Construction on the College of Electronic Healing commenced shortly after his death at age 60 from bronchopneumonia. The steel-frame building would not see completion, however, courtesy of a legal battle. His heirs objected to the use of the fortune he’d amassed from selling medical devices, ultimately derailing the planned school.
Even without a protracted legal battle, however, the fate of the college would have almost certainly been in limbo. By the end of Albert Abrams, the work that had propelled him to national prominence was being debunked at a rapid clip by many of the country’s most illustrious scientific journals.
In an article published in The Lancet a mere two weeks after the physician’s death, F. Howard Humphris cuttingly noted, “[T]he ailing human body would receive more vibration and a greater quantity of electricity from the work of a competent masseur using one hand than it would from a whole battery of Oscilloclasts.”
No doubt not the manner of eulogy the doctor had hoped for, but perhaps by the end of his life, it was precisely the one he’d expected.
It was a precipitous drop from auspicious beginnings. In 1882, Abrams received a medical degree from the University of Heidelberg at age 19 – becoming the youngest student in 100 years to do so at Germany’s oldest university. In a piece titled, “My First Patient,” Abrams describes his early days of struggle as a young physician, closing with the note,
If ever I am rich enough to own my own carriage I will emulate the example of the fashionable doctors and have an escutcheon painted on it, bearing the inscription, 'Mistakes Often Lead to Fame.'
A series of teaching jobs followed, culminating with a role as the president of the San Francisco Medico-Chirurgical Society. A series of books, meanwhile, established Abrams’ role at the forefront of neurology around the turn of the century.
Had he continued down this path, it’s easy to imagine a scenario wherein Albert Abrams might have remained a respected voice in the medical community, recalled fondly by those following in his footsteps. Not the manner of career that amasses millions and inspires the erection of medical colleges devoted to the studies of breakthrough treatments, but a respectable path, nonetheless.
By 1909, however, Abrams was touting radionics, the notion that the body was governed by energy frequencies. The concept reached new heights with the 1917 appearance of “The Electronic Reactions of Abrams” in The International Clinics, a respected journal that had previously published his work. Abrams noted self-deprecatingly that he didn’t expect a major splash from his findings, but the piece describes with great confidence the discovery of something entirely revolutionary.
“The archaic cell-doctrine must be superseded by Electronic theory,” Abrams writes, with customary flare. “The spirit of the age is radio, and we can use radio in diagnosis.”
Abrams’ early machines, like the Dynomizer, could diagnose disease or a patient’s religion using a single drop of blood or a sample of handwriting. Those gadgets were ultimately superseded by his Oscilloclast and the Radioclast, which were capable of weaponizing radio waves against such diseases. Leasing these products made Abrams a millionaire.
The medical community was quick to refute such outlandish claims. An intensive study by Scientific American drew the following conclusion,
This Committee finds that the claims advanced on behalf of the Electronic Reactions of Abrams, and of electronic practice in general, are not substantiated; and it is our belief that they have no basis in fact. In our opinion the so-called electronic reactions do not occur, and the so-called electronic treatments are without value.
Until the end of his life, however, there existed those who were eager to defend what they viewed as world changing technologies. Public iconoclast and legendary gadfly Sinclair Lewis wrote a letter to The Journal of the American Medical Association titled, “Albert Abrams: A Defense,”
But the world moves on, and men's brains should improve, and it should be possible to shorten the time of persecution which the great pioneers of science have to suffer. I put to you this simple proposition : Send a reliable man of science to the clinic of Albert Abrams, and let him stay there as long as he pleases and see all that he wishes to see, and then send you a report, and if it indicates that you have blundered in your condemnation, be honest and say so, and save your profession from another black mark against its name.
Abrams, too, defended himself until the end. “No cremation for me,” he was reported to have commented ahead of his death. “The A.M.A. has roasted me enough over the coals.”
Sources:
Electronic Therapeutics of Albert Abrams, M.D. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41109485
Heirs Fight Abrams College Project https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1925/01/18/98813432.html?pageNumber=68
Works by Albert Abrams http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/physico-clinical_medicine/physico-clinical_medicine_v1_n4_jun_1917.pdf
Our Abrams Verdict https://www.jstor.org/stable/24975243