An Historical Perspective:
Albert Abrams, The Physician Who Made Millions Out of Electricity

Paul Scholten, MD, Historian

San Francisco has always loved eccentrics and characters and Alfred Abrams, MD, AM, LLP, FRMS, (1863-1924) was one of the city's finest characters. A brilliant physician, he was highly educated for the time and for 20 years he was eminently respectable and a highly respected practitioner. For the next 15 years he was looked on by his colleagues as controversial with increasingly odd theories and treatments. Finally, in the last six years of his life, he developed a world-wide notoriety and was felt by many in the profession to be an out and out money-hungry charlatan-but a very rich one when he invented an electronic box that would diagnose and cure all disease.

Abrams was born in San Francisco to a merchant family on December 8, 1863 and died here at the age of 60 in 1924. The family was affluent enough to send him to Heidelberg where he received his medical degree in 1882. He returned home and earned a second medical degree from the local Cooper Medical School in 1883. He went back to Germany for a year of post-graduate study in Berlin, then entered practice here in June of 1884. Years later, when he became notorious, many wrote to the American Medical Association saying that it was not possible to get an MD from Heidelberg at the age of 19, but the AMA checked it out and found that he was the youngest medical graduate there in 100 years. They also confirmed the Cooper medical degree to be genuine, his local courses probably shortened by his Heidelberg credits.

He began to practice on the southwest corner of Van Ness and California Streets. Later, after being burned out in the Great 1906 Earthquake/Fire, he moved a few blocks west to 2135 Sacramento Street, from where he made his rounds in a chauffeured Rolls Royce. He became very active at Mt. Zion and French Hospitals and at Cooper Medical School where he was professor of pathology (1893-98) and Director of the Cooper Medical School Clinic. He joined the San Francisco Medical Society, the AMA and the CMA and in 1894 was vice president of the California Medical Association.

At that time, the SFMS played a large part in continuing medical education with frequent evening meetings. The records show that Abrams gave "a very good report" on a case of tetany at a meeting in December 1889, spoke on the new discovery of culturing diphtheria in a test tube on February 1896 and on October 9, 1897, spoke on pneumonectomy for lung abscess, which was felt to be controversial by his listeners. He was always on the cutting edge of medicine and looking for new modalities. Wilhelm Rontgen, professor of physics at Wurzberg University, discovered the x-ray in 1895. By 1897 Abrams was doing original work in San Francisco demonstrating heart enlargement and aortic aneurysm by fluoroscope and x-rays, thus being one of the very first anywhere to show the value of x-rays in cardiac diagnosis.

Abrams was a prolific writer, publishing his first paper, "Medical Education in Germany" here while still a student at Heidelberg. It was followed by almost a hundred more scientific papers on such diverse subjects as carbon monoxide poisoning, floating kidney, azospermia, tetany, pulmonary atelectasis, lung syphilis, gastroptosis, gonorrheal endocarditis, brain tumors and pernicious anemia. He published at least seven books, the most noted of which was a 170-page Diagnosis and Treatment of Diseases of the Heart, published in 1900, which soon became a standard work. It was the second cardiology text by an American, the only other being Austin Flint's of 1859.

About this time he began to express controversial ideas and opinions and his colleagues started to feel that he was somewhat wild and even that he might be a little balmy. He postulated that all cancer was the late result of syphilis, active or congenital and that vaccination would cause of form of "bovine syphilis," although no one could define what that was. While percussing the heart, he noted a recession of the ventricle when tapping a certain area. He never stated why this was significant but termed it the "Cardiac Reflex of Abrams." He then noted that the lung retracted to percussion and named it the "Pulmonary Reflex of Abrams." His new reflexes got wide publicity here and abroad and in time he published papers on these and his discovery of reflexes of the stomach, aorta, intestines, spleen, vertebral reflexes and knee jerks. His fame became somewhat dulled when he described a whole series of reactive areas in the abdomen and claimed that he could percuss out one's religion by noting the dullness in certain abdominal areas. Not only could he discover one's religion but even discover what the denomination was, i.e., distinguish Baptists from Methodists. In wonder, the JAMA published one of his abdominal maps in 1922.

About 1908 he embraced the ideas of the osteopaths and chiropractors stating that all disease was due to spinal disarrangement. These were new ideas at the time, Dr. Andrew Still in Kirksville, Missouri having developed osteopathy about 1890 and D. D. Palmer championing chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa in the 1910-15 era. In 1910, Abrams published a book Spondylotherapy, explaining his views on spinal problems and therapy. He wrote numerous articles and between 1912 and 1914 gave courses around the country teaching spinal manipulation and percussion of the spine.

