15) Ruth Drown

It should come as no surprise that the continued academic and political backlash of Radionics should fall on someone after Abrams' demise, and that someone was Ruth Drown. Various sources describe Ruth Drown as either a chiropractor who came in contact with Abrams' work early on, or a secretary working in the Abrams clinic in the early 1920's. In spite of her modest medical training, Ms. Drown is generally credited with being the most significant figure in Radionics for the next 25 years, for a variety of reasons.

Ms. Drown had no scientific training. Her diagnostic work and later her instrument design is largely based on exceptional intuition and psychic ability. Radionics historian Edward W. Russell quotes Ms. Drowns friend, inventor of the Bell Helicopter Mr. Arthur M. Young:

“In conversation with her, one could feel that she was in touch with a tremendously complicated internal system of patterned harmonics, a self-regulating system of 'resonant vibration' of which all I can say is that I was convinced she knew what she was talking about, even though it could not be translated into terms which would pass muster in present science.”

The result of her intuitive approach was to discard any pretext of scientific objectivity in favor of a more occult system. Her first revision was to remove all electric current from the modified Abrams type devices she designed (save a small light bulb to warm the device described next). Her second important revision replaced the percussive technique on the human abdomen with a type of dowsing apparatus called a “stick plate”.

The patient, standing upon two metal plates connected to the instrument, supplied an input to the device. The operators’ fingers moved across a flat rubber pad covering a detector until they appeared to stick to the surface. This dowsing technique replaced the abdominal percussing. Simultaneously, the operator turned the variable resistor “dials” of the Radionics box until the “stick” indicated the appropriate rate to diagnose or treat. This technique is still very much in use today.

Described another way, to use the stick-pad, one turns the dial to establish a rate while ones' other hand moves across the stick pad. As the dial slowly is turned, one waits for the finger to suddenly halt its gliding across the surface and "stick" to the plate. This sticking action was presumed to result from the same dowsing reflex observed by Abrams as causing the abdomen to harden under the glass wand or while percussing. Whatever numerical rate was observed on the turning dial when the stick occurred would provide information on the condition.

Drowns stick plate effectively discarded the use of ohms and inductance altogether to measure the rate of a disease. It relied solely on the operator's dowsing ability to determine where on a rotary dial a particular rate existed, to diagnose or to cure.

Significantly, it is reported Drown was also able by this method to correlate her dowsed rates to the actual atomic weights and numbers of the organic and inorganic specimens she put under examination. By doing so, she hoped to inject a measure of scientific authenticity to her technique. In actuality, a further level of mystification of Radionics was adopted into her instrument designs, philosophy and approach, which nevertheless validated her own approach.

Ruth Drown should also be considered the first radionic inventor to invent an art-form. This would be Drowns discovery of radionic photography.

Imagine Ms. Drowns excitement and the vindication she must have felt for her techniques upon discovering that the dowsed radiations of a diseased organ could be captured on a photograph plate attached to a Radionics instrument! This astounding development was obtained by connecting a wire from the radionic device tuned to a condition to unexposed color-sensitive film. When the film was developed the tuned organ or tissue would appear on the film without benefit of exposure to light. If the patient were connected directly to the instrument, the outside of the organ would be revealed, but if a blood sample was used instead, the inside of the organ appeared, usually in cross section!

Ms. Drown performed many photographic diagnoses in front of audiences of medical doctors, occasionally of their own pathologies. Lack of a clear scientific foundation for her discovery however, was not enough to stop the issue of a British Patent for her camera (#515,866 on December 15, 1939). Ms. Drown never implied her camera technology was fully understood scientifically. Problems with repeatability of this process made it clear that some personal, psychic or psycho-kinetic mechanism was involved in the acquisition of the image. In fact after the harrowing inquisition she faced later in life, she was no longer able to take these photographs at all.

The process of obtaining images through psychic means accidentally or deliberately is far more common than one would imagine possible. It is called "Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC)" and can be explored extensively online (for instance: www.worlditc.org). The process where by a psychic individual is able to affect a photograph also has also received some scientific scrutiny under Dr. William A. Tiller, one of the world’s leading scientists on the study of matter at Stanford University’s Department of Materials Science. In Tiller’s laboratory side by side film cameras were set up and pictures taken, one sensitized to subtle energy by a psychic, the other not. While the un-sensitized camera operated normally, the sensitized one recorded unusual features and imagery that were not the result of mechanical error.

“From this study, I deduce that subtle energies exist for which the camera lens cap and the human body are at least semitransparent. Further, it seems that photographic film has a layer or layers of subtle substance capable of registering an imprint from a pattern of subtle energy entering the lens. The presence of Stan’s [the psychic] energy field appears to allow interaction between this subtle substance imprint and the silver halide grains of the physical film so that an imprint transfer takes place that is ultimately recorded by the photographic development process.”

One interesting facet of Dr. Tiller’s work with Stan was that whenever the unusual energy he projected onto the film took place, he experienced a strange feeling in his back between the 7th cervical and the 4th thoracic vertebra. This involuntary muscle response allowed him to time the precise point at which to take the picture. Like the radionic stick, this reflex action acted as an indicator. It is not clear from Dr. Tiller’s account whether the precise moment described by the muscle reflex acted like a trigger mechanism for an energy release from the subject’s body onto the photograph, or whether the moment merely indicated the correct conditions were in place for a spontaneous occurrence. Either way, Tiller’s description of the correlation between intent, body and instrument requiring a muscular reflex tuning process provides a simple illustration of radionic methodology independent of radionic jargon and professional expectations.

What is so uncommon about the Drown pictures is that they served a practical, diagnostic purpose and contained useful medical information. Despite the disapproval of mechanistic science, electronics and vital energy continue to be intertwined with each other in more unusual ways today than ever before.

