Introduction

Introduction

Reich reported on these pioneering experiments in The Bion Experiments on the Origin of Life and The Cancer Biopathy. The control experiment of the grass-infusion project, my own idea, applies the principle involved in the other bion preparations, the heating and swelling of dead material. This booklet is for the amateur researcher, the reader most likely to be interested and open-minded enough to do these experiments. Professionals will probably be burdened with too long a mechanistic training to give these experiments a second look, let alone actually do them to test Reichs findings. Professionals familiar with microscopy who try these experiments, if only to prove Reich wrong, will find them fairly easy. Even for the amateur beginner, they are not too technical and difficult. The obstacles are within us rigidity, dogma, and a reluctance to see what is in front of us. Reichs bion research in Norway set off a vicious press campaign against him, Experts who he had tried to interest in his work used their status and access to the press to ridicule it without testing his claims scientifically. His scientific discoveries are repeatedly explained away in this way, as if they were philosophical speculation, not the result of serious and testable scientific work.

To do these experiments you need a knowledge of sterile precautions, the air-germ theory and Brownian motion. These are the standard objections to Reichs claims that he had observed forms with some of the characteristics of the living originating from sterilised and even non-living materials. The air-germ objection claims that the movements seen in the preparations can only stem from cysts or spores of living forms that have entered the preparations from the air. (This is a logical objection, if you insist, regardless of evidence, that life can only come from the same form of life and cannot conceivably arise on its own.) Brownian motion is the movement imparted to small particles suspended in a fluid by the kinetic energy of the fluids molecules. For more information look up these words in a textbook or dictionary of biology. Better still, read Browns original text. Orgonomic research demands a willingness to look things up.

Why this booklet? Only one of Reichs original texts is in print in this country. An interested browser is unlikely to come across Reichs seminal orgonomic texts, The Bion Experiments and The Cancer Biopathy, in a library. They are at the moment as good as lost. I am writing this booklet in the hope that future students of orgonomy may have at least something to work from. Few people realise that Reich produced a huge volume of scientific work that can be followed up and controlled in the scientific sense; that the experiments can be repeated according to his protocols and his claims refuted, confirmed or added to. These experiments are within the possible for the motivated and curious student. For detailed reports of these experiments please see Reichs own texts. There is no substitute for the original sources in any scientific research, especially in this case. This booklet is a humble attempt to bring this work to the attention of the few who may not know of its existence but who may be open-minded enough to look again. Many people who feel their own orgone energy in motion have an intuitive sense that the arid certainties of mechanistic biology cannot be the final truth. Reichs experimental work is scientific confirmation of this intuition.

Reich wanted to see if the currents or streamings reported by his patients in psycho-therapy were a basic natural function that could be seen in living nature at large? He started to observe cultures of amoebae under the microscope. He naively dared to ask the technician delivering the cultures where they came from. He was assured that a culture of hay in water produced plentiful amoebae from the spores attached to the grass. Reich tested this assertion by trying to obtain spores washed off grass and observed the grass as it swelled and broke down in water. He was unable to find any spores or cysts, but observed the organisation of protozoa from breaking down grass. He named this process bionous disintegration. Before protozoa were visible the dead tissue swelled, became grainy, and started to move in places. He observed tiny vesicles both attached to the grass and free-floating in the water, which pulsated, that is expanded and contracted, and also moved in other ways. These had some characteristics of the living without being any recognisable life-form. He named them bions. These had a tendency to clump together and form protozoa. You may be able to actually see this taking place in the grass-infusion experiment if your microscope has high enough magnification, about x1000-1500. Even without this magnification you can still see some of the movements generated by the process at x500-600. Reich then investigated this process of disintegration and re-integration in other materials soot, coal-dust, sand, soil, and even iron-filings. We shall be doing the same investigations ourselves in our three experiments.

These experiments are a good introduction to laboratory orgonomy, the functions of orgone energy and matter, and the organisation of life from non-life. Modern biologists and evolutionists assume this occurred aeons ago, possibly only once, and does not occur in nature any longer. I must warn you now that if we wish to roll up our sleeves and get down to serious work, in the eyes of evolutionists and biologists, we have joined the ranks of those described by Richard Dawkins as;

flat-earthers, young-earthers, perpetual-motion merchants, astrologers, and other harmless fruit-cakes.

It is a dogma of modern biology that an organism, simple or complex, can only come from another organism of the same type. It is therefore impossible for an organism, however simple, to originate from inanimate, sterile matter. Reichs findings show that life all the time starts, organises itself into existence, when circumstances are favourable. Reichs findings are written off as contamination by air-germs or the misinterpretation of Brownian motion. No-one critical of his work has repeated his experiments from openly published and detailed research protocols and disproved his claims. Orgonomic workers have repeated them and confirmed and developed his findings. I have repeated these basic orgonomic experiments myself and also confirmed Reichs claims. Reich made no pretensions whatever to have said the last word on his discoveries; he often said that he was the one who had discovered the continent and that others would map out the interior. By repeating his experiments you will be confirming the outlines of this beautiful, fascinating continent, and, if you carry on, helping to map out a small area of the interior. Orgonomic experimentation is so fertile and alive that these simple projects will certainly lead you to further experiments.

Equipment

This list is not exhaustive. You may need other items. The orgonomist needs flexibility and resourcefulness above all. You do not find answers in a textbook, apart from referring to Reichs own writings. Someone knowledgeable in microscopy or experimental methods may be able to help you with equipment and techniques, if you can bear the raised eyebrows and doubts in your sanity.

I have found the articles in The Annals of the Institute for Orgonomic Science helpful. I am grateful to the editors for their experienced advice and information. Their editorial address is included at the end of this booklet.

Microscope; If you are using a school or college instrument make sure that it is a biological microscope that uses light directed through the specimen from below. Those intended for geological or crystal work use reflected light. You will be able to do the basic experiments with a much simpler instrument than is ideal. You will need a microscope able to magnify up to x1500, if possible, though x1000 will do. To work out the possible magnification, look at the objectives, the metal tubes, usually three in number, that rotate into position above the slide, which rests on the stage. These terms will become clear to you if you have a good look at a microscope. On the objectives you will see the level of magnification provided, x10, x40, x100. The eyepiece also magnifies the image produced by the objective. Its magnifying power will also be shown somewhere, probably x10 or x15. If the total magnification available is x1000, (a typical combination of a x100 objective with a x10 eyepiece), you will still be able to see much of what I describe below. A binocular microscope is less tiring to use than a monocular one. As you will have to (and want to) spend many hours observing these enthralling processes, I very much recommend one.