Then in 1916 he unveiled his masterpiece, Abrams Electronic Reactions and his world-famous Abrams Box for diagnosis and treatment. His stated theory was that all tissue gave off electronic vibrations and one could diagnose health and disease by measuring the vibrations. He called this the "Practical Application of the Electronic Theory in the Interpretation and Treatment of Disease." He had a book printed up, New Concepts of Diagnosis and Treatment: Physio-Clinical Medicine. He founded a Journal of Electronic Medicine and a quarterly Physio-Clinical Medicine. At the same time he produced a nicely crafted portable oak box containing the machinery that he said would measure the electronic vibrations, the famous Abrams box.

Actually, he had several different boxes, one for diagnosis called the Biodynamometer or Dynamiser and the treatment box called the Oscilloclast, and changed or "improved" the models from time to time. The machines were sealed and operators made to swear that they would never open the boxes. When someone did, they found a series of transformers, condensers and rheostats wired together and connected to dials on the top of the box. They came in battery and plug models, were never sold, only leased for a down payment of $200 for the A.C. model, $250 for the D.C., and a further $5 rent each month. Later models came with buzzers and lights that came on as the machines were in use.

Originally, the operator would press an electrode to the patient's forehead with the patient facing west in a dim light. An ohmmeter, sometimes two, would give a reading and this would reveal the diagnosis. Shortly, it was realized that more patients could be taken care of if they did not have to come to the office, so instead, the patients were told to just mail in a drop of blood on a piece of white or filter paper. This would be held on the forehead of a healthy assistant and the electrode applied, again wit the stand-in facing west in a dim light. This also proved tedious and Dr. Abrams soon "discovered" that his latest machine would do just as well with the bloodstained paper just laid on the table. His machines and diagnostic techniques were widely advertised and he was soon doing a very brisk mail order business as well as shipping out the machines to other practitioners of electronic medicine. Later, he dropped the use of the blood and claimed that his newest machines would make the correct diagnosis by pressing the electrode against the patient's signature.

For treatment, the operator would adjust the dials of the Oscilloclast to the appropriate number for the disease to be treated and apply the electrode to the suspected site of the illness. As far as we know, the boxes didn't actually do anything at all, consisting of simple electrical parts wired together. Abrams had them made up for $30 each and the man who first made them later said that he asked the good doctor exactly how to connect the parts and Abrams said that it didn't matter as long as they were wired together. Scientific American magazine submitted one of the boxes to a scientific panel and radio and engineering experts stated that they couldn't find the slightest evidence of any electrical current passing through the machine. When told this, Abrams just laughed, saying, "Of course not, the machine are electronic, not electric."

Dr. Robert Millikan, president of Cal Tech and Nobel prize winner in physics in 1923, testifying in a legal process said that the box had no scientific foundation whatever. This author got a hold of one, took it apart and also was unable to find that anything was happening. But over the next few years Abrams leased out some 3,000 machines, 1,500 to chiropractors and 1,500 to physicians; many, as the AMA noted, with borderline training. Skeptics and the AMA sent in chicken, guinea pig and sheep blood for diagnosis, as well as that of apparently healthy humans. All came back with a whole spectrum of serious diseases. A guinea pig showed tuberculosis of the uterus, pancreatic cancer and a streptococcal infection of the gall bladder. A very chaste sheep was reported to have hereditary syphilis, a Neisserian infection and metastatic cancer of the left lung and pancreas. Dr. Abrams got hold of the authentic signatures of Dr. Samuel Johnson, Edgar Allen Poe, Samuel Pepys and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, submitted them to his machine and announced that they all tested positive for syphilis. Abrams sounded so scientific when he lectured that in 1922, a San Francisco judge allowed the admission of Electronic Analysis to prove paternity in an alimony suit.

In 1922, the AMA took after Abrams and printed numerous articles about him and his disciples in the JAMA. Interestingly, Upton Sinclair, the famous muckraker and novelist and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, came to Abrams defense, wrote articles in the popular press and a very long letter which he dared the JAMA to publish, which they did. Lewis was a food faddist, a dedicated socialist and strongly against organized medicine. Lewis expounded a raw-food diet, felt that fasting was nature's remedy for all diseases and made a very strong showing when he ran for governor of California in 1934.

In 1923, Abrams resigned from the SFMS and AMA but continued to practice, write and appear in court to defend the users of his box. About Christmas time in 1923, he came down with bronchopneumonia, went downhill and died on January 13, 1924, leaving an estate of three to five million dollars. Interestingly, he didn't really need the money from his quack apparatus. He married two wealthy wives, both of whom died leaving him small fortunes. There were no children. He left his money to found the Abrams College of Electronic Medicine and had a ten-story building for it under construction on the corner of Sutter and Hyde when he died. His relatives and his wives, relatives sued, broke the will and the fortune and college dissipated.

Was Dr. Alfred Abrams a fraud? Certainly, in most respects. He was certainly money-mad, possibly mentally deranged at the end. Paul de Kriuf, the medical writer was kindest. He said, "He was a magician who believed in his own magic."

(Presented at UCSF to the Bay Area History of Medicine Club on April 14, 1999.)