaluating radionic technology as an artistic methodology.

06) The “Divided Legacy” of Medicine

The invention of Radionics in the early decades of the 20th century by Dr Albert Abrams, A.M., LLD, M.D. was considered by many to be one of the most important medical discoveries of that time. Before revisiting this fascinating period and the circumstances surrounding the origin of Radionics, it is important to have some concept of the intellectual climate surrounding this discovery.

Not long before, in 1897, Sir J.J. Thompson had just discovered the electron. A few years lather, Sir Ernest Rutherford had shown that all atoms consisted of a central nucleus surrounded by the constant movement of electrons. The study of electronics was in its infancy, but already the Electron Theory had demonstrated the electrical nature of matter. By the early teens, Marconi was stating "We are just entering what may be called the field of vibrations, a field in which we may find more wonders than the mind can now conceive."

Einstein was immersed in formulating the theory of relativity. Cezanne was laying the foundations for abstract art. Automobiles were appearing on roads and airplanes were staying in the air. 'Heroic' medicine, the forefather of modern allopathic bio-medicine as formulated by Benjamin Rush and others, was busy lancing, leeching, bloodletting and poisoning its way to the forefront of contemporary healing.

At the center of the medical controversy of this time was a conflict going back to the Hermetic Tradition of Paracelsus, generally recognized as the founder of modern scientific medicine. Was disease was to be treated through the introduction of chemical substances, or was the patient to be restored to a state of harmony, whereby the life force unimpeded by blockage, would heal the body by itself?

‘Heroic’ medicine prevailed, through adapting itself to and incorporating new scientific discoveries. Significantly, germ theory that relied upon a plethora of new technology arising from the study of optics and electronics came to the forefront of medical thinking. By contrast, competing medical approaches like Radionics, seemed more to resemble sympathetic magic.

Returning to Steve Mizrach’s article "Medicine On The Fringe", consider the origins of the conflict facing medicine around 1910.

"In order to understand the disputes between 'orthodox' and 'alternative' medicine, one needs to consider the problem as resulting from what the medical historian Harris L. Coulter calls a 'Divided Legacy' in medicine stemming back for perhaps 2000 years, that is, a continual conflict and give-and-take of what he calls Empirical and Rationalist approaches." Coulter sees Empirical medicine as being based in induction through direct, concrete observation and experimentation, whereas Rationalist medicine is essentially deductive, searching for logical, abstract, a priori procedures for dealing with disease. Homeopathy, (and by comparison, Radionics), he suggests, is Empirical, based as it is on a careful elicitation of a patient's entire life history and a drawing upon of the doctor's own experience. Biomedicine is Rationalist, assuming that the doctor can treat the problems of the patient through his training and a formal, logical, procedural method.

"Coulter notes that, over time, as healing ways become more professionalized and systematized, they face pressure to become less Empiricist and more Rationalist. He suggests that allopathy started out as a more Empirical system, but that various forces, especially efforts to professionalize (the Flexner Report creating a standardized curriculum for medical education and establishing the central role of the AMA), resulted in it moving over to the Rationalist axis. Coulter points out that as alternative medical systems like homeopathy [and by analogy, Radionics, ed.] try to emulate the success of allopathy, they inevitably face the dilemma of losing their empirical foundations."

The schism that has pursued the philosophy of medicine for the last 2000 years, the Rationalist versus the Empirical, was very much in play during the early 1900's when Radionics was first discovered. In fact, the resulting controversy over Radionics presents a vivid picture of the transition modern medicine was making at that time from Empirical to Rationalist. An immediate conflict appeared as Radionics sought to use electronics to conduct an unknown biological energy. Radionic technique required the practitioner to be something of an artist, projecting the doctor’s considerable healing skills into a subtle, mind sensitive instrument. However, to make these techniques palatable to others, Radionic devices had to mimic machines rooted in procedural method, explainable in the scientific terminology of the day.

07) The Father of Radionics

The field of Radionics owes its discovery to Dr. Albert Abrams. Dr. Albert Abrams, A.M., LLD, M.D. was born in San Francisco in 1863. Dr. Abrams qualified at medical college before he was of age to receive a diploma. Learning German, he went to Europe to continue his medical studies, graduating with the highest honors in medicine from the University of Heidelberg. He continued post-graduate work in Heidelberg, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and London under some of the most famous teachers of the time.

One of these was the eminent 19th century physician, mathematician, physiologist, physicist and philosopher of science, Hermann Von Helmholtz. It was through Von Helmholtz that Abrams became knowledgeable of physics and became passionate about finding a correlate from its laws to biology.

Upon returning to the U.S. Abrams began teaching at Stanford University where he eventually became Director of Clinical Medicine. By age 30, he was President of the San Francisco Medico-Chirurgical Society and a fellow of the AMA. With twelve books in the Library of Congress, he was regarded as one of the foremost neurologists of the day. His book Spondylo-therapy published in 1910 went into six editions and was translated into French and Japanese. Sir James Barr, a former President of the British Medical Association, in writing a foreword to a book on Abrams radionic discoveries, described him as the perhaps the greatest medical genius of the previous half century.

In Sir James' own words, “I have often said that if Abrams had done nothing more than discover the cardiac and pulmonic reflexes, he was worthy of a prominent niche in the temple of fame. In America and France, Abrams' cardiac reflexes must have saved thousands of lives.” Had Abrams not been possessed of both an overwhelming curiosity and a substantial inherited fortune, he may well have never aroused the controversy and vilification brought on by his discovery of Radionics.

