The electronic reactions of Abrams from diseased tissue
For the next experiment Abrams asked a healthy boy (Ivor) to strip to the waist, and stand facing West, while the clear, ringing resonant note was being elicited by percussion over the area just above his navel. Will everybody please take note of the hollow, resonant quality of that note?" "Very well" said Abrams, "and now will one of you gentlemen step forward and take hold of this pair of forceps to which I have affixed one of these cancer specimens. There was a collection of pathological specimens, each of which had been carefully authenticated as genuine, by the director of the pathological department. All the specimens had been wrapped in tinfoil, and duly labeled. While Abrams steadily and continuously percussed this area of Ivor's abdomen, another volunteer, placed that specimen in light contact with his forehead. It kept there some four or five seconds, replaced it again and so on. The result of this experiment was that the instant the specimen was placed in actual contact with the boy's forehead, altering the pitch of the note elicited by percussion from resonant to dull.
After verifying the validity of this phenomenon by repeating the experiment with other attested cancer specimens, Abrams chose another kind of specimen from the collection beside him. This time the specimen was not cancerous, but tuberculous. When this (tubercular) specimen was brought into contact with Ivor's forehead, the resonance of the note elicited by percussion just above the navel underwent no change, but Abrams quickly noticed that an area just below the navel had now become abnormally dull when percussed, but only so long as this (tubercular) specimen was held in contact with the subject's forehead. When removed, the dull sounding note gave place to the normal resonant sounding note.
During the days, weeks and perhaps months which followed, Abrams devoted the whole of his time to the laborious task of confirming the above phenomena. Hundreds of known cancer specimens had to be tested, hundreds of tubercular specimens had to be tested, before he would finally pass either the cancer reaction, or the tubercle reaction, as valid. It was in no hasty spirit that he began at last to draw up a series of charts, depicting the areas on which these "reactions" as he named them, might be detected by careful and skilful, percussion.
Still making use of carefully chosen and attested post mortem room and operating-theatre pathological specimens, Abrams found that syphilitic tissues and sarcomatous tissues, the reaction induced, detectable by percussion, was in each instance identical! Malarial material induced a very definite reaction two inches below and two inches to the left of the "subject's" navel. But so also did a specimen consisting of a few grains of quinine! The tubercle reaction was duplicated by the reaction induced by material infected by a somewhat rare disease caused by a fungus known as "Actinomycosis". The reaction induced by streptococcal pus from an abscess was identical with that induced by a pinch of the element sulphur and so on.