Many radionic practitioners since Abrams have pointed out that while there are similarities to the way Radionics works with electronics communications technology, the source energy is not electricity but life energy. The individual provides intent and a well of life energy. The instrument simply separates the nested signals through the tuning process, into numerically identifiable segments, in accord with Fourier's Theorem. This entails assigning a number or "rate" to each condition and particular vibration.

Any compound or mixture or substances can be examined and a rate established. What is essentially being described as a rate could also be called a resonant frequency. It can describe the geometry of the substance or the vibration of its energy. The rate, being either a wave form or a structure is characterized as a pattern in Radionics, tying it visually into the artistic language of abstract geometric form.

On the electronics side, Trevor Constable, a qualified radio engineer, researcher, and biographer of Drown speaks to the analogy of radio to Radionics when he states:

"In the case of the radio receiver, the 'carrier wave' of the station being tuned strikes the antenna. On this carrier, the broadcasting station has superimposed the announcer's voice or music. Whatever its nature, this superimposed element of the signal is called the 'modulation'. The radio receiver picks up the carrier wave, extracts and amplifies the modulation from the carrier, and reproduces it through a loudspeaker.

"In our analogy, the electrostatic energy of the human body – which remains with it after death – is the carrier wave in the Drown conception of the process. The vital energy (orgone) of the human being, which flows into and through and animates the human tissues, is the 'modulation' or intelligence. This energy is not present in the body after death. Absence of this energy turns a living human into a corpse. This vital or orgone energy enables our organs and tissues to maintain their form. The Drown instrument tunes into the histological structure to determine whether or not the "carrier" in the various organs and glands is receiving the proper amount of intelligence or modulation, i.e. life energy.

"Treatment is ultimately performed by the patient upon themselves, not due to the electronics of the box, which in Drowns case did not use electrical current.

"In therapy, the patient is placed in a complete circuit with himself. His energy is collected on a plate of block tin placed over the solar plexus. This energy is passed through the instrument and back to the patient via his feet – the latter resting on two plates of German silver. The minute electrical current resulting from the junction, via the patient's body, of the dissimilar metals tin and German silver, acts in the therapy hookup as a carrier for the vital energy.

"The patient's energy normally would be radiated into the ethers to return to him after a world-circling journey. Under this therapeutic system, the energy is passed through the instrument instead. The tuning of the device governs the precise area of the body into which the totality of the patient's energy returns. The focusing of his total energy results in increased cell division in the tissue so treated. New cells come in healthy, and the diseased condition is gradually overcome.

"Over a period, and with systematic and careful monitoring by the doctor, the affected organ or tissue is largely restored. Never should it be forgotten that the energy involved in therapy is possessed inherently of form-giving power. As regeneration begins, the vibratory rate of the area under treatment begins changing back toward a normal, healthy rate of vibration. Regular checking by the doctor is necessary to keep the instrument in tune with the tissue under treatment."

Drown perfected the process of using a patient's drop of blood placed in her instrument to diagnose and treat a patient remotely anywhere in the world. The inevitable result of this assertion was to place her work even more squarely in the realm of the occult. In occult theory, blood is believed to contain portions of an "etheric web", or a "unifying bio-energetic continuum". In other words, blood contains a pattern recognition component that can be used in various ceremonial ways to produce change. Drown’s medical successes reinforced this assertion and tried to transpose it into the practical world of medical technology.

In Ruth Drown’s case, we are lucky to have an informed, contemporary source provide us with a closer look at her methodologies. In 1930, according to Mr. Constable, a friend gave her a copy of MacGregor Mather’s book THE KABBALAH UNVEILED. She is described as being subsequently "overwhelmed" by this treatise of esoteric Jewish tradition with its own mixed and controversial academic foundation.

Essentially, the Kabbalah is considered an ancient form of Jewish and Babylonian mysticism that is commonly associated with magical practices and occult technology. Drown tied her radionic knowledge into the Kabbalistic Tree of Life diagrammatic system, essentially fusing her new form of Radionics with mysticism. This association has persisted in radionic theory to the present day. As Constable noted so succinctly in 1976, “From the inception of her work, Dr. Drown’s instruments were the 20th century concretion of the Qabalah.”

Some of Drowns contemporaries claim she refused to relinquish the monopoly she held on her technology to the medical profession, thus arousing their ire. Through the aura of secrecy Drown initially maintained around her discoveries, coupled with her independent attitude and enormous success with her patients, she ultimately attracted the attention of the FDA. In 1951 they moved in for the kill. Knowing that Drown was the most visible of all the radionic practitioners, the rational was that by toppling her, others would be intimidated.

The result was a vigorous prosecution. One could argue today it was based upon entrapment. The prosecution capitalized on her enthusiastic and over-confident attitude, in effect, setting her up. The jurors were effectively persuaded by the testimony of electronics experts that Radionics had nothing technically to do with radio and that her devices couldn't possibly work the way she claimed. Therefore, Radionics was in essence, fraudulent. None of the numerous testimonies of patients bearing witness to the effectiveness of her treatments persuaded them otherwise. She was convicted of fraud and medical quackery. Her appeals dragged on for years, and in the end she served a short time in a California prison. All her instruments were seized and destroyed.

When eventually released, she was emotionally exhausted, broke and professionally ruined, with no way to make a living. Within a few months Ruth Drown suffered a series of strokes and died.

From this point on, Radionics was officially an outlaw technology. The benefits that may have accrued from radionic treatment were no longer considered viable. There was no longer any scientific reason to explore their potential. Soon, other approaches to healing that did not fall under whatever standard was determined acceptable to Scientism were vigorously persecuted or condemned. As a result, anyone practicing Radionics on humans, selling these instruments for medical purposes, or even shipping them across state lines may be subject to prosecution in most states today.