Thin transparent specimens under a microscope are often invisible. Phase-contrast attachments, darkfield facility or colour filters can make them visible. Filters, the easiest and cheapest method, can be improvised with coloured cellophane paper. An amoeba may be a collection of dots under brightfield illumination, but its cytoplasm and membrane may be visible under some types of illumination, even a simple blue or green filter. I suggest that you get used to your microscope by looking at water samples from various habitats. You can then play about with different lighting and magnifications and generally get used to your instrument. This is extremely enjoyable. My first sample from my local park, a jarful of dirty water, was teeming with protozoa, many of them unbelievably beautiful. I found out later from a textbook that I had accidentally chosen a good habitat for such organisms, a pond rich in animal droppings from the flock of Canada geese on this small pond. It is also a test of the air-germ theory. See what you find in standing water at various sites. If the air-germ theory is true, you should find many spores, cysts blown there in great quantities. You will find in fact that much standing water is almost devoid of visible forms.

Other items; you need many small, cheap and easily available items; test-tubes, corks, microscope slides, well-slides, (also known as cavity slides), coverslips, paraffin wax and petroleum jelly, (Vaseline), some small capacity syringes and needles (1ml and 2ml). A test-tube stand, wooden holders, and a few glass jars or bottles will be helpful. If you are using a borrowed microscope in a laboratory, an autoclave to sterilise your preparations may be available. You can improvise autoclavation with a pressure-cooker. Autoclaving tape confirms full sterilisation. The stripes on it turn brown when the temperature reaches 120C for long enough. The conventionally accepted time and temperature for full sterilisation is 30 minutes at 120C, easily obtained in a pressure cooker. Coverslip forceps are essential for handling coverslips. Test-tube racks are convenient. Without them you may find transferring fluids to tubes and extracting samples by syringe difficult. A competent handy-worker can easily make a test-tube rack. For the grass-infusion experiment you need a pan in which to melt the wax mixture. The wax stays liquid for longer if this is a heavy cooking pot which retains heat well. Wax in a thin metal vessel is not safe, may heat up quickly, reach flash-point and ignite. Even if watched carefully with the heat turned off when the wax melts, it cools too rapidly. IMPORTANT!! DISPOSAL OF NEEDLES: The needles mentioned above, made as disposable items, can be re-sterilised in your autoclave for laboratory use. They must be disposed of safely in a sharps container, as used in dental and medical practices and biology labs.

General Principles

In the bion experiments Reich observed the natural process of bionous disintegration. The bions originating in this process had an innate tendency to organise themselves into protozoa (He also found that this was the process by which cancer cells originate; the equivalent in the organism to the disintegrating grass is devitalised tissue.) The tissue disintegrates because of chronic reduction in energy charge stemming from long-term sexual stasis, the result of armouring, muscular tension, present from infancy and childhood, caused by the frustration of primary needs. If these experiments confirm Reichs claims, this suggests that his explanation of cancer based on his findings is correct, too.

This work demands patience, care, and observation. Drawing what you see develops your powers of observation and attention to detail. You will need to spend much time looking at your samples. You may see something that no-one else has noticed before. If you are lucky with the grass-infusion experiment, you may see an agglomeration of bions break free from its matrix and take off on its own as an independent being. This is, to put it mildly, an exciting moment. You have witnessed what biologists assume occurred many millions of years ago and which cannot happen now. This is even more exciting when you see it taking place with previously inanimate, sterilised materials. To check your findings, you can do what Reich did, and heat your materials to red-heat, before you add water or KCl and still find vigorous cultures of bions. As the bions develop, we observe the process of orgonotic pulsation, the orgasm formula of tension charge discharge relaxation at the microscopic level. You will learn much about orgone energy functions from these experiments.

Bions from Sterilised Inanimate MatterAny finely ground material such as sand, soil, iron-filings, clay, soot, when heated and allowed to swell in a nutritive solution or water undergoes bionous disintegration, producing bions and eventually protozoa. There is no great difference between the materials suggested and you could do the experiment with other substances, say, soot, coal-dust, clay, or slate. Though these experiments have been repeated by different orgonomists,, , you will be breaking new ground if you try some new but commonly available material. When I started bion work, I was keen to try iron-filings. These were the hardest, least organic materials that I could find. It has since occurred to me to do the experiment using really hard ground materials, such as flint or fluorspar. Some of these materials may need to be ground more finely, which can be done easily in a domestic pestle and mortar. You can obtain small amounts of such materials from a potter. They are commonly used in glazes. Red clay, too, is a cheap material obtainable from potters and produces the most interesting results. In some areas you can dig up your own clay. (Since the writing he first draft of this I have collected a sample of pink granite from the Isle of Mull which contains feldspar and quartz. Finely ground, this produces bions very easily.)

a) Soil

Take a couple of spoonfuls of garden soil and let it dry on a plate or in a domestic oven. Pass it through a fine sieve, so that it is smooth and granular. A simple version of this experiment is to prepare one test-tube with soil and distilled or boiled water and to observe what has happened in it after, say, a week or month. A more interesting way is to prepare ten test-tubes in the same way and to examine the contents at regular intervals, so that you can observe the process of bionous disintegration and the organisation of protozoa step by step. This is not difficult, though it demands more time. Watching the bions under the microscope demands much time, mainly because it is so interesting. It takes little more time to prepare ten tubes than one. Place the tubes in a rack, with a spatula add a pinch of soil to each tube and pour in a small amount of distilled or boiled water. The amounts do not have to be exactly equal. We are not measuring products in this experiment. Cork the tubes carefully, place them in your autoclave or pressure cooker, seal with the lid and sterilise them for 30 minutes at 120C. Some test-tube racks are too tall for a domestic pressurecooker. I put my tubes in jam-jars. These withstand the autoclaving well. I first found that the corks blew off and I now tape them down with autoclaving tape, which also confirms that the correct temperature has been reached. This is available from laboratory suppliers.

