Radionics is a highly controversial field that claims to detect and modulate life force using electronic devices. Patients can be diagnosed and treated without even meeting the practitioner, who uses a radionic ‘‘black box’’ to tune into ‘‘vibrational frequencies’’ from a sample of hair or blood. The device is then used to ‘‘broadcast’’ healing frequencies back to the patient, who may be hundreds of miles away.

The seeds of radionics can be found in radiesthesia, a diagnostic technique employing pendulums or dowsing rods developed by three French priests during the early 1900s. The founding father of radionics was Albert Abrams, an American neurologist (1864–1924) who believed that his machines could, from a sample of blood, hair, or even handwriting, determine a patient’s sex, race, financial status, religion, and underlying causes of illness. His therapeutic machines were hermetically sealed and were not sold, only leased on the condition that they never be opened. Investigators who examined the devices around the time of Abrams’ death found nothing inside to which they could attribute potential medical benefit. The principles of distance healing were developed by a U.S. chiropractor, Ruth Drown, during the 1930s.Drown also maintained that her devices could produce x-ray-like images of a patient’s condition, based solely on a blood sample. A scientific committee that examined these images in 1950 detected no recognizable anatomic structures in them, and concluded they were simply ‘‘fog patterns.’’