Chapter 5

Rife Therapy
An Innovative Advance in Electromedicine

Nenah Sylver, Ph.D.

One of the most effective and noninvasive healing modalities is frequency therapy, based on the principles discovered by Royal Raymond Rife. Though initially hailed by physicians in the 1930s and 1940s as a major breakthrough for curing cancer and other diseases, Rife’s technology was disparaged and censored and has reemerged only in the past twenty years. Did this technology really work? If so, why was it suppressed? And how can we use it today?

ELECTROTHERAPY’S PLACE IN COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE

Rife’s technology is best understood in the context of holistic or complementary health. Allopathic medicine regards the body as a machine that is the sum of its parts, but holistic medicine treats the person as a unified organism greater than the sum of its parts, and, because all parts are interconnected, there are no isolated symptoms.

The bioelectrical nature of our bodies is often overshadowed by its more obvious mechanical aspects. But every cell is a transmitter and receiver of electromagnetic (EM) information (which is why electronic equipment is successful in testing). The entire body is a living electrical circuit. Cells and tissues act as conductors, as insulators, as semiconductors, and as capacitors. Human beings, animals, and plants all contain and respond to EM fields, as each cell has its very own frequency with which it oscillates. These various electromagnetic frequencies precede and correspond to biochemical functions. For instance, healthy cells oscillate at higher frequencies than do unhealthy cells, such as in the case of a person with cancer.

Electrotherapy (or electromedicine) is a medical modality that uses electromagnetic, electric, and magnetic energies for therapeutic purposes. Since ancient times humans have used electromagnetic fields from the sun, visible light, electricity, and magnetism for healing. These energies stimulate circulation and normalize the body’s cells and tissues. Sometimes they disable and destroy pathogens.

By the early 1900s--a hundred years after the discovery of electrical current--electromedical equipment was considered mainstream. Alternating current, direct current, low frequencies, high frequencies, static electricity, diathermy, infrared rays, and ultraviolet rays were utilized to treat muscular aches and pains, skin conditions, gynecological problems, some heart conditions, respiratory ailments, gastrointestinal disorders, acute and chronic infections, and degenerative diseases.

Today, machines utilizing electromagnetic fields, electricity, and magnetism are used for diagnosis. These include the electrocardiogram and Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Given the widespread historical use of electromedicine and the modern use of machines for diagnosis, it seems remarkable that more practitioners and the general public don’t use electromedicine in their daily lives for healing.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ROYAL RAYMOND RIFE

Born in Nebraska in 1888, Royal Raymond Rife was truly a Renaissance man. Educated in optics, electronics, biology, and chemistry, he studied at Johns Hopkins University before designing and building many medical research instruments. Perhaps his most famous invention, the 200-pound, 5,682-part Universal Microscope, was completed in 1933. The Universal Microscope had extraordinary magnification powers and depth of field, rendering live organisms as small as single viruses visible--something that conventional scopes and even electron microscopes could not accomplish.

Reasoning that once he could see how pathogens responded to negative stimuli he could find a way to destroy them, Rife built a ray that devitalized microbes via a specific EM field. This ray disabled pathogens and, once they were disabled, the body’s immune cells could eliminate them.

Rife’s technology was safe and effective, and he was praised in hundreds of newspapers and journals. His colleagues and supporters were among the most prestigious doctors and scientists of the time. Throughout the United States and Europe, doctors administered Rife Therapy in the treatment of many types of infection, including those caused by E. coli, strep, staph, and salmonella. People recovered from cancer, tuberculosis, typhoid, tetanus, gonorrhea, pneumonia, and other ailments. Even most patients given “terminal” diagnoses by their doctors became well when treated with the ray device.

Fourteen highly effective units were made by the Rife’s Beam Rays Corporation before a smear campaign was begun in 1939 against Rife, his inventions, and like-minded doctors who practiced Rife Therapy. Virtually everyone who attacked Rife was funded by or connected to the pharmaceutical industry, including the allopathically oriented American Medical Association, the American Cancer Society, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute. The smear campaign was effective: the abundant funding and resources that Rife had enjoyed in the 1930s evaporated, making mass production of a Rife Ray impossible.

Today in the United States, Rife Therapy is relatively unknown because it is likewise systematically disparaged. The alliance between the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA, and the AMA ensures the prevalence of drugs and surgery rather than nondrug, nonsurgical protocols. Rife Therapy was opposed by allopathic medicine proponents for many reasons. It’s much more successful, and thus more cost-effective, than pharmaceutical medicine, because Rifers tend to use far fewer drugs than non-Rifers. Rife machines can be used by more than one person. Moreover, most sessions can be self-administered without a doctor’s supervision. Rife Therapy is compatible with all holistic modalities such as acupuncture, chiropractic, and naturopathy. It can even be used with select allopathic procedures.

Today people are seeking alternative treatments--alternative, that is, to the allopathic model most commonly promoted--because they refuse to settle for less than genuine healing. It’s time to bring Rife Therapy back into the mainstream by making it freely available to everyone, everywhere.

Nenah Sylver, Ph.D., is a writer, educator, artist, and agent for social change. Her training as a musician and her interest in healing and the natural sciences led her to study physics before earning a Ph.D. in transformational psychology. For many years she had a private practice in body/mind psychotherapy based on the principles of Wilhelm Reich. Her research in Rife frequency technology and other related fields in holistic health coalesced to form the 768-page volume The Rife Handbook of Frequency Therapy and Holistic Health. Her work on the themes of holistic health, psychology, feminism, sexuality, and social change has been published all over the world.