The ERA after Abrams' death
An AMA member sent a blood sample to an Abrams practitioner, and got back a diagnosis that the patient had malaria; diabetes; cancer; and of course syphilis, presumably bovine syphilis. Actually, the blood sample was from a Rock rooster. Similar tricks were played on other Abrams practitioners, and a few found themselves facing fraud charges in court. Dr. Abrams managed to avoid appearing in court, however, by the effective if somewhat drastic measure of dying of pneumonia at age 62 in January 1924.
After
his death, his work was attacked in the academic press where slander and
innuendo were used to diminish his lifetime of achievement. Doctors in North
America all but stopped work in this area.
In the decades following the death of Abrams, the development of radionics
proceeded in three isolated arenas. In Great Britain, doctors who had studied
the work of Albert Abrams founded the "Classic School of Radionics".
This came to be expressed in the work of De la Warr, Copen, Rae, Tansley and
others. In eastern Europe, there were many doctors trained by Abrams. Cut off
from the rest of the western world after World War Two, the use of electronic
healing and diagnostic techniques was promoted by state supported medicine. As
with many things in the top heavy communist bureaucracy, medical science was
poorly done. Individual innovation was discouraged and the potential of this
technology never flowered in the east.
In the United States, in the decades following Abrams death, we see a great deal
of animosity develop between doctors who were seeking to ally themselves with
the pharmaceutical industry and the developing wonder drugs, and those that
continued to develop the fields of homeopathy, herbology and radionics. On the
latter side, we find naturopathic doctors, chiropractors and a growing array of
alternative practitioners. Most notably among these, Galen Hieronymus and Dr.
Ruth Drown seek to build on the work of Abrams. These individuals give rise to
the "Underground School of Radionics". The approach of Hieronymus,
pushed the capabilities of the electronics of the day to its edge, adding signal
generation and phase control to the Abrams work. Ruth Drown, a student of Alice
Bailey, took a decidedly more metaphysical approach. In her view, the
instruments were only extensions of the conscious mind. So within the
Underground School there arose two factions, the gear heads and the air heads.
The gear heads built large and impressively complex electronic healing
instrumentation and evolved strange energetic theories to explain the
effectiveness. The air heads constructed modest black boxes that you discreetly
did not ask to be opened and evolved strange energetic theories to explain the
effectiveness. Drown was the last major E.R.A. practitioner in America. The AMA
dealt with her claims the way they did with Abrams, including recounting
investigations and tests of her techniques similar to the rooster and guinea pig
and Scientific American variety that found no basis for her claims. She
was twice charged with fraud and died awaiting her second trial.
G. Laughton Scott wrote in 1925 The Abrams Treatment in Practice, including in the appendix the report on the Oscilloclast submitted by Ackerman and Clark. This was a study of the electrical phenomena associated with the device and did not address any medical effect it might have. The oscilloclasts these men examined had oscillating armatures and likely incorporated Hoffman's patent. Early oscilloclasts, such as the one illustrated in the Lancet, Jan 26, 1924, had a rotary motor driving a circuit breaker. The device they inspected oscillated 98 times per second, with the medical circuit made and broken 196 times per second. The "reagent" was wired with only one electrode from the device (lucky for him) and sat on a chair isolated from the ground by glass cups under each leg. The "reagent's" feet rested on a rubber pad, to provide further insulation from ground. Ackerman was able to measure a slight current passing through the reagent due to leakage to ground. This fact was used by many proponents of the E.R.A. to counter the Scientific American report which claimed no electrical effect because the circuit was not completed.
Also in 1925, another detailed report on the electrical properties of the oscilloclast was included in a book by Sir James Barr, one of the foremost proponents of the E.R.A. in England, and a past president of the British Medical Assoc. The book was Abrams' Methods of Diagnosis and Treatment, and this investigation into the inner workings of the oscilloclast and its operation was performed by Prof. E. Taylor Jones, a physics professor at University College, Bangor. His findings were similar to Ackerman's. Due to the endorsement of Sir James Barr and the Horder report on the E.R.A., England has had more tolerance for radionics.
John S. White wrote a book entitled The Voice from out the Shadows of the Grave, in 1925, as a defense of the E.R.A. and of Abrams, even including a poem to and portrait of Abrams. Of the various ardent supporters of E.R.A., it is impossible to tell which were being duped and which were in collusion with Abrams.
In 1928, Dr. H.H. Wilkinson published The New Concept of Diagnosis and Treatment, a book espousing the E.R.A. and attempting to explain its use. This book demonstrates a significant advancement of the state of E.R.A. in just 3 years. Wilkinson uses the term radio waves freely in his discussion and refers to the oscilloclast as a miniature radio transmitter. The healthy human "reagent" was still used, and percussing was still the method of detection.
He also describes Planetary and Earth electrical charges. Normal, healthy tissue have these two charges in the ratio of 246 2/10 units planetary positive charges to 153 8/10 units negative charges. He also describes further research on Abram's death rate - a vibratory rate which would show whether the donor of a blood sample was still alive. Wilkinson, tested a blood sample every few minutes, of a patient miles away, watching the death reaction increase and the vitality "rate" decrease until it ceased. A phone call was then made to the residence of the deceased to verify that he had died and the exact time.
It is clear from Wilkinson's book that E.R.A. did not die with Abrams. The Electronic Research Association continued to meet in Chicago and several similar quack organizations appeared. Comments on a joint meeting of these organizations appeared in JAMA in 1926, titled The Birds Flock Together.