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The Suppression of Unorthodox Science 239
LIFE UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
Loyal friends helped Reich buy equipment for microphotography, sterilization,
and detecting electrical charges, as well as to hire assistants. In
1936 time-lapse photography of protozoa was a new idea, but Reich never
let that stop him. His critics could not understand why he wanted highmagnification
microscopes, since there was an upper limit above which
the subject would become increasingly blurry. But he wanted to study
movement within the protozoa, not the fine details of form.
A series of accidental or experimental changes in procedures led to his
amazing discovery of moving lifelike forms which could be grown in cultures
and developed from a variety of apparently non-living materials put
in solutions which caused microscopic particles to swell. Artificially-created
tiny blue-green vesicles (sacks) which he named "bions" grew in
sterilized preparations of materials such as coal or sand. Under high magnification
the vesicles could be seen in rolling, pulsating, rotating and
merging movements. In controlled experiments he proved that the bions
could not have appeared as a result of infection from the air.
While looking at bion cultures under the microscope, his eyes were
burned by a non-nuclear radiation from them that he later found in the
atmosphere. It was not the type of radiation known to physics. Instead, it
corresponded more to the Hindu concept of prana or to the Chinese concept
of chi. This is when he named it orgone—energy of the organism. It
is a biological radiation, not electromagnetic, and an Oslo radiologist confirmed
that no standard nuclear radiation was present in the bion culture.
In the dark, the cultures glowed with a vague greyish-blue light.
Reich also studied cancer tissue at high magnification and showed a
leading cancer researcher some moving cancer cells from living tissue.
The researcher took the tissue back to his own laboratory, performed the
usual procedures which killed cells by drying and staining them, then in a
smug tone reported that he had "controlled" Reich's experiment and found
Reich's bions to be "only staphylococci." He apparently did not follow
Reich's procedures, however.
Reich continued to follow the path which now leads into research on
cancer pathology. Eminent Norwegians started a newspaper campaign
against his work in all his fields of interest, and once again influential psychiatrists
pressed a government to kick Reich out of their country—this
time by changing licensing regulations. By now the furore had nothing to
do with his former interest in Communism; he had seen it for what it is
and became vehemently anti-communist. In the middle of Reich's intense
study of bions, he had to quickly pack up his laboratory equipment. On
the last boat out of Norway before World War II, Reich again emigrated
to another country.