a cautious and fragmentary way, has begun to understand some of the psychiatric
implications of cancer. ... It was almost uncanny the way each phase of his earlier
work had equipped him with the special skills needed to understand different
aspects of the cancer process. His work on the orgasm problem linked him with
those researchers who found aversion to sex linked with cancer; his studies of the
character-resistances linked him to those who found blocked emotions were typical
of cancer patients; his work on the ameboid movements in his bion cultures had
prepared him for the ameboid cancer cells that Enterline and Coman were to con-
firm were derived from within and not from parasites. Similarly the studies of the
basic antithesis [expansion and contraction] had given Reich just that kind of
understanding of the contractionprocess as a total psychosomatic shrinking that was
necessary if the cancer disease was to be comprehended^18.Experimental Treatment with the Orgone Energy AccumulatorAs we noted, in Norway Reich had found that injections of T-bacilli led to cancer
in many experimental mice. He had also found that SAPA-bions were the most effective
kind ofbions in killing T-bacilli. In America, these observations led him to conduct a series
of experiments during 1940 involving the injection of cancer mice with SAPA-bions.
Treated mice lived significantly longer than control cancer mice. “But finally all of them
died; in some the tumors had receded, in others it had first receded or disappeared and then
grown larger again.”^19
The Cancer Biopathyexplains in detail Reich’s partial success with SAPA-bion treat-
ment. Suffice it here to note that blood tests showed that the red blood cells (erythrocytes)
of the treated mice were taut and biologically vigorous, while the blood of the untreated
mice presented the typical picture of cancer: shrunken membranes of the erythrocytes, T-
spikes,and abundant T-bacilli in the blood. Through these and other observations, Reich
came to the conclusion that the erythrocytes, charged with energy from the SAPA-bions
were the bearers of the therapeutic function, rather than the SAPA-bions themselves, as he
had originally thought.
With the treated mice, Reich noted that many died not from tumors or from T-
bacilli intoxication but from tumor remains clogging the kidneys. The larger the tumor, the
greater was this danger. In other words, they died from the results of the elimination of the
cancer.
During the extraordinarily productive year of 1940, Reich worked on a broad front:
observing the visual effects of orgone energy, building an accumulator, and taking thermal
and electroscopic measurements within it. In his work with the accumulator, he also experi-
enced considerable prickling and heat sensations similar to those he had noted with SAPA-
bions. Reich’s postulation of a common identity between the SAP A radiation and the
atmospheric orgone energy led him to wonder whether the orgone accumulator itself might
not be worth exploring as a treatment for cancer. If so, it would be much simpler to use than
282 Myron SharafFury On Earth