Drown, Ruth B. (1891-1965)

American chiropractor who developed the pioneer work of Albert Abrams (1863-1924) in electronics (later known as radionics ), involving the correction of disease conditions by shortwave low-power electromagnetics and alternating magnetic currents. Dr. Drown was born in Greeley, Colorado, on October 21, 1891.

Drown called her treatment radio therapy and founded the Radio Therapy Institute as an outlet for her work. It involved placing a blood sample from a patient in a machine "tuned" to the patient and "broadcasting" healing radiations. This controversial system of treatment was developed further by George De la Warr in England. He describes her technique in several books, including The Science & Philosophy of the Drown Radio Therapy (1938) and The Theory & Technique of the Drown Radio Therapy & Radio Vision Instruments (1939).

Her apparatus was granted a British patent but declared "fraudulent" by the Food and Drug Administration in the 1940s. In 1950, at the request of several of Drown's supporters, an investigation was conducted at the University of Chicago. With blind controls, she was unable to make accurate diagnoses, and the American Medical Association reported on the negative results. These texts made Drown and anyone using her techniques open to charges of medical malpractice, and she soon disappeared from the public eye and lived the rest of her life in relative obscurity.

Through most of her life, Drown was also a metaphysical teacher and she developed her own system, which is presented in her book The Forty-Nine Degrees (1957). The "Gnostic" system discusses the soul's journey from heaven to earth and its eventual return, and the knowledge needed for that return.

Drown died in 1965 while awaiting trial for fraud.

Sources:

Drown, Ruth, ed. The Forty-Nine Degrees: The Road to Divine Truth. New York: Greenwich Book Publishers, 1957.

Inglis, Brian. The Case for Unorthodox Medicine. New York: Berkley Books, 1965.