Sterilise your tubes for 30 minutes and leave them to cool before opening the pressure cooker. Leave them to stand for a few days. If you have prepared only one tube, wait for at least a week, so that you can be sure of having something interesting to look at. If you have prepared a series of tubes, you can examine the first one quite soon, say after two days, to study the process of bionous disintegration and the formations of bions and protozoa. You could get more information by preparing 30 tubes and examining one every day. The actual preparation of such a number would not be too difficult or time-consuming. Test-tubes are cheap and are anyway only supplied in packs of a hundred. You can sterilise 20 or more quite easily even in a pressure-cooker. Examining them under the microscope, however, demands a great deal of time, especially those observed later, as more and more items appear. Your own free time is the limiting factor. You can easily spend an hour or longer examining a drop of water on a slide at x1500. If you find something that seems about to break free from its matrix, you may find yourself watching it for hours on and off. It is now rewarding and helpful to draw what you see. Drawing encourages you to look very carefully. This is, of course, a vital scientific skill anyway, but it demands yet more time.

Let your tubes stand for three days. Before you prepare a slide, make sure that your microscope is in working order and ready to use; connected to a power supply, optical surfaces clean, condenser and optical accessories centred where necessary. Take a tube and the items that you will need to prepare a temporary microscope slide slides, cavity or plain, coverslips, coverslip forceps, immersion oil, and sterile syringes and needles. Have several slides and coverslips to hand at your first try, if you are unfamiliar with your equipment. You may make minor errors drop or break coverslips, contaminate slides, drop too much fluid on the coverslip or slide and have to start again. You will rapidly become more effective and be able to set up a slide in a minute or two. What is lacking, if you feel awkward or frustrated, is not a BSc in microscopy, but physical familiarity with your tools and materials. This you will soon acquire.

If conventional theory is correct, there should be nothing living in your test-tubes. Examine some soil in non-sterile water so that you can recognise soil particles and how they change through the process of bionous disintegration. You could prepare a control tube, as suggested in reference to see how heating affects soil particles and accelerates breakdown into bions and/or protozoa.

To prepare a hanging-drop slide separate a few coverslips from each other (They tend to stick together.) Open your syringe and needle and attach the needle, replacing it in its sterile packaging until you actually use it. Peel off the autoclaving tape, shake your test-tube so that the water becomes turbid and gently remove the cork, taking care not to contaminate the inside of the tube. Let the larger particles settle. Before the water clears completely, put your needle into the water and draw up some water. 1ml syringes are narrow and ideal for this. Paediatric grade needles (orange colour code, size 25G) allow you to place a small drop right in the centre of the coverslip. It is easier to do this, if you hold it with the forceps or have the slip placed with its edge protruding and accessible. Coverslips are awkward to handle until you get used to them. They break easily, stick together obstinately, and are often invisible, if you drop them. Without a pair of coverslip forceps safe and hygienic handling is impossible.

You may need several attempts before you can set up a usable hanging-drop slide. If the drop is too large, the water will squeeze outwards and lift the coverslip off the slide. The coverslip will then float about and be very unstable. It may move about as you move the stage. You may end up with water or oil where they can do damage. If you rehearse the procedure with some tap-water, you will soon find how big the drop of fluid needs to be. I now glue coverslips to the slide with tiny blobs of Blutack at the edge of the coverslip.

If you have now got your very small drop of water safely onto the coverslip, safely held with the forceps, turn the slip over so that the drop is hanging downwards and very gently place one edge on the cavity slide alongside the circular well, so that when you let the coverslip lie flat on the slide surface the drop is in the centre of the well. Holding it in position very lightly, glue it down with the Blutack. A coverslip is so light that it easily sticks to a finger. You need to exercise great care once it is sitting on the slide surface. You can hold it in place after you have lowered it with the forceps with a plastic biro end or wooden ruler. To prepare a flat slide, place a slightly larger drop onto the centre of the slide and gently lower the coverslip onto the drop. If you have got it right, the drop will spread out evenly under the coverslip and stick it to the slide, neatly holding things in place. You may need to practise this a few times to get it right.

Your slide is now set up. Start with low magnification, around x50-100, and get a good overview of the drop. This level of magnification allows you to get a general impression of things. If your sterile precautions have been effective you will probably not see any movement at this magnification. You can now try out the different types of illumination available on your microscope brightfield, darkfield, phase-contrast, or colour filters. This will be much easier if you have already had a look at other things and got to know your microscope. After you have gained a general impression of your sample and found an area with a good number of particles to look at, move up to intermediate magnification, x400-600. It is advisable, however keen you are to move ahead, to get an overall view at low magnification. Once you have oil on the coverslip for high magnification with oil-immersion it is impossible to remove the oil and revert to dry observation.

Find out which combination of filter and optical attachment allows you to see the most. You may see movement at intermediate magnification. I often do with C O R Es Olympus microscope. Have a good look round and record your observations. You are now looking at a smaller area of the slide and therefore it will take much longer to cover the whole area of the drop. It will also be much harder to find something again, once you have lost it. If you do find something moving, I suggest that you go back to it and leave it right in the centre of your field of view, before you switch up to your high magnification of x1000 or x1500. This involves oil-immersion, which is quite simple. Lower the stage well out of the way of the objectives and place a drop of oil (special oil for microscopy provided by your manufacturer) on the coverslip directly above the water drop, which you should be able to see without difficulty. If you have focused on an interesting item take care not to move the stage while doing all this. If you move it at all, you may find it hard to relocate the item. With the oil in position, rack up the stage until the oil just touches the objective. Raise the stage with the fine-focus until you see the column of oil jump between slide and objective, producing a little flash of light. You can now observe your slide at high magnification. Once you have got this far, take care to raise the stage only with the fine-focus wheel, which brings it up very slowly, minimising the risk of damage to the objective.

