delimited excision rather than a radical mastectomy. A surgeon at the Leahy Clinic in Boston,
who was friendly to Reich’s work, agreed to this procedure and to the use of the accumula-
tor post-operatively. The surgeon was later reproved by the hospital administration for coop-
erating with a “Reichian” physician in pursuing this “unusual” treatment procedure.
Fourth, Reich was often accused of promoting a “cancer cure.” Of the fifteen cases
he saw between 1941 and 1943, all were in advanced stages of cancer. Three patients died
as expected by their physicians’ estimates. Six patients lived five to twelve months longer
than expected before dying. In all cases, Reich reported that the pain was greatly alleviated
and the use of morphine reduced or eliminated. Six patients were still alive at the time Reich
published his results (1943), but on none of these did he have a two-year follow-up^24 .As
in the case described, Reich was optimistic about the accumulator’s effect on the tumor but
extremely guarded about its dealing with the underlying biopathy.
When the Food and Drug Administration later attacked his cancer work, Reich
downplayed his optimism and highlighted his caution. Yet whatever the demurrals, his
report in the above case that the tumor was no longer palpable after eight accumulator ses-
sions can easily be read as an account of the miraculous. I do not know how justified Reich
was in stating a causal connection between tumor disappearance and accumulator use.
Tumors sometimes—though rarely—disappear without any treatment. I am better able to
assess his scientific style in sociology and psychiatry, with a suggested extrapolation to his
medical endeavors. In his enthusiasm for sex-politics, Reich was highly unrealistic about the
possibilities of rapid and positive social change; throughout his career he could overestimate
the effectiveness of his psychiatric therapy.
In my view, his at times impaired scientific skepticism had at least three sources: an
intense excitement about his findings, the desire to bury his enemies under a creative ava-
lanche, and his intuition that only by going too far could he find out how far he could go.
One has to be a great pioneer to be justified in employing such a risky approach. It remains
for further investigation to determine the blend of pioneering discovery and unscientific
error in his medical work with the accumulator.
Fifth,one ofthe constant rumors connected with the accumulator was that it was
some kind of “sex box” that promoted orgastic potency. Reich always vigorously denied that
the accumulator had anything to do with “orgastic potency.” The increase in sexual excita-
tion that this patient—and others—experienced through accumulator treatment occurred
naturally because, as they improved, less energy was needed to fight the illness. However, the
accumulator could not resolve the patients’fearof excitation nor their incapacity to dis-
charge the excitation. Hence, it did not promote orgastic potency.
Even though Reich did not claim a cure for the cancer biopathy, he did assert that
he had elucidated important avenues to the prevention of cancer. The route to such preven-
tion was the same as the route to the prevention of neuroses. As he put it:
These cancer patients brought again to my consciousness, in the sharpest
focus, what I had learned to see for the past twenty-eight years:the pestilence of the286 Myron SharafFury On Earth