So what was so objectionable about this discovery that nearly a Century later it remains a criminal offence to practice it in most of the United States? The answer lies in the very peculiar strain it put upon scientific procedure, then and later. For one, like Abbe Mermet, Abrams sought to have his discoveries thoroughly understood scientifically. His Empirical approach assumed that better knowledge of the physics involved would eventually follow to explain the experimental results.

08) Life Energy Down a Wire: The Electronic Reaction of Abrams (ERA)

In the era Dr. Abrams practiced medicine the human abdomen was used as a diagnostic medical instrument. The doctor taps the patient's abdomen in an attempt to feel and hear the stomach beneath. If he finds an area of several square inches that, instead of sounding hollow like a drum, is flat and dull, it can indicate a particular illness.

The art of percussion consists of tapping with the middle finger of the right hand on the middle finger of the left hand, which is held against the abdominal wall. It was a diagnostic technique Dr. Abrams had used for many years. From experience he knew instinctively that the dull sound above the naval did not belong where it was unless the patient was in the early stages of cancer. A similar sound along the inner border of the shoulder blade confirmed his suspicions.

His reasoning for the sound was that the cancerous tumor was emanating a specific radiation that was affecting the nerve fibers of those areas, reflexively causing a muscle contraction of the abdomen in that spot. By assembling other patients with similar conditions, he could verify that each had a contraction in the same location.

These observations caused him to question whether a cancer tumor removed from a patient would have the same effect in the proximity of a healthy person.

To answer this question, Abrams devised a clever experiment. He found an entirely healthy young man and had him apply to his forehead a vial containing a piece of a malignant tumor just removed from a cancer patient nearby. Within a few seconds the dull areas percussed on the cancer patient appeared on the body of the young man, but only when he was facing west. For some unknown reason, when the young man wasn’t facing west, or removed the vial from contact with his skin, the cancerous tone disappeared.

This astounding discovery was repeated many times. For the first time in anyone's memory, a slice of diseased tissue held against the surface of the skin, in a closed container, was producing a clearly observable reflex action in the nervous system of a healthy person that wasn’t there moments before! Abrams surmised from his knowledge of physics that the molecules of the diseased tissue must have a different atomic or electronic signature from healthy tissue. If the difference between the healthy and diseased tissue was electronic in nature, then perhaps it would travel down a wire and produce the effects at the other end.

Again the healthy young man (call the Subject) was asked to stand with a wire fastened to a small aluminum disc held by elastic against his forehead. On the other end of the wire, an insulated handle was mounted to a larger aluminum disc. This wire was passed behind a screen, where an assistant who could not be seen, held a cancer specimen. Without Abrams or the young man able to know when, the disc was pointed by the assistant at the cancer specimen. In each instance, the dull tone appeared in the young man's abdomen as before, and every time the wired disc was pointed away, the healthy tone re-appeared. This tone was audible to the assistant behind the screen, so he knew exactly when the tone matched his pointer.

In later experiments, thousands varying conditions were tried. Different diseases resulted in dull tones appearing at various locations on the body. However, it was not long before Abrams discovered that certain diseases shared locations close to one another on the body, like syphilis and cancer.

To overcome this obstacle, Abrams reasoned that if the signal of the diseased tissue would travel down a wire, then perhaps he could distinguish one radiation from another using the methods of electrical calibration. He simply cut the wire going between the assistant and the man being percussed and attached a variable resistance box between the two cut ends and resumed his tests.

Edward W. Russell, a prominent writer on Radionics who knew many early Radionics inventors well described this box. “Large and durable, it had three knobs fastened to brass blades that were designed to sweep across three arcs of studs. The studs were attached behind the box to coils of wound wire inside. With three blades able to make contact with a total of sixty-one studs, it was possible to accurately measure resistance in ohms across the two connecting terminals.” (1973, REPORT ON RADIONICS)

By using variable resistance, which assigns a numerical rate to the amount of resistance (in Ohms) in the line, Abrams was able to numerically differentiate between the different diseases that he observed in his experiments. The first notorious ‘Black Box’ was nothing more than three old fashioned dial resistors, but Abrams gave it a complicated name: the ‘Reflexophone.’

In testing cancer, the assistant held the wire pointed to the tumor sample while he twisted the dial of the resistor. When he hit 50 Ohms resistance in the circuit, Abrams heard the familiar thud on the abdomen of the Subject. At 49 and 51 it disappeared. When he tested for syphilis, the thud appeared at 55Ohms, and so on. With this process of calibration in place, Abrams was able to assign a spot on the body and a rate in ohms, to thousands of diseased conditions. These he published in a book called the ATLAS.

This simple experiment was of critical importance for the next hundred years of Radionics.

The measurements made with the resistance box were called the “Electronic Reactions of Abrams” or ERA. Later, the process became known as “Radionics”.

So far, nothing Abrams had done went beyond what any highly curious and talented researcher might have done under the same circumstances. Given the many unknowns about electricity at that time, Abrams’ discovery of a biological radiation that had an electrical component would certainly have merited scientific investigation. Many of Abrams contemporaries duplicated his simple experiments with similar results. The enormous implications of his findings---being able to electrically detect radiations emanating from diseased tissue were eagerly received by many physicians of his day. They are all but lost to us now. Yet this discovery was just the beginning for Abrams. As he began to devise instruments to treat illness based upon these mysterious radiations, Abrams silently crossed over the invisible boundary between science and metaphysics.