If your preparation has been brewing for a while you will probably see much activity. How are the moving particles that you saw before moving? It is important to notice the many different sorts of movement, so that you can distinguish between orgonotic motility and Brownian motion. If small particles show Brownian motion, (brought about by the bombardment of floating particles by the molecular movement of the fluid in which they are suspended), all particles of a similar size will be in motion. This will not be the case in your bion preparation. You will probably see lots of motionless dots and quite a few that are highly motile. If they are large enough for you to see their movement, you may see that they are pulsating (expanding and contracting), spinning, rocking to and fro through an arc of 30-45 degrees, moving up and down, (you can tell this if the particles move into and out of focus), moving quickly from side to side or up and down in your field of view, and possibly even moving from one place to another. I have my own symbols to show how a particle is moving. If particles move in one way and others of a similar size do not move, the motion must be orgonotic motility. It cannot be Brownian motion, as the molecular motion producing this must affect all particles equally. The most noticeable movement is often that of a largish particle vibrating to and fro. This cannot be Brownian motion as there are similarly large particles in nearby that are not moving at all. Another detail that confirms orgonotic motility is the waggling movement of a small tongue or peninsula protruding from a large particle in the fluid. This bends like a forefinger seen from the side and is presumably a motile, charged formation about to break away from the matrix and to organise itself into a protozoon. I have not yet seen this happen with bions from solid matter, though I have observed the whole process of detachment in the grass-infusion experiment. Once you are examining preparations more than a couple of weeks old, you will be overwhelmed by the amount of moving items to observe, describe and record.

Try to cultivate the ability, vital to orgonomic work, to watch patiently and let your material speak to you, rather than trying to immediately identify everything you see. This will not be described in textbooks or reference works anyway. You can only refer to Reichs own, his many photomicrographs, and the articles on these experiments in the Annals of the Institute for Orgonomic Science. You will recognise there much of what you see here.

b) Sand

Obtaining bions from sand is not very different from getting them from soil, though sand does not seem to break down as quickly as soil. It is easier to handle though and even when dug up in its natural state is usually fine and free-running when dried out. It contains fewer lumps than soil and may not even need to be sieved. Apart from these minor differences, the experiment is exactly the same, as you will soon see. If you want to see bions generated from sand, prepare a couple of tubes and examine them at, say, 2 and 4 weeks. If you want to study the process of bionous disintegration step by step with sand, then prepare a larger number of tubes and examine them at shorter intervals. This approach takes much more time and has a habit of running away with your enthusiasm. You can expect to spend 2-3 hours each time you open a test-tube, examine a slide at low, intermediate, and high magnifications, and record what you have seen and make drawings of the more interesting items. If a partner is sharing the work with you and you are comparing observations and frequently swapping places at the microscope, then it will be yet more enjoyable and yet more time-consuming.

You will find little difference in results, whether you prepare bions from soil or sand. You obtain pulsating, highly motile vesicles that spin, turn, rock, and occasionally change position from preparations that are sterile and which should, in theory, show no signs or characteristics of life. If you did a string of parallel preparations, one of soil, one of sand, prepared in exactly the same way, you might discover differences. If you have facilities to stain your bions (or attempt to) and to test their electrical status, as Reich did, you might make some new discoveries about the bions. I am writing this booklet in the hope that readers will do just that familiarise themselves with the basic principles of orgonomic bio-physics and then take off on their own with original orgonomic research, based on their own ideas and inspirations. Hardly any orgonomic research is being carried out in Britain at present, so there is great scope for pioneers.

c) Iron Filings

It is not clear what inspired Reichs progress from disintegrating biological matter to inorganic, inanimate substances. Presumably it was a logical progression for him. I felt more excitement and anticipation preparing iron filings than I did with any other material. I had known the theory of these experiments for decades, and obtaining living forms from once-living materials seemed reasonable, though still exciting. Soil, even sand, was not stretching things too far, but iron filings? Nothing seemed less likely to produce new life than the hard, shiny metal particles in their modern plastic container. But Reich was right. They do produce bions, as do grass, soil, or sand. They are cheap and easy to obtain. You can make your own, if you have some soft scrap-iron and a coarse file.

Prepare test-tubes in the same way as for soil or sand. Burlingame suggests that you use a 0.1N solution of potassium chloride (KCl) and incubate the preparation at 37C if possible, but distilled water and room temperature will be adequate. Give the tubes a few days to brew, unless you are planning to do a day-by-day study of the process. You will see familiar forms; free-floating bions that are spinning, rocking, jerking, or pulsating (while nearby particles of a similar size are immobile), and larger particles with a recognisable likeness to iron filings, with a rust-coloured crystalline structure. Some of these will be quite immobile, while others will be moving in various ways rocking gently, jerking up and down or from side to side, rolling in all planes and even migrating small distances. You will see smaller, highly motile bionous particles attached to these larger particles that are moving much more than the matrix. These highly charged motile particles are even visible at x600. These smaller particles are either discreet entities with a continuous border (membrane?) of their own, but somehow still attached to the matrix and unable to move away independently, or the tongues mentioned above, described by Reich in The Bion Experiments. This occurrence, often seen in these studies, is a real stumbling block for the dismissive critics with their air-germs and Brownian motion. If the moving tongue were contaminating micro-organisms, they would spread all over the particle and into the surrounding fluid before long. The tongue does not do this and stays more or less in the same state of motility all the time, though if we were able to observe it continuously for longer periods, we might see development, and possibly even detachment of the tongue as a separate, motile particle. This is clearly part of a larger particle undergoing some process or other, not contamination by air-germs. Neither can this be Brownian motion, as the rest of the particle may be either motionless, or more likely, moving gently in a quite different way, (probably rocking). There may be similar tongues on these larger particles which themselves are not moving. A non-sterile preparation of iron filings in water or KCl will act as a control and show what happens, if anything, without the filings undergoing the process of heating and swelling.

