the origin of the cancer cell; the clinical account of the cancer process, suggesting a bio-
emotional disposition toward the illness; and his actual experimental treatment, first with
mice and later with patients.
The Origin of the Cancer CellThe first opinion Reich formed from his experimental production of cancer
tumors in mice was that the T-bacilli he injected were specific tumor agents. Thus, his initial
thinking ran along traditional lines: a specific agent or virus for a specific illness. However,
the T-bacilli did not prove to be specific for cancer. Reich examined samples of blood and
of secretions, and found that T-bacilli could be obtained from persons who were perfectly
healthy. For example, he found T-bacilli in a small erosion of his own tongue.
This negative finding led him to shift the focus from the agent of the disease to the
host organism, in other words, to the question of “resistance to disease.” As Reich put it:
“It is always reassuring to find the ‘specific cause’ of a disease. This enables us to delineate
the disease from healthy organisms in which this specific cause is absent. But this concept
is erroneous and blocks the approach to the nature ofimmunity, that is, the natural defense
reactions ofthe organism... .”^3
It should be stressed that when in the early 19405 Reich asked these questions,
“holistic medicine” and intensive immunological research had not yet become part of the
cultural-scientific climate. Mann and Hoffmann have rightly asserted that Reich was one of
the pioneers, if generally unacknowledged, in the shift from concern with the disease agent
to the defenses of the host^4.
Reich had observed that while healthy blood and secretions also showed T-bacilli,
in the case of cancer patients the T-bacilli developed easily and rapidly; the blood and excre-
tions ofhealthy individuals, however, had to be
subjected to a process ofdegeneration,sometimes lasting for weeks, in order to
obtain T-bacilli.Reich reasoned that in a healthy organism the T-bacilli were destroyed by
the white blood cells. But if the organism was flooded by T-bacilli, then a secondary, patho-
logical defense against the T-bacilli developed. The tissue and blood, weakened by the strug-
gle against T-bacilli, began to decay prematurely into vesicles, both PA-bions and further T-
bacilli.
Very early in his American work, Reich’s concepts about the energetic processes in
the organism changed. After his discovery of atmospheric orgone energy, in 1940, he began
to think of the energetic charge of the tissues no longer as a “bio-electrical” but as an
“orgonotic” charge. The energy he was observing in the atmosphere he believed to be the
same as the energy in the organism.
Reich noted that in the blood of healthy individuals, one saw the PAbions sur-
rounded by dead T-bacilli: the PA-bions had combated them successfully. He assumed that
the struggle between PA-bions and T-bacilli took place all the time and everywhere in the
healthy organism. He further reasoned that the weaker the energetic charge of the PA-bions,
276 Myron SharafFury On Earth