on June 12. This was no test at all, since Reich never claimed that accumulator usage for so
short a time in such a severe illness would have an effect.* Nor was this an exception. At
Johns Hopkins the average duration of accumulator treatment for nineteen women with
malignant tumors was four or five days, with several being treated for only two or three
days^14.
None of the tests showed a proper regard for Reich’s emphasis on the fact that var-
ious forms of radiation from X-rays to radium dial watches negatively influenced orgone
energy. Such forms of radiation were likely to be abundantly present in the medical settings
where the FDA conducted their tests.
Here as elsewhere there was room for discussions between Reich and the experi-
menters making control studies. But such discussions never took place; and there is no evi-
dence that the medical testers were at all familiar with Reich’s writings. They lacked any
awareness of the clinical signs one might find from even brief accumulator usage. That the
FDA cancer patients died says nothing at all about the validity of Reich’s findings. Most of
his own patients died.
Even the best FDA tests done for the FDA failed badly on the above criteria.
George B. Smith, M.D., of the Holy Ghost Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, treated quite
sick cancer patients with the accumulator blanket. Some cases were treated daily for two
months. Smith includes in his report one rather mysterious sentence that the patient was
treated from “10 to 30 minutes depending on the patient’s tolerance.”^15 Why a patient
should become “intolerant” of a blanket was never explained. Nor does Smith indicate what
symptoms the patient manifested to indicate that his or her degree of tolerance had been
passed. Yet it is precisely in such reports that one can find some of the subjective evidence
for orgone effects, for example, the patient’s reporting sensations of heat, prickling, or itch-
ing.
Some positive effects, in terms of Reich’s criteria, were noted when illnesses of less
severity than cancer were treated. William F. Taylor, M.D., of Maine General Hospital,
admitted a patient to the accident ward with burns on her face, ears, nose, neck, dorsum of
fingers and hands, and volar surface of the wrists, following a stove explosion. The six-inch
funnel from the accumulator was placed about four or five inches from the right side of her
neck for twenty minutes. Within five minutes of beginning treatment, the patient said that
her neck felt better and that it was less painful than her face and hands. The next day there
was no evidence ofblistering of the neck, but still some blistering in other burned areas.
The neck continued to heal nicely, while the other burned areas had further crusting and
blistering.^16
This case has particular significance because the accumulator treatment of burns
and wounds was one of the few instances where Reich maintained that rapid and striking
386 Myron SharafFury On Earth
*It is true, as noted in Chapter 22, that Reich reported one case where a tumor was no longer palpable after eight
treatment sessions. However, his cancer cases generally required a much longer course of treatment and even in
this instance the schedule was twice as long as most of the Johns Hopkins treatments.