After graduating from the University of Heidelberg as a physician in 1882, Dr Abrams completed post-grad courses in London, Berlin, Vienna, Paris and Portland and set out on what was to become a distinguished career. Among his many appointments were Professor of Pathology, Cooper Medical College; President of the Emmanuel Polyclinic, San Francisco, and Consulting Physician, diseases of the chest, Mt. Zion and French Hospitals, San Francisco. He made several significant medical contributions - the "cardiac reflex of Abrams" – the change in the size of the heart and aorta upon irritation of the overlying skin, and wrote two important medical texts which helped to establish his national reputation.

Between 1900 and 1910 he moved away from orthodox medicine, expounding his own electronic theory of disease and began devoting his time to the "Electronic Reactions of Abrams" (ERA) – changes in electronic vibrations measurable at the skin surface, by which he claimed he could diagnose and cure disease. According to Abrams, disease was simply a disharmony in the body’s electrical oscillations, each disease having its own characteristic vibrationary rate. Diagnosis consisted of determining the nature and degree of disharmony and a cure was effected by restoring the vibrations to equilibrium.

Dr Abrams developed and sold expensive apparati for diagnosis and treatment including the "oscilloclast", the "pathoclast", the "electrobioscope" and the “biodynamometer".

The simplicity of push-button therapy had tremendous appeal, particularly as Abrams categorically stated that it was not even necessary for a patient to be physically present, all the relevant data about the patient including sex, race, and religious persuasion could be gleaned from a single drop of blood, or even a signature.

By 1923 there were more than 3,500 practitioners in America using ERA, and the machines suffered none of the prejudices and poor techniques of conventional flesh-and-blood doctors. Treatment was quick, clean and painless, Dr Abrams had made medicine an exact science.

When Dr Abrams died in 1924 he left an estate worth $US2,000,000 and a legacy that has endured in variant forms, principally – radionics.

Following the death of Dr Abrams, Dr Ruth Downs of the U.S., and George Dc la Warr in Britain, developed his procedures dispensing with the auscultation technique (listening to the heart and lungs) and devised black boxes which produced photographs relating to the condition of the patient whose sample was placed in the machine. The De la Warr Laboratories in Oxford, England, currently design and manufacture radionic instruments as well as diagnosing and treating patients.

Combining the theories of radionics, homoeopathy and orgone energy (see Rudolph Steiner), variations of Dr Abrams devices are now being marketed and utilized to reduce and eliminate the need for medication and synthetic chemicals in agriculture and farming. They are particularly popular with organic farmers both in Australia and overseas.


Comment:

Dr Abrams’ black boxes were the subject of numerous investigations. Professor R.A. Milligan, Nobel prize winner in physics and head of the California Institute of Technology, examined the Abrams apparatus and issued a statement to the effect that "not only did the apparatus not rest on any sort of scientific foundation, but from the standpoint of physics were the height of absurdity."

Professor Milligan pointed out that Abrams' followers insert electronic resistance into a circuit which cannot oscillate at all, and therefore has no vibratory frequency. Other physicists and engineers found them to be a jungle of electric wires violating all the sound rules of electronic construction.

The Journal of the American Medical Association and the Scientific American both published convincing evidence of charlatanry, and in 1924, the AMA noted that Abrams "easily ranked as the dean of all twentieth century charlatans."


Further reading:

American Medical Association, 1936. Nostrums and Quackery Vol III. 1936.
Gardner, Martin. 1957. Fads and Fallacies in the name of Science. Dover. New York.
Page, E.W. 1939. "Portrait of a Quack." Hygia 17 (Jan 1939) 53-55, 92, 95.