The Grass-Infusion Experiment

I have placed this experiment here even though the grass-infusion investigation came first in Reichs work. The technique of setting up and maintaining a continuous-culture slide demands more than a temporary slide. This experiment will be easier, if you have already had some experience of handling your microscope and other equipment. It was undertaken as the result of his nave question to the technician delivering his first culture of amoebae - where do they come from? The reply was the stock one in biology from spores attached to the grass, of course. The technician then explained that the best medium for finding amoebae in was hay in water. This brings us to our starting point cut some blades of old, yellowish grass rather than bright, fresh grass. The latter will be bio-energetically stronger and will break down more slowly into bions. When you are more used to your equipment, you could do two slides at the same time, one of old and one of fresh grass, and observe any differences. Wash them thoroughly under running water and wipe them down with a soft tissue, (so that you have removed the thousands of encysted amoebae clinging to the grass!) and place them in some distilled water or cold boiled water. Leave them for about 48 hours, so that the process of bionous disintegration can start. Alternatively you can set up the observation slide with the blades in situ straight away: Keep the grass supplied with water, and observe the whole process form the start. After trying both methods, I find the second one simpler, as it is easier to set up the slide with dry grass. You will then have to wait a couple of days before there is much to see.

Reich pioneered this technique, which allows us to maintain an open infusion on a cavity slide for an unlimited period. It is described in detail in Dews article. Setting up a well-slide that can be observed for days and even weeks, is quite fiddly at first. You may need several tries to get it right. It will become much easier as you get more familiar with your materials and methods. You may well find, to mention a few of my disasters, that your carefully prepared grass-blades get blown away as someone opens a door, or you drop a coverslip and cannot find it again. (Have several to hand.) If your wax is not organised properly, you may find that it has gone hard again, just when you need it. On the other hand it is not safe to leave it on the heat unattended while you concentrate on your slide. Hence my recommendation of a heavy pan that retains heat well. Another solution is to have an assistant watch the wax and keep it safe. An extra pair of hands will, anyway, be very helpful, particularly the first time you do this.

Make sure you have got your equipment to hand; sharp scissors or razor-blade (one with a safety backing along one edge), both types of wax (mixed 1:1), well-slide, coverslips, a good-quality soft paintbrush to apply the wax. I suggest that you lay everything out on a large newspaper on a solid table in a good light. Take your blade of grass and cut down from the bottom (wider end) to the top (the narrower end) along each side of the spine, which is thicker than the rest of the blade. It is easy to forget which tiny strip of grass is spine or softer, thinner tissue from the rest of the blade. Keep your eye on each piece as you cut and discard the unneeded spine immediately. Trim the pieces to about 2.5 cm in length. Place them over the slide well as illustrated, with their tips just to the right of centre and their cut ends lying over to the left, clear of the coverslip edge. If in doubt about dimensions and position size everything up beforehand without actually fixing anything. You want the tips of the grass just inside the coverslip glass with about a quarter of the wells diameter open to the air, so that you can replenish the water. With your grass-blades in position, glue them to the slide surface with your wax mixture on the paintbrush, which will be on hand and already melted. (In a heavy metal container, it will remain fluid and usable for some time when removed from the heat.) Make sure it is on a thick protective cover, if you are using a domestic table with a polished surface. A dab of wax on the brush glues the blades in position. Once the grass is securely attached, carefully place the coverslip over it, leaving the part of the well open, pressing the slip down onto the slide. This is quite tricky. Too much pressure breaks the coverslip. I suggest you use a wooden or plastic item to hold the slip in place. Paint a line of wax 2-3mm wide along the edges of the coverslip, half over the slip, half on the slide surface. (See illustration.) This is the most difficult part of the job. If you have got this far without mishap, you are nearly there. Now paint a miniature wax dyke round the edge of the slide to prevent water coming off the slide and getting into sensitive microscope parts. Make this thicker and higher than the seam round the coverslip. You can easily remove any stray wax on the underneath by running your thumbnail along the edge or round the lower face of the slide. The bottom of the slide must be absolutely clean so that it lies flat on the microscope stage. The working distance of a x100 objective is so minute that any unevenness may interfere with focusing. Your slide is now ready for observation.

You can, if you wish, look at your grass before it is under water and breaking down. It is not a necessary part of the experiment, but is still interesting. The structure of grass, like most of natures structures, is beautiful and fascinating and well worth looking at when magnified, regardless of the interest of the bions.

With a syringe and needle draw up some distilled or boiled water or KCl. Place the point of the needle in the gap between the coverslip edge and the edge of the well and slowly squeeze out a drop. The drop should vanish into the space between the coverslip and the bottom of the well, sucked in by capillary action. If there is still airspace under the coverslip, add more fluid drop by drop, until the grass is surrounded by water. A small, insistent bubble will not interfere with the experiment and will probably soon disappear. Try to avoid touching the slide with your syringe needle as you drop the water in. The culture is not sterile, but it is obviously good practice to avoid all possible contamination from outside.

If you did not examine the structure of the grass while it was still dry, you should now, as a part of the experiment is to describe what you are seeing and how it is affected by the process of bionous disintegration. To start with this will not be going on, and you will be observing the structure of the grass in an integrated state. You can see this best at low magnification, say x100-150. It is still interesting at x400-600, but not at high magnification, until some disintegration has taken place. High magnification gives no real impression of the grasss structure. If your grass has been ripening in water already for a couple of days, you will probably be able to see some bionous activity. At x1500 with oil immersion you will by now certainly be able to see the characteristically grainy areas where bionous disintegration is becoming established. If you are starting from scratch, you can look at your infusion every few hours and see how this process develops. It is an exciting moment when you first detect actual movement and the first time some bions separate and start pulsating, spinning, rocking or jerking. You will also see movement of bions that are still attached to the matrix. After a few days, (varying from infusion to infusion), you will also see how bions agglomerate into highly motile clumps that rock through 30-45, jerk up and down or from side to side. You may also be able to detect movement, shimmering or pulsation within these clumps. If you can find a Cancer Biopathy now, familiarise yourself with the illustrations in it. You will recognise many of the things photographed by Reich in that text. A very characteristic movement of these bionous clumps that seem ready to move off as independent organisms is a tugging movement reminiscent of a child trying to break away from someone trying to hold it back or an impatient animal trying to escape. The expression of this movement is unmistakable. If you are lucky you will see a clump detach itself and move off to start existence as an independent organism. If you are unable to observe your culture frequently, you may find that a lot has happened while you have been away. A likely occurrence after a few days is that you can see protozoa in your culture, perhaps paramecia, amoebae, or bodonid flagellates. These protozoa seem to appear fairly early in a culture, during the first few days and disappear again, possibly when too many have appeared the habitat becomes short of food for them. You may then see encysted forms lying about immobile. You will also find large numbers of active bacteria in some areas. You may be lucky enough to see the protozoa actually ingesting bacteria.

