In 1910 Dr Albert Abrams invented a revolutionary branch of medicine based on what he called "electronic vibrations".
For an individual, each organ and disease had a unique rate of vibrations. They could be measured using his "Dynamiser", offering an exciting new method of diagnosis and treatment.
The Dynamiser's circuits analysed a patient's sample of blood, sputum or saliva. Amazingly, it could even perform diagnosis from a patient's signature.
Sales of the Dynamiser boomed, prompting him to follow up with two new devices using the same principles. The "Oscilloclast" and the "Radioclast" came with instructions to use frequencies that would "attack" any given disease.
According to Abrams, vibration rates ("homovibrations") of drugs owe their efficiency to their "inherent radioactivity".
Abrams' claims were indeed remarkable. They were also false.
It took until around 1924 for Abrams' nonsense to be debunked, with an article in The Lancet reproducing one of his diagrams purporting to reveal that "areas of dullness" were indicators for whether a person is Catholic, Methodist, Seventh-Day Adventist, Theosophist, Protestant or Jew.
One AMA member claimed they had been offered a diagnosis of malaria, diabetes, cancer and syphilis from a blood sample that was in fact... from a rooster.
All this had been a nice little earner for Abrams.
You could in attend a course in "spondylotherapy" and ERA for $200 and by 1921 there were said to be 3500 ERA practitioners.
Abrams' marketing of terms like "reflexophone" and '"spondylotherapy" are part of a long tradition that plays on a curious feature of human psychology.
If a term sounds sufficiently big and complicated, it's probably also true. Art and literature must be great if nobody but the greatest minds can understand it.
The practice continues, and now we have things like the "psycho-galvano-meter" and homoeopathy.
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