09) The Oscilloclast

There are elements of Abrams invention, the Reflexophone; the use of simple materials, clear headed observation and the willingness to creatively explore possibilities through experimentation, that eerily parallel the discovery of radio. (A brief description of how a crystal radio is designed appears in the appendix, for those readers who are curious to explore the parallels.) In the case of Radionics, the essence of the discovery was denied institutional scientific research. Largely, to this day, it remains in the hands of talented healers and inventors.

Abrams could have stopped here. He could have spent much of his fortune and talent coaxing this knowledge of a strange biological radiation onto a mainstream science that was not at that time as thoroughly mechanistic and deterministic as it is today. But this was not to be the case.

Abrams was not only brilliant and endowed with the stamina of an iconoclast; he was also rich. He had the means to pursue his research and discoveries without the need to justify it to anyone. He didn’t have a shrewd publicist to constrain his exuberance, or a board of directors to answer to for his pay. His freedom accelerated his work, but also brought with it envy and a cruel and debilitating professional skepticism.

Abrams also made some crucial professional miscalculations that considerably weakened his scientific objectivity. One of those was in unwisely popularizing the mysterious attributes of this radiation that he discovered doing oddball experiments for fun and relaxation. In a book titled, New Concepts dozens of off hand and spurious observations were offered by Abrams that made his discoveries seem like more of a parapsychological side show than a serious professional undertaking. All the controversy aroused by Abrams’ extensive publicity cast every person he helped and each new invention he discovered in a surreal light that did not endear him to his conservative profession.

The next critical turning point for Radionics occurred when Abrams obtained clear and reliable readings on his resistance box from a drop of blood. Suddenly he had an entirely new way of diagnosing the individual patient. No longer was it even necessary to visit his office in person. At that time, the early 1900’s, Abrams and his colleagues were unaware that a drop of blood contained a blueprint of the individual’s entire genetic makeup in the form of DNA. The world was decades away from that discovery. Likewise, they could not have fathomed that cells emits measurable radiation in the form of light. *We have discovered this much and more since Abram’s empirical quest first instrumentally probed biological radiation.

At the time however, the mysterious manner by which blood seemed to yield up personal information to a strange instrument had a sinister quality to it. Images of voodoo and the occult came to mind. The more exotic Abrams’ pronouncements were, the more dogmatic he became about their authenticity, the louder the ridicule became and the more his credibility suffered. This began a media circus around Radionics that went on for decades. It also functioned to distract public awareness from the diligent experimentation Abrams had done and the fascinating discoveries that emerged from it.

The reality was that Abrams was referring to the mysterious radiations he was detecting as “energy provided by thought.” In other instances, he would make equally cryptic statements like “Psychic energy passes through metal and all other media thus far tried.” By leaning towards a psychical interpretation of his data, Abrams was guiding Radionics outside mainstream science and into Parapsychology. The result was an inevitable conundrum; one could not adequately study the radiation scientifically because it was in part or in whole a product of the consciousness used to study it!

Regardless, Abrams was able to obtain usable medical information by placing the blood sample, now referred to as the "witness" of the patient, into the ‘well’ of a homemade condenser. Again, he chose to give an ordinary electrical component a peculiar name: the ‘Dynamiser.’ Radionics writer Edward Russell, in REPORT ON RADIONICS describes its construction:

"It was a circular container made of hard rubber about three inches in diameter in the base of which were two electrodes connected to earth. The lid was formed of discs of aluminum with layers of mica between. A wire from the lid was connected to the resistance-box to another wire connected to a pointed electrode with which the patient or an assistant could determine the precise location of the disease.

"Abrams found that the 'Dynamiser' intensified the reactions. These could be made more clear and definite if the Subject stood on two grounded aluminum plates." This discovery proved beneficial in that it eliminated the necessity of having the patient wait while the doctor completed the diagnosis by percussing the Subject.

Just how significant was Abram’s approach to the diagnosis and treatment of disease based upon the energetic vibrations or frequencies of tissue, both healthy and diseased? Consider the words of Dr. Francis Cave, in an article about Abrams written for Pearson’s Magazine in 1922:

“How can vibrations destroy disease? Everything in nature has its natural period or rate of vibration. If one approaches an object with a source of vibration of the same vibratory as itself, the object will also be set in vibration-as shown by the response of the harp to the tuning fork. This forced vibration of the object may attain such magnitude as to fracture or destroy it, and it makes no difference whatever whether the source be a chemical, a pigment, a ray of light, an electrical current, or some other thing yielding the same vibratory rate.

“This brief statement contains in concentrated form practically the entire therapeutic philosophy of Abrams. Prolonged demonstration is proving to be absolutely fundamental and the first successful effort to deal with medical problems on a purely mathematical basis. Disease is merely the expression of a vibratory rate. If this vibratory rate can be measured, something can be found with a similar vibratory rate which can be imposed upon it and destroy it, thereby to a large extent proving the correctness of the Hahnemannian principle of “Simila Similibus Curantur.”