How often do you need to add water to your culture? This depends on temperature and humidity. It may need drop or two a day, much more in hot weather. If you are going to be away for a few days, you can remove the slide from the stage and put it in a moisture-proof container, such as a small polythene bag or a margarine carton with a well-fitting lid. A large Petri dish with a layer of wet lint on the base also makes a good damp chamber. I set up my first grass-infusion slide in fear and trembling, imagining it would be difficult to do and a temperamental item that would be hard to maintain. Experience soon showed that it is a simple, flexible method of observation. If the wax breaks down in places, it can be easily patched up with your paintbrush. I have maintained these grass cultures for three months and see no reason why you should not keep one going for much longer. A note of caution here about time; if you find the earlier bion experiments demand a lot of time, they are generous in comparison with the grass infusion. So much is going on that you can watch all day, if you have time and your eyes can bear looking down a microscope for so long. You will find yourself focusing on something promising, hoping to observe the magical moment when a bion clump takes off independently, and go on waiting and waiting for that to happen. Even without that you can scan the field of view by the hour, watching bions and protozoa. Once the grass has broken down a little, you will find that there are two layers to observe. To start with you will observe bionous disintegration only on the outer surface of the grass blade, though you can easily focus down into the layer below, the interior cellular structure of the grass, which consists of regular rows of ovalish dark-green cells. After 2-3 weeks the internal matter of these cells appears to have broken down and escaped into the surroundings. The cells appear to be empty. If you also observe these cells, you will have twice as much to look at. The interesting developments in these cells do not appear to have been described by Reich or the US orgonomists who have written up a very helpful and thorough repeat of this experiment.

There is no obvious point at which to end this experiment, though the first weeks are the most interesting. If you have no external way of recording what you are seeing you will have plenty to draw. It is helpful to draw whole areas of the grass surface and the pattern of bionous disintegration. If the enormous range of things to observe bewilders you, I suggest that you for a time just observe the culture open-mindedly and receptively and let it show you what it can teach you.

A book that will help you identify any protozoa arising will be useful. I do suggest that you look at a good few samples of pond-water before you do this experiment, so that you can recognise a fully-formed, free-living protozoon when you see one. They vary greatly in form, colour, size, and behaviour.

A Simple Control Experiment for the Grass-Infusion Experiment

If you know anything of science you will know of the principle of the control experiment. I suggest here a way of controlling the grass-infusion experiment for interested readers who are unfamiliar with it. When a fellow-researcher points out that the grass-infusion is not sterile and that all the life-forms observed in the culture could be explained as already being attached to the grass itself (as is conventionally thought in modern biology), you must be able to demonstrate that this is not so. Some American orgonomists have done a more complex air-germ experiment and Reich himself investigated what was to be found in the air and attached to grass. I have examined dozens of samples of water standing outdoors on all sorts of different places open to the elements and in different parts of the country and have found very little in most samples, unless there has been an animal input like the pond-water with geese living on it, or large amounts of decaying vegetation. This, though, is not conclusive, only circumstantial. To answer the objection we need to produce bions and/or protozoa from a sterile preparation, as we have done with soil sand, and iron-filings.

A simple way of doing this is to chop some grass, place it in water in a test-tube and to autoclave it, as in the other experiments. We cut a handful of grass-blades, let them dry for 24 hours, chop them finely, as if they were herbs for the kitchen, add a generous pinch to each of 5-6 test-tubes, add distilled or boiled water, cork and tape the tubes, and autoclave them for 30 minutes at 120C.

Since the continuous grass culture takes about 48 hours to show signs of bionous disintegration and movement, we leave the tubes for that long after autoclavation. We then investigate one every 2-3 days. We already know that bionous disintegration and the growth of motile forms occurs quite quickly with a grass infusion. It is also possible that chopping up the grass and autoclaving it accelerates bionous disintegration.

We open a tube carefully and draw up a drop of fluid with a sterile needle and syringe. We set up a hanging-drop slide in the usual way and examine it. At x150 brightfield we see particles of various sizes in the fluid, some dark green, some silver or translucent. At x600 we already see some movement, though not all the particles show this. At x1500 with immersion oil we find a lot of activity. There are mainly three types and size of particle; small, about 0.5m in diameter, some of which appear to be highly motile, spinning, pulsating, and moving from side to side and up and down; somewhat larger ones, about 1-3m in diameter, more or less spherical, slightly oval in shape, commonly seen in the grass-infusion experiment, though as yet somewhat smaller; a larger form, a flake, presumably a larger grass particle, similar to free-floating forms often seen in the infusion preparations, about 5m in their longest dimension, showing grainy areas exactly the same as the bionously disintegrating surfaces of the grass strips, with brighter dots, bions, visible in the grainy areas. Only one or two of these larger particles are moving. All the particles are pale green at this high magnification.

To summarise: we see forms and processes similar to those found in the early stages of the grass-infusion slide bionous disintegration, bions attached to the grass surface, free bions, and possibly forms that are evolving into protozoa. We have examined the droplet from our sterile preparation within seconds of opening the test-tube. Even with minor contamination from the atmosphere, the variety of forms cannot possibly have developed in only few minutes.

Two days later we open a second control tube. The findings are similar. There are particles of various sizes ranging from the barely visible at x1500 to ones measuring 5-6m. Many particles show no movement at all, regardless of size. If Brownian motion is the correct explanation for the movement that we see, all particles of a similar size will be moving. This is not the case. We also see larger particles showing the typical signs of bionous disintegration on their surface. Some of these are quite immobile, a few are beginning to rock gently. We see tiny bean-shaped particles about 0.5m in length spinning furiously and large immobile flakes. Again our findings parallel almost exactly those of the grass infusion experiment. With large expanses of clear fluid, as with the bion experiments, it is easier to see the movement, shape, and quality of the separate particles than it is when they are seen against the background of the grass blades. We do not see any forms that could be bacteria stemming from contamination, in particular the rods that we see in the grass infusion at a later stage. If these stem from bionous disintegration and the reorganisation into organisms that Reich claimed occurs, we should see these bacterial forms later as well as protozoa.

We open a third control tube 8 days after autoclavation. There is a large piece of grass in our sample of water. This accident gives us a good chance to compare the contents of the control tubes with the infusion culture on the open slide, where we see almost everything against the background of the grass blades.

At x150 brightfield the typical, still coherent structure of the grass is visible. Even at this magnification we can see tiny visibly motile particles in the clearer fluid at the edge of the grass and also some immobile particles of a similar size. At x600 with a blue filter we see particles ranging in size from 1 to 10 m. Several look like a windsock, similar to a Stentor organism, but much smaller, have an upper green, more or less circular surface with a shape descending behind bounded by a transparent membrane. Some of the particles are apparently attached in pairs and show a radiating bridge, as described and illustrated by Reich in The Cancer Biopathy. We see all these forms both in the clear fluid and above and possibly attached to the grass. Although there is not a great deal of bionous disintegration on the surface of the grass (perhaps this stage is already complete), the second, deeper layer of the grass structure is beginning to break down. Some of the roundish cells which initially contain a dark-green substance (?chloroplasts) are now empty and transparent. Some of the yellow spheres seen in the grass-infusion experiment in these cells are beginning to move gently.

Examination at x1500 confirms these findings. Smaller particles, about 0.5m in diameter are also visible, some of them spinning very actively. Bionous disintegration is visible, especially near the end of the grass barbs and on the thin thread-like grass particles. A paramecium-like form is visible but not moving. We also see very symmetrical, immobile circular forms seen in the grass-infusion slide. These may be encysted protozoa. In the grass-infusion slide at a certain stage, when there are too many protozoa to survive on the limited resources available, we see many fewer mobile organisms and many more encysted forms.

Two days later we open our fourth control tube. There is plenty to see, even at x150. We can just detect movement in some of particles ranging from the barely visible to 0.1 to 100m in size. Some of the larger particles, even at this magnification, appear bionous. There are a small number of much larger bodies exactly like amoebae, with the typical spreading pseudopodia and darker bodies visible within the cytoplasm, thought these forms do not appear to be moving.

Observation at x600 shows more detail many motile particles, ranging in size from barely visible to 25m. The larger amoeboid forms are visible with phase-contrast and one may just be moving. We see tiny, highly motile bions and immobile, free-floating dots similar in size, 2-3m in diameter. At x1500 we see many highly motile forms of similar size. These look very protozoon-like, similar to the forms shown in the AIOS articles. A few are much smaller, perhaps 1m and a single larger one is visible, as big as 10m. We see free-floating, motile bions about 1m in diameter that rock, spin, move from side to side, up and down and rise and fall in the fluid. A particle sinks and rises in and out of focus several times. We find a protozoon-like organism moving in all the above ways and also from place to place over a small distance. It is a slipper-like organism, grayish with a grainy internal texture and an anterior flagellum or cilium. We also see a much larger flake, about 10m across, showing bionously disintegrating patches and beginning to move, rocking up and down and from side to side.

Four days later we prepare a sample from the fifth, final tube. We are now 14 days from the start of the experiment. At x150 with brightfield lumination we see large pieces pf grass showing bionous disintegration, 0.1 0.3m across. We see protozoon-like and amoeboid forms. One of the latter, 10-20m across is moving gently from side to side and up and down. We see many dots and bean-shapes, most of them only just distinguishable, some moving, some immobile.

At x600 with a blue or green filter (which helps us to see translucent items with low contrast) we see the same in more detail. We also see new items previously invisible, two different highly motile protozoal forms; these are either slipper-shaped or spherical and show all types of movement, spinning, side to side, up and down, rocking and turning on their own axis.

At x1500 using phase-contrast we see clearly what are presumably protozoa, mobile and showing all the above forms of movement. Most are about 1-2m long. Many have a visible flagellum at one end. We also see many small bions, spherical and bean-like. Many of these are spinning vigorously, though we also see immobile particles and identical forms of a similar size. As we notice movement, we must check that there are other similarly sized items that are not moving. Otherwise the movement can be written off as Brownian motion. We can also see motile spheres about 2-4m in diameter and the familiar windsock forms about 1-4m in diameter across the upper surface. The amoeboid forms seen moving gently at x600 magnification and the oval translucent forms cannot be traced. Perhaps they are too deep in the drop to be seen. (The working distance of a high magnification objective is minute. Objects must be close to the surface for us to be able to focus on them.) Just as we are about to stop our observations, after several hours, we notice a paramecium-like shape 3-4m long with an anterior flagellum that shows all types of locomotion and definite migration from one place to another. It also changes its position, now lying horizontally across the field of view, now hanging vertically in the water, visible as a dot.

We could continue this experiment for longer with more tubes. However five tubes observed for up to 14 days after autoclavation confirm similar processes at work and the organisation of similar organisms in both a grass- infusion open to the air and one sealed and sterilised. The rod-shaped bacteria seen in large numbers in the grass-infusion experiment do not appear in this control experiment. Repeated trials may explain this discrepancy. The obvious explanation is that the rods are contamination from the atmosphere. However, a similar experiment done with beech leaves does show the rods after about 3 weeks. We have repeated the grass-infusion several items and found that it produces the same forms each time without much variation and that it produces motile, apparently living forms, even after repeated autoclavation. (See below for comments on the work of Oparin and Tyndall.) If you join in this work and repeat these experiments carefully, you may help clarify these apparent contradictions.

Another method is to prepare a test-tube using a Suba Seal stopper. The contents of the tube remain sterile while you withdraw fluid. You push a needle through the stopper. As you withdraw it the stopper automatically reseals itself. First sterilise the surface of the stopper with a Steret or Mediswab. This procedure allows you to use one tube throughout the experiment. Your sterile precautions will be more complete. To tighten up your sterile procedures further, you can flame your slide before use. If you have no Bunsen burner or gas-cooker to hand, a meths-burning camping stove will do just as well. You should do everything to disprove that bionous disintegration and the spontaneous organisation of living forms occur. A conventional biologist with unexpected findings does this.

Scientific Refutation of Some Classical Objections to Abiogenesis

It is well known that spores of micro-organisms are more resistant to autoclavation or dry sterilisation than living organisms. An ingenious refutation of the work of the English pioneer H C Bastian (1837-1915) by the Soviet biologist A I Oparin (1894-1980) states that Bastians autoclaving killed off any living organisms in his infusions and that spores surviving this process then emerged into the fluid. I have tested this objection by repeatedly autoclaving infusions. Findings refute Oparins objection. Another refutation of this objection is to heat a mineral item, sand, soil, iron-filings, or clay, to red heat before autoclavation. Reich himself did this. Such non-living materials, when heated to red heat before being added to water or 0.1N KCl and autoclaved, still produce bions. Answering these objections takes this work an important step further and is an important part of your orgonomic education. Oparins objection is an example of how a critic will try to refute a finding gained by laborious, thorough work by ideologising about it. Oparin does not back up this objection with any reference. Presumably he is referring to the work of John Tyndall (1820-1893), who claimed to have disproved categorically the possibility of spontaneous generation and to have confirmed Pasteurs air-germ theory. I have found that grass infusions repeatedly autoclaved continue to produce motile, apparently living forms. All these refutations depend on sterilising solutions and protracted, fruitless argument over the temperature at which micro-organisms or spores are killed by heat. Only Reich thought of experimenting with solid materials that can be heated to red heat, far beyond the temperature at which any germs or spores could survive.

Another influence on bion growth is pH values. Palm and Dring point out that bion growth does not occur above a certain pH level. This confirmed an observation at C O R E that preparations made from foraminifera sand or limestone produced few motile forms. We did not then relate this to pH levels. Following up their observation we tested various preparations and measured the pH levels. Material producing no bions prepared in water giving a pH of 12.0 produces bions and other motile forms when prepared with an acid, eg, domestic vinegar, giving a pH of 3-4. (Both samples were first heated to red heat.) This difference proves quite consistent with several materials producing high pH levels in water; talc, foraminifera sand, sand made from ground crab shells, and ground marble. These materials contain large amounts of calcium carbonate from skeletal remains. These observations open a new field of enquiry in bion research.

A Postscript on Darkfield Facility

If you are borrowing a microscope, ask the owner to show you how to set up darkfield illumination, if it is available. This shows up movement well and details invisible even using phase contrast at x1500. Tiny motile items, invisible under brightfield or phase contrast, show up as flashing specks of light.

Darkfield illumination is wonderfully beautiful and raises microscopy to a plane of unimaginable delight. Prepare to be overwhelmed by the dance of life before your eyes when you use darkfield lighting. The principle is simple. The light is directed obliquely across the specimen. Translucent specimens reflects light upwards into the tube, giving a negative image; the background is dark and the specimen shows up as a silvery silhouette of dots and lines. Highly motile bions show up as flashing specks. Drs Lassek and Gerlanger report being able to see even the T-bacilli that appear in the second Reich blood test under darkfield illumination. The use of darkfield greatly widens the scope of our investigations.

Further Study of Orgonomy in the Laboratory

I have found the texts listed below useful in my own orgonomic work and these experiments. You could add many more. These are just a beginning.

Farley J (1977); The Spontaneous Generation Controversy from Dscartes to Oparin, John Hopkins Press, Baltimore and London.

Fitter R and Manuel R (1994); Lakes, Rivers, Streams and Ponds of Britain and North West Europe, A Collins Photo-Guide, Harper-Collins, London.

Oldfield R (1994); Light Microscopy An Illustrated Guide, Mosby-Yearbook Europe, London.

Patterson D (1996); Free-Living Freshwater protozoa A Colour Guide, Manson Publishing, London.

Thain M and Hickman M (1994); Penguin Dictionary of Biology, Penguin, London.

Remember that this work is outside conventional science. These texts give only technical information on microscopy and biology. They contain no answers to orgonomic questions. You may find these in the orgonomic literature, especially Reichs own works. In any scientific endeavour go back to the original reports!

Savona Books, 400, Seawall Lane, Haven Sands, North Cotes, Lincolnshire, DN36 5XE, phone 01472 388994, e-mail; savonabooks@savonabooks.free-online.co.ukWebsite; http://www.savonabooks.free-online.co.uk

publishes a quarterly catalogue of secondhand books on microscopy and related subjects. Some of these will be helpful to the beginner.

A binocular microscope suitable for this work costs about 1000, the price of a cheaper instrument. The sum would be possible for a group saving from wages from weekend jobs. Secondhand instruments are often bargains, though this is only a reliable option if an informed helper can check an instrument for you. At C O R E we have researched the market and list below models apparently suitable for this work. We have not tested them and give this information in good faith. We would like to hear from readers who have used any of these microscopes.

Suppliers (direct sales to the public) of models SP40, SP60, SP100, SP200

Brunel Microscopes Ltd, Unit 2, Vincients Road, Bumpers Farm Industrial Estate, Chippenham, Wilts, SN14 6QA hhtp://www.brunelmicroscopes.co.uk

Suppliers (wholesalers and importers) of Microlab-2000 Series models

Optical Vision Limited, Unit 2b, Woolpit Business Park, Woolpit, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, IP30 9RT, www.opticalvision.co.uk

John Millham, 82, Brasenose Road, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 7BN, phone 01253 817157, supplies secondhand microscopes, publishes a list of microscopes for sale, and this states accessories attached and the condition of the instrument.

Philip Harris Educational, Novara House, Excelsior road, Ashby Park, Ashby de la Zouche, Leicestershire, LE65 1NG, www.dialnet.com are a good source of microscope sundries; they publish a catalogue and give technical advice.

The Annals of the Institute for Orgonomic Science, whose series of articles The Amateur Scientist in Orgonomy has been so helpful in the writing of this booklet and my own orgonomic work, is at; The Institute for Orgonomic Science, 205, Knapp road, Lansdale, PA 19446, