Text: Even today, doctors tend to tap here and there when examining patients, so at first Abrams's percussing attracted little comment. It was when he developed a machine to assist him with the diagnosis that eyebrows began to be raised. The `Dynamizer', as it was called, was a box with a bird's nest of wires inside. One lead was connected to a battery, another was attached, by a metal clamp, to the forehead of a healthy human being. Once this weird circuit was hooked up, Abrams would then take a blood sample from the sick individual, placing it on blotting paper inside the box somewhere amongst the wires. Then, believe it or not, the doctor would start tapping the abdomen of the healthy person, and by duly considering the sounds made by the raps would diagnose the condition of the patient whose blood sample was in the apparatus. Those of a scientific bent will already have deduced that some kind of emission from the blood cells on the blotting paper was being detected and amplified by the black box and that the human was serving as a living loudspeaker. No reader of this book will be surprised to learn that what was emanating from the blood sample was described by Abrams as `vibrations' - a word of great utility to cultists of all persuasions. With this invention the great doctor was just flapping his wings, but when he discovered that he could pinpoint not only physical, but also psychological conditions by this means he really began to take off the deck. Before long another breakthrough occurred, when it was discovered that the dynamizer could also determine a person's religion - it was particularly hot at winkling out Theosophists and Seventh Day Adventists - to say nothing of their age and sex. For those for whom a blood sample was not readily available, the dynamizer and its various successors could produce accurate diagnoses from handwriting in lieu. The next step was logical enough. If diseased bodies gave out specific, describable vibrations, should it not be possible, by devising a sufficiently versatile vibrator, to send therapeutic signals back into the unhealthy tissue and so correct matters, Dr Abrams felt that it most certainly should and built a machine known as an `oscilloclast', which transmitted beneficent vibrations of all kinds, and which he kindly rented out in large numbers to the quack doctors with which America has been and, no doubt, always will be richly endowed. http://www.drink.com/sci-lib/evans/pioneers.html

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