“If we can make it impossible for the vibratory rate of disease to exist, the disease itself cannot exist. Abrams has shown the world not only how to measure out the vibratory rate of disease, but also how to measure out its virulence, a thing which is not possible with any other method known to me. When these things are ascertained, and the application of his therapeutic reasoning is made, the disappearance of the disease is a practical certainty.

“Here is the basis for all therapeutic systems, whether allopathic, homeopathic, osteopathic, or mental. The vibratory rate of the diseased organ or tissue must be changed or recovery cannot ensue. Just how this change is successfully made by the different schools of practice could readily be determined by the application of this process of reasoning to there respective problems. The rise and fall of therapeutic systems and schools of medicine will hereafter be determined by the degree of their acceptance and application of the basic electronic principles and practices first enunciated by that scientist and humanitarian, Dr. Albert Abrams, of San Francisco. He has been the first to supply a definite yardstick by which all other methods can and must eventually be measured.”

In Abrams' era, the term “electronic” had much more of a mysterious connotation to it than it does today; it was far more like the term “psychic energy”. It is important to remember that the vacuum tube had only been invented shortly before, in 1905 and not turned into an amplifier until much later.

The public "mystification" of Radionics began with the idea that alone Abrams' "Black Box" could heal a person of disease. This distortion of fact was in part due to an interesting discovery Abrams made shortly thereafter. When Abrams tested the blood of a malaria patient together with a few drops of quinine, he could obtain no reaction at all on the Subject. The tests suggested to him that “radiations” of the quinine were able to cancel out the “radiations” of the malaria.

Abrams was fortunate enough to hire the very best engineers available to design his variable resistance instrumentation. He reasoned that since all matter was electrical in nature, the specific radiations of the diseased tissue might be energetically reversed and the disease thereby cancelled out.

What Abrams was able to do was obtain the most accurate variable-resistance boxes money could buy. They were so sensitive that some critics contended that his measurements could be due to some variable inductance from the resistance coils themselves. It is a shame that more information about how this criticism was addressed is not better documented.

While a great deal of patient research and good fortune enabled Abrams to carry his early diagnostic work forward, it was tragedy that pushed him to develop an instrument to cure. His Radioscope and Dynamiser had allowed Abrams to calculate both the intensity and the location of a disease. He also discovered that he could detect the existence and severity of a disease long before it took on a physical manifestation. For ten years Dr. Abrams watched in growing horror and desperation as his wife developed and ultimately died from an inoperable form of cancer which he had detected long before it ever appeared in her body.

Stimulated by the painful conundrum of having discovered a revolutionary diagnostic technology which could detect disease but not cure it, Abrams determined to find a solution. To this end, he retained and collaborated with an inventor named Samuel Hoffman. The result was a piece of equipment known as the “Oscilloclast”. The year was 1919.

The Oscilloclast was basically an electrical device designed to subject the patient to a negative electrical charge with radio-frequency electromagnetic pulses in between. A resistance box with different settings for adjusting and controlling the treatment "rates" of the patient was placed in circuit between the Oscilloclast and the electrode attached to the forehead of the "subject". A technical writer of the time (unknown) described it thus:

“Today’s tube Oscilloclast belongs to a class of electrically operated devices known as short-wave treatment instruments. Such instruments are divided broadly into high power and low power devices. The Oscilloclast belongs to the low power class. It differs from the conventional low power devices in that it produces three kinds of energy. One kind is the usual short wave; another kind is an impulse excited damped wave and the third kind is an alternating magnetic energy. All of these energies are of low power and, it is thought, act to help the body overcome pathology and restore normalcy in the tissues by utilizing characteristics of the low power energies themselves rather than to produce heat in the tissues.

“The continuous waves are chopped up into short wave trains without changing the frequency or heights of the waves. This kind of chopping up continuous waves is done to produce dots and dashes in the receivers in radiotelegraphy. The high frequency waves in radiotelephony are not chopped up into short-wave trains as in radiotelegraphy but the broadcasting oscillators are so controlled that their high frequency waves have different intensities or heights. If a line is drawn so that it touches the tops of all of the high frequency waves it will describe a waveform with the waves much longer than the high frequency waves. The high frequency waves are called carrier waves and the longer ones are called modulated waves.”

Treatment could be up to an hour in duration, during which nothing was felt by the patient. It is interesting to note the writer’s observation about how the wave train of signals generated by the device occurred in a digital dot to dash formation used in electrical communications (Morse code). The electrical waves may in fact be carrier waves for the biological information, dependent upon the intent focused upon it by the operator.

As Abrams progressed with his discoveries, more and more it became apparent to adherents and critics alike that some form of Information to Energy conversion was taking place. The information component of the disease was solicited by the doctor by applying percussion to the patient. That information was energetically transmitted along an electric wire to the instrument, where it became information again, but in a more precise form. Likewise, in treatment, the correct healing information was sent back by the Oscilloclast to the patient as radio pulses, triggering the body to heal itself. The whole process was semiotic, a theme we will return to in later chapters.

In point of fact, the Oscilloclast was a very well thought out and built medical device. It may have inadvertently taken advantage of a psychic process inherent in healing itself, but it was designed for reliable, mechanical dependability by any physician trained in its use. Dr. Abrams and other physicians cured many people that had given up all hope with the Oscilloclast. Could they have gained such notoriety had these devices not performed as advertised? To allow the reader to further judge this for himself, we have included several technically oriented papers and commentaries on the Oscilloclast treatments in the appendix.

