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Albert Abrams (1863–1924) was a quack and a fraud, posing
as a doctor in San Francisco, whose tool for gaining profit from the gullible
was a variety of "electricity therapy" he called ERA,
or Electronic Reactions of Abrams.
Early days
Abrams was born in San Francisco around 1863,
giving dates a couple of years either way on occasions. He fraudulently[1] claimed to have qualified in medicine from the University of Heidelberg at the age of variously 18 to 20.
In 1910, Abrams published a book on a medical technique he called Spondylotherapy. This was presented as his version of
Chiropractic and Osteopathy. Courses in Spondylotherapy
and ERA cost $200.00 and the equipment was leased at about $200.00 with a monthly $5.00 charge thereafter. The lessee had to sign
a contract stating the device would never be opened. [1]
The Heidelberg Doctorate
Claiming to have graduated from Heidelberg University at age 18 (!) was Abrams' most successful hoax. It was his way of
getting back at the boorish Germanophiles at the AMA, and these gentlemen reacted to it in predictably humorless fashion.
Earlier, he had aroused their anger by dubbing them in his writings Dr. Hades, Dr. Inferior, etc (comparing their looks to
typhoid and other germs), and by making fun of various abstruse therapies that at the time were
considered "scientific" by the medical establishment. In a hilarious send-up in verse of Balloon therapy, for instance, the
doctors take their patients up in the air but don't know how to bring the Balloon down again. The poem ends with the lines:
But they never came back. That's why we confess / Aëronautic therapy is not a success.[2]
His claims
Abrams promoted an idea that electrons were the basic element of all life. He called this
ERA, for Electronic Reactions of Abrams, and introduced a number of different machines. One of these was the
Dynomizer, which he claimed could diagnose any known disease from a single drop of
blood or alternatively the subject's handwriting.
The devices
The Dynomizer looked something like a radio, The blood did not have to be fresh; Abrams
performed diagnoses on dried blood samples sent to him on pieces of paper in envelopes through the mail. Apparently Abrams even
claimed[citation needed] he could conduct medical
practice over the telephone with his machines, and that he could determine personality characteristics.
The Dynomizer was big business by 1918, then Abrams widened his claims to treating the diagnosed
diseases. Abrams came up with a new and even more impressive gadget, the "Oscilloclast", apparently also known[citation needed] as the "Radioclast". It came with
tables of frequencies that it was to be set to, to "attack" specific diseases. Clients were
told cures required repeated treatments.
Dynomizer operators tended to give alarming diagnoses, involving combinations of such maladies as cancer, diabetes and syphilis.
Abrams often included a disease called "bovine syphilis," unknown to other medical practitioners. He claimed the Oscilloclast was
capable of defeating most of these diseases, most of the time.
Students attended Abrams' San Francisco clinic for training courses listed at $200 USD a head, a significant sum at the time,
and then leased the devices to take back home. Abrams developed a range of different devices. The rules specified that the boxes
could not be opened excusing this as fear of disrupting their delicate adjustment.
By 1921, there were claimed to be 3,500 practitioners using ERA technology[citation needed]. Conventional medical practitioners
were extremely suspicious.
A public uproar
In 1923, an elderly man who was diagnosed in the Mayo
Clinic with inoperable stomach cancer went to an ERA practitioner, who declared him
"completely cured" after treatments. The man died a month later, and a public uproar followed.
Investigation
The dispute between Abrams and his followers and the American Medical
Association (AMA) was intensified. Defenders included American radical author Upton
Sinclair and the famously credulous Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of
Sherlock Holmes.
Resolution of the dispute through the intervention of a scientifically respected third party was pursued. Scientific American magazine decided to investigate Dr. Abrams' claims. Scientific
American was interested in the matter as readers were writing letters to the editor saying that Abrams' revolutionary
machines were one of the greatest inventions of the century and so needed to be discussed in the pages of the magazine.
Scientific American assembled a team of investigators who worked with a senior Abrams associate pseudonymised as
"Doctor X." The investigators developed a series of tests and the magazine asked readers to suggest their own tests. The
investigators gave Doctor X six vials containing unknown pathogens and asked him to identify
them. It seems likely that Doctor X honestly believed in his Abrams machines, since he would not have agreed to cooperate if he
hadn't, and in fact he allowed the Scientific American investigators to observe his procedure.
Doctor X got the contents of all six vials completely wrong. He examined the vials and pointed out that they had labels in red
ink, whose vibrations confounded the instruments. The investigators gave him the vials again with less offensive labels, and he
got the contents wrong again.
The results were published in Scientific American[3] and led to a predictable "flame war" in the letters pages
between advocates and critics. The investigators continued their work. Abrams offered to "cooperate" with the investigators, but
always failed to do so on various pretexts. Abrams never actually participated in the investigation, and in ERA
publications[citation needed] asserted he was a victim of unjust persecution.
"Debunking"
Then an AMA member sent a blood sample to an Abrams practitioner, and got back a diagnosis that the patient had
malaria, diabetes, cancer and syphilis. The blood sample was in fact from a Plymouth Rock rooster.
Similar samples were sent to other Abrams practitioners, and a few found themselves facing fraud charges in court. In a case
in Jonesboro, Arkansas, Abrams was called to be a witness. Abrams did not attend
court, because Abrams died of pneumonia at age 62 in January 1924.
With Abrams gone, the AMA publicly opened up one of his machines. Its internals consisted of nothing more than wires connected
to lights and buzzers.
According to Rawcliffe, Abrams and his successors had "founded a
good many special clinics in the United States and their number has by no means diminished in the ensuing years".[4]
Notes
- ^ History of Stanford medical school and predecessors : Chapter 26. Wilson
- ^ Albert Abrams: Transactions of the Antiseptic Club, E.G. Treat, New
York 1895
- ^ Austin C. Lescarboura, "Our Abrams Investigation - VI." A Study of the Late
Dr. Albert Abrams of San Francisco and His Work. Scientific American 1924 March; 130 (3):159.
Austin C. Lescarboura, "Our Abrams Verdict. The Electronic Reactions of Abrams and Electronic Medicine in General Found Utterly
Worthless. Scientific American 1924 Sep; 131 (3):158-159
- ^ D.H. Rawcliffe: Illusions and Delusions of the Supernatural and the
Occult, Dover, New York 1959, p.365)
References
- Fishbein, M., The Medical Follies: An Analysis of the Foibles of Some Healing Cults, including Osteopathy, Homeopathy,
Chiropractic, and the Electronic Reactions of Abrams, with Essays on the Anti-Vivisectionists, Health Legislation, Physical
Culture, Birth Control, and Rejuvination, Boni & Liveright, (New York), 1925.
- Hale, A.R., "These Cults": An Analysis of the Foibles of Dr. Morris Fishbein's "Medical Follies" and an Indictment of
Medical Practice in General, with a Non-Partisan Presentation of the Case for the Drugless Schools of Healing, Comprising Essays
on Homeopathy, Osteopathy, Chiropractic, The Abrams Method, Vivisection, Physical Culture, Christian Science, Medical Publicity,
The Cost of Hospitalization and State Medicine, National Health Foundation, (New York), 1926.
See also
External links
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