debates with psychoanalysts Reich was thoroughly conversant with the concepts and clini-
cal data on both sides, he frankly acknowledged his deficiency in physics. In 1945, he wrote:
“I have not mastered mechanisticphysics as well as I might or should.”^3 However, his oppo-
nents would also have to accept the possibility “that the discovery of cosmic energy may
shake the foundations of their special picture of the physical world.” Both sides, then, had
to risk defeat in an open, honest, paradigmatic debate.
To return to the Oranur experiment: Although the one-milligram units ordered by
Reich may seem a small amount, radium emits so powerful a radiation that extreme care
must be exercised in its use. Reich kept the radium in a thick shield and his assistants used
lead gloves and lead aprons in handling the material.
Before starting the experiment proper, Reich established the “normal radiation” or
“background count.” According to classical science, normal radiation is present constantly
from radioactive materials in rocks and, especially, from cosmic radiation. At Orgonon in
December 1950 the background count was approximately 35 counts per minute (CPM), as
measured by a Geiger-Miiller (GM) counter^4.
On January 5, 1951, Reich placed one milligram of radium in its lead shielding in a
garage outside the laboratory as a control. It was not exposed to any special orgone accu-
mulations. The other, experimental milligram was placed in a small, one-fold orgone charg-
er, which in turn was placed in a twenty-fold accumulator. The radium within the accumu-
lators was then placed in a large room, built of accumulator materials, which served as a
“dark room” for the visual observation of orgone energy (hereafter referred to as the OR
room). In this way Reich intended to see if the accumulator could neutralize the effects of
the treated radium compared to the control.
Five hours after the radium was put in the accumulator, Reich checked the labora-
tory and found the air charged and oppressive. Objectively, the GM counter “jammed,” that
is, the impulses were faster than the GM could measure when it was brought near the accu-
mulator in the OR room.That it was not a failure in the battery of the meter which caused
the “jamming”became apparent when Reich removed the meter to the fresh air, whereupon
it once again gave the normal background count of about 35 CPM.
Reich was not prepared to relinquish the experiment, but he did want to reduce the
ominous charge inside the laboratory. The experimental radium, still in its small orgone
charger, was removed from the OR room and taken to a shed some 150 feet away from the
laboratory. The laboratory was aired with the hope that the high charge would dissipate
quickly. But ventilation did not seem to help. Nor was the radium per se causing the heavi-
ness,for one could get very close to the removed radium without feeling any of the ill
effects—heaviness in the air, a sense of oppression, headaches, nausea—that one felt in the
laboratory.
After ventilating the laboratory, the background count diminished. It is interesting
that the GM count was only one index Reich used in determining a new, puzzling, and pos-
sibly dangerous development in his experiment. The quantitativecount was not sufficient to
establish the qualitativemeaning of the phenomenon. Earlier, in 1948, Reich had found that
346 Myron SharafFury On Earth