It is important to the understanding of the technology of Radionics to see how it progressed from a remarkable medical discovery praised by many scientifically trained medical men into a system with much in common with shamanic healing. For understanding the artistic and design potential of Radionics, both methods offer intriguing possibilities.

It is hard to visualize exactly what is being described in a Radionic treatment. Fortunately, we have obtained an article published in Pearson's Magazine in June of 1922 that greatly helps in that regard. Through renowned American writer Upton Sinclair, (courtesy of Borderlands Research Foundation), we have a first hand glimpse into Dr. Abrams’ clinic. (We also include Sinclair's response to the American Medical Association, which had criticized both this article in particular and Abrams' discoveries in general, in the appendix.) The AMA's curt follow up reply to Mr. Sinclair follows.

10) Inside Dr. Abrams' Clinic: An Excerpt from Upton Sinclair

“For some fifteen or eighteen years I have had the good fortune to count among my friends one of America's greatest poets and most loveable of men, George Sterling. For ten or twelve years I have been accustomed to read in his letters extravagant statements concerning a certain San Francisco physician. He would say, ‘I should never again be afraid of getting any disease. Abrams would cure it in a week or two.’ He would say, ‘My friend Abrams continues to work new miracles, so rapidly that the medical profession had been frightened away from him.’ These statements were so extreme, that I failed to take them as seriously as I should. I wish now to profit by that blunder, and tell what I have to tell as cautiously and conservatively as possible, so as not to frighten the reader away.

“A few months ago I received from George Sterling a letter from which I quote a couple of paragraphs: ‘I am glad to see you're interested in Dr. Abrams, and I wish I could orally discuss him with you. He has utterly revolutionized medicine and henceforth nine operations out of ten will be unnecessary, especially where bacilli are concerned. I send you one of his quarterly pamphlets, which he publishes for the many physicians who have taken his course. There are always a lot of them in his laboratory, and they tell me that his diagnoses are 100 per cent correct. In this quarterly read especially the article by Sir James Barr, late president of the British Medical Association; realizing meanwhile what it means for a conservative English physician to make such statements! And Barr is going to be convinced even as to cancer. I know of many cases that Abrams has cured lately, four of them personal friends of mine. And Tuberculosis is nothing to him. To me he seems the greatest man ever born…’

“So”, says Sinclair, “I decided to go to San Francisco and investigate. I planned to spend a day or two, but what I found there held me a couple of weeks, and it might have been months or even years, if urgent duties had not called me home. I think the best way to present the work to you, the work of Dr. Albert Abrams, is to take you to his clinic, and let you see what I saw at my first visit, without any preparation or explanation.

“It is a two story building on Sacramento Street, and after I had visited it a few times, I took to calling it ‘The House of Wonder’, for I saw in it such miracles as I had never dreamed of in this world.

“You are in a physician's laboratory, with rows of raised chairs on one side of the wall. These chairs are occupied by a score or so of physicians, who have come from all over the country to study Abrams work. In the center of the room there is a long table containing some electrical apparatus. One of the wires from these apparatus ends in an electrode, and in front of the table upon a grounded plate, stands a young man stripped to the waist, and with the electrode pressed to his forehead. Dr Abrams sits on a chair before the young man, and taps with his finger upon the latter's abdomen, a method known to physicians as ‘percussion’. To save you any unnecessary bewilderment, I explain at once that this young man is not the patient being examined; this young man is known as the ‘subject’, and his body is merely one of the instruments, which Abrams uses in his examination. The patient is in Toronto, or Boston, or Mexico City and all that Dr. Abrams has is half dozen drops of his blood upon a bit of clean white blotting paper.

“ ‘Next specimen’, says Dr. Abrams, and his assistant takes from an envelope a blood specimen which has come in this morning’s mail, and cuts it to the right size and puts it in a little box which is connected by a wire with a rheostat, in turn connected with the body of the subject.

“The doctor's assistant hands him a letter which has come with the specimen, and the doctor reads it to his clinic: ‘I sent the blood of Mrs. J., age 16 years’ that is all. ‘No symptoms!’, grumbles Abrams. ‘They want me to try it out, of course, and I can't blame them, but it is a waste of time to begin at the beginning of each case. All right, gentlemen, we set the instrument at 49 which is the vibratory rate of human blood. I don’t happen to know this doctor who sends the specimen, and there are people trying to play tricks on me all the time. If this specimen contains human blood, the vibratory rate will come through on the body of the subject, and we shall have a dull area on this spot, if it is a male.’ The doctor indicates a line just below the navel, and about an inch to the left. ‘If it is a female, the dull area will be on the corresponding spot on the right. Now listen.’

“He presses the second finger of his left hand against the abdomen of his subject, and with the second finger of his right hand, used as a little hammer, he begins to tap. He starts a couple of inches off from the correct spot and you hear a slightly resonant sound. He moves his finger, and when he comes upon the correct spot you notice a difference in the sound --- at least you come to notice it after you have listened through several sessions of the clinic and your ear has become practiced. The sound is duller, which is the same difference you would notice if you were percussing a table, and changed from the middle of the table to a spot over one of the legs.

“‘It is human blood, female,’ says Abrams. ‘In order to verify it, I set the rheostat at 50, and you notice that the dullness disappears. I set it back at 49, and the dullness returns. I call your attention to the fact that the subject is facing west. I turn his body slightly out of the line, so, and you note the dullness is gone, even at 49. I have to impress upon you again and again the importance of these minute details. I do not know why it is necessary to face west; it must have something to do with magnetic currents of the earth, of course. All I know is that if you face west you get these reactions, and if you face any other way, you don’t get them. All this work of mine is empirical, you understand. I experiment and find what happens. I try one way, and then I try another; so little by little I am groping my way to these secrets of nature.’

“‘Another physician I do not know’, says Abrams. ‘And again, no symptoms given. It seems that we have to spend the whole morning doing this a-b-c work; every physician in the country has to be separately convinced --- and then they aren't convinced! All right, no help for it. First, is it human blood? We set the dial at 49. Forehead, please.’

“The subject places the electrode upon his forehead, and Dr. Abrams begins to tap. ‘Aha!’ he says. ‘A practical joker. No human blood! You see gentlemen; it is clear and unmistakable. The area for human blood is precisely here. Now listen carefully; there is no difference whatever in the sound. Neither male nor female! About once a week we have someone trying to play this silly joke upon us. Just for fun, let us determine what kind of blood it is.’ And the doctor sets the rheostat at one figure after another. ‘Cows blood? No, dog's blood --- no! Monkey, cat, sheep---ah yes, sheep's blood. He has pressed the paper against his Sunday dinner before it went into the oven. All right, we will waste no more time upon that.’ The doctor takes the envelope, and the vehemence of his pencil as he writes the words ‘sheep's blood’ ought surely, if there be anything in his theory of radioactivity, to convey a vigorous shock to the doctor in Boston who has played the trick.

“ ‘Next specimen.’ And so we proceed. Another sample is put in, and the tapping begins, and we are told that this person has 25 ohms of tuberculosis, located in the spinal cord and left kidney. We are told that the disease is of 12 years standing, also that there is ‘strep’, that is to say streptococci, or pus infection in the teeth on the lower left hand side. We are told that the next specimen, which comes from a town in Texas, indicates a tumor located on a certain precise spot of the brain. The next specimen comes without any indications whatever, and we are told that it is a woman 52 years of age, and she is suffering from acquired syphilis of 14 years standing, and the lesion will be located on the right fore-finger. Some of these findings are made in two or three minutes. None of them take more than ten minutes, and after you have watched the work for an hour, you find yourself with one clear-cut conclusion in your mind. This eager and excitable little Jewish doctor is either one of the greatest geniuses in the history of mankind, or else one of the greatest maniacs. You are not quite sure which, and you go on day after day, and still you cannot be sure, because that unveiled to your view is so amazing, you cannot make it real to yourself.

“But one thing becomes quickly clear to you. The hypothesis of fraud must be excluded. This man is passionately, even furiously, convinced of the reality of his phenomena; also he is a reverent scientist, working in the highest traditions of the healing art. He is a much over-worked man, irritable and nervous.

“Things go wrong with his apparatus; the wires get in his way, or his assistants make blunders, and he says, ‘Damn it’ and he has to apologize to the lady doctors. But present him with a new idea, some way to verify or perfect his work and he pounces on it like a cat. He is a veritable incarnation of Nietzsche’s phrase about the human soul which hungers for knowledge like a lion for his food. There is no experiment he will not try: you suggest an idea to him one morning, and discover the next day he has slept only two hours – he was working the rest of the time on that idea. There is hardly any subject of human thought about which he has not read and has not something vivid and vital to say. Incidentally, he is a warm-hearted and loveable man whose work is a personal pleasure to aid.

“He has a marvelous acquaintance with the human body. He calls it the most delicate scientific instrument in existence, and he has not merely that knowledge of its structure and functions which other physicians and surgeons possess – he has gone on to explore the radioactivity it manifests and the infinite variety of reactions resulting there from. Many years ago this man was known in the medical profession as the discoverer of ‘the reflexes of Abrams’. He studied the nervous system of the body, tracing out each minute thread of nerve, and showing exactly where disturbances in the functions and structure would manifest themselves. It is this knowledge about nerve reactions, which he has now turned to use. The nerve threads all carry out different vibrations, and if radioactivity is introduced into the body, they instantly sort it out, and manifest it at a certain area, which can be found.

“You decide that the man is not a fraud, and then you begin to wonder, can it be that he is deceiving himself, and that he only imagines that he is getting these reactions? You talk with the physicians who sit watching. ‘Why did you come here?’, you ask, and the answer is, ‘I sent Abrams some blood specimens, and found his diagnoses were right every time.’ You ask another, and get the same response. You ask a third and he says, ‘He diagnosed my cancer while I was in Illinois, and cured it, so I came to learn about it. Half the physicians here have been cured of something, you find, and several are in the process of a cure.

“I assume that the reader is skeptical concerning these miracles. It is proper that he should be. Some one may point out that the little drama with Dr. So-and-so might easily have been arranged in advance, after a fashion understood in the ‘medium parlors’, where you talk with the spirit of your deceased grandmother for the sum of two dollars. But I sat in this clinic twice a day for a couple of weeks, and in that time I saw several hundred blood specimens examined; and letters and telegrams sent to physicians all over the United States. Abrams has examined to date over 12,000 blood specimens for other physicians, and the fact that letters continue to arrive by special delivery can have only one meaning, that the physicians find his diagnoses correct. Also, I saw in this clinic more than a hundred patients who had been treated, or were being treated, by Abrams' methods. He must have been a stage manager of supernatural skill to have taken all this variety of people, men and women from a dozen races and of ages varying from eight to eighty, and taught them to play the strange roles, which they played before the critical audience! Again and again I saw Abrams make a diagnosis from the blood, and then bring in the patient, and invite some physician in the clinic who happened to be a specialist, to make an examination and see if he could find signs of the disease.
“And here comes an actor, who has had a tumor on the brain, and had lost the power to make connected sounds, and was rapidly losing the power to walk. Now, after two month’s treatment, he can both talk and walk again, and his stage ambitions have revived. He is a tall, black-coated figure, presenting a weird appearance, because a part of his treatment has consisted of shaving his head and painting it a vivid red, some substance whose vibratory rate corresponds to that of sarcoma.

“‘Now show us how you can walk’, says Abrams. ‘Can you stand on your toe?’

“‘Yes, sir’, says the actor, and he toddles around.

“‘You couldn't do that a few weeks ago?’

“‘I fell on my face every time I tried it.’

“‘And now on your heels. You couldn't do that?’

“‘No, sir, if I got up on my heels when I got out of bed, I fell back on the bed helpless.’

“‘And your voice is coming back all right?’

“‘Well, you can hear it’, says the actor proudly. His voice still falters, but he tells us how in the old days he acted in England, and how some day he is going to act Richard III. He shows us how he will do it, with many expansive gestures:

“‘Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York!’

“What is the principle upon which these marvels are based? Let us bear in mind to begin with that all our explanations in this matter are guesses. What Abrams has done is to find out what happens. He has done this by twenty years of minute and painstaking experiment. Having found out he tries to account for the happenings, to rationalize them, but if all his guesses are wrong, that does not alter his facts.

“Every high school boy knows that water consists of two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen, and if it varied from that composition, it would be something other than water. In the same way, Abrams as discovered experimentally that every disease has a radioactivity peculiar to itself; uniform and invariable. He calls this the ‘vibratory rate’ of the disease; but you must bear in mind that this term is purely arbitrary, a name which he gives to certain effects which he has observed and measured, though he does not know what they are or how they came to be. Tubercular tissue, and the tubercle bacillus and every drop of blood from a body which contains the tubercle bacillus—all these substances produce a reaction when the rheostat is set at 42, and if the reaction does not come through at this point, there is no tuberculosis in that body. That this is amazing and new does not in any way alter the fact that it is so. It has been demonstrated by Abrams in many thousands of cases. It is demonstrated over and over again, scores of times every day in his clinic, and it can be demonstrated by any one who will take the trouble to understand his method.

“It would be impossible to exaggerate the revolutionary nature of this one discovery. It gives us for the first time an infallible method for the diagnosis of disease; it gives us also a means of exploring disease and understanding its real nature.”

Upton Sinclair’s original article is far longer. Likewise, his letter to the American Medical Association extolling the virtues of Dr. Abrams’ discovery is quite compelling as well. This was their response:

“May 12, 1922.

“MR. UPTON SINCLAIR:

“Your point of view as to what constitutes scientific evidence is so at variance with that of our readers that it would be a waste of space to publish your letter.
Yours very truly,
THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
(Signed) George H. Simmons.

“P. S. We are returning your letter herewith."

11) Psychical Physics

It seems peculiar to us today that prominent medical doctors and famous writers like Upton Sinclair would be so supportive of what could only be considered the use of psychic energy in the pursuit of medicine. We cannot readily appreciate how interested many scientists at that time were in the crossover of electrical phenomena with consciousness and psychic phenomena.

In late 2006 the New York Times ran an Op Ed story titled ‘The Ghost in the Machine’ by Pulitzer Prize journalist Deborah Blum. Her insights into that word bear review.

“The human brain is, in surprising part, an appliance powered by electricity. It constantly generates about 12 watts of energy, enough to keep a flashlight glowing. It works by sending out electrical impulses — bursts of power running along the cellular wires of the nervous system — to stimulate muscles into motion or thought into being.”

“The scientific study of the supernatural began in the late 19th century, in synchrony with the age of energy. It’s hardly coincidental that as traditional science began to reveal the hidden potential of nature’s powers — magnetic fields, radiation, radio waves, electrical currents — paranormal researchers began to suggest that the occult operated in similar ways.

“A fair number of these occult explorers were scientists who studied nature’s highly charged circuits. Marie Curie, who did some of the first research into radioactive elements like uranium, attended séances to assess the powers of mediums. So did the British physicist J. J. Thomson, who demonstrated the existence of the electron in 1897. And so did Thomson’s colleague, John Strutt, Lord Rayleigh, who won the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with atmospheric gases.

“Rayleigh would later become president of the British Society for Psychical Research. And he would be joined in that organization by other physicists, including the wireless radio pioneer Sir Oliver Lodge, who proposed that both telepathy and ghostly appearances were achieved through energy transmissions connecting living minds to one another and perhaps even to the dead.

“Lodge argued that the human brain could function as a kind of receiver, picking up signals at a subconscious level. These were powered by some undiscovered energy, traveling perhaps in waves, perhaps in currents. Such transmissions lay behind telepathic experiences, including shared thoughts. Along the same lines, he thought it possible that a spirit’s appearance was really just its specific energy signal stimulating a response from the receiver’s brain.”

In the gradual recasting of Radionics as a psychic technology, Abrams had discovered that blood samples had allowed him to diagnose a patient from a distance. He had also found that the mysterious radiations he studied could fill a Leyden jar for about an hour; they could also charge a condenser or even piece of paper. The charge present in these materials was often sufficient to cause a stomach reflex several hours later. He also found that colored light could amplify the ERA reflex if shined upon a section of the diagnostic circuit.

Today, physicists like Dr. William A. Tiller of Stanford University who has spent decades studying the physics of consciousness points out the plethora of photon radiations given off by living systems.

“Ultra-weak photon emission from various living systems is a common phenomenon for all plants and animals with the radiation intensity being on the order of a few thousand photons per second……..The spectral range of the photon emission spreads at least over the region from the infrared to the ultraviolet with the mitochondria in cells appearing to be the localization of the radiation source…….Cancer cells are intense radiation sources with peak intensities, without spectral shifts, increasing by a factor of 100 after treatment with toxic agents.

“It is interesting that the human photoreceptor, the flavin molecules, are not limited to the retina of the eye but are ubiquitous, being found in virtually every tissue of the body. In addition, flavins are not the only photoactive molecules in the body: carotenes, melanin and heme molecules are also photoactive.” (SCIENCE AND HUMAN TRANSFORMATION, P. 135).

Given the capacity of the body to produce and receive photonic radiation, which we are beginning to understand today, and its potential role in expanding our knowledge of psychic phenomena, perhaps the rush to judge Abrams mysterious radiations as unscientific was a bit hasty and shortsighted. Decades later, other Radionics inventors would also claim some form of electrically stimulated light was the conductor of radionic emissions.

Do these simple and interesting facets of Abrams basic experiments hold unrecognized potential today? What if the hard drive of a computer is also capable of holding this radiation? Could it be sent into computer circuits to accomplish work? Could the color on the screen amplify the process? Could it be sent across the internet and be downloaded into a viewers mind as a subconscious semiotic command?

Abrams tried many techniques for long distance diagnosis. First he measured the earth for conduction, a method he called ‘radiogeodiagnosis.’ It was only reliable for short distances. He tried the telephone, asking the patient to place the witness (blood sample, etc.) near the receiver while he searched for the appropriate stomach reflex in his clinic (‘telediagnosis’). This technique was good for about 500 miles. When he tried for direct communication through the air, the best he could do with any accuracy was one mile.

There was one other very serious obstacle to advancing the ERA into a fully electronic technology. Abrams was not able to escape the constraint of having a living, healthy stomach nearby for determining the appropriate reflex. At one point he became so desperate to create a substitute for this human component he offered a small fortune in those days, $10,000, to anyone who could engineer a suitable instrumental replacement for percussing the human abdomen. It was becoming increasingly hard to find young men willing to stand the long hours necessary for compounded diagnostics.

One technical advancement Abrams accomplished was to circumvent the necessity to learn the percussive techniques. For some physicians, this skill had not been easy to acquire. In its place, he substituted a glass rod held firmly over the abdomen to be stroked back and forth over the abdomen. When the rod appeared to drag or catch over the reaction area, which puckered from the reflex, one could thereby diagnose the condition.

It was becoming more than obvious that something beyond electricity was at work. Abrams had found that radiations from drugs like quinine had cancelled the radiations of malaria, as mercury had with syphilis. Can you imagine the damage to the drug industry today if only a small portion of a medicine’s radiations directed at a disease could promote the same curative effects?

Abrams had also discovered the peculiar fact that any of these mysterious radiations could be neutralized by the magnetic fields of the earth. For some unknown reason we learn, no reflex reactions were possible unless the Subject faced west. The capacity for the cancellation of the radiations of a disease by counter radiation became a major component in the development of his Oscilloclast instrument. Ironically today, with magnetic resonant imaging, MRI, we are able to paint a magnetic image of all the organs of the body. The image is constructed of the particular magnetic characteristics of the organ. Should a tumor appear on the image screen, is it so far fetched to imagine that those precise frequency characteristics could used to cancel out the disease? If a Bose headset uses inverted frequencies to cancel out disturbing noise, can inverting the frequency characteristics of a disease do the same?

At the time of Abraham’s discovery of Radionics, chemistry was at the beginning of its long march to take control of modern medicine. One can see as we view Abrams' discovery through the eyes of his longtime friend, author Upton Sinclair, that with more institutional support, Radionics might well have become part of today's roster of diagnostic tools. One can only wonder as to the benefit to world health today had these discoveries of Abrams and his followers not been effectively squelched in their infancy.

Today, the current public fascination with alternative healing modalities and the increased investigation of psychic powers in the scientific and defense community have all set the stage for a reconsideration of Abrams' work. Experimentation with these techniques, especially in the arts could foster greater public awareness of the potential of tools like Radionics.

We present details of radionic concept, design and construction with the artist in mind, as a place to begin research. After Abrams death, much of the early scientific excitement behind Radionics research was eclipsed by a more occult approach to obtaining results. Where Abrams upheld high standards of training and manufacturing, refusing to sell his instruments to unqualified individuals, soon they became available to anyone with a hanker to cure. The blurring of technology and psychic healing accelerated. Ironically, while these developments created utter consternation with medical authorities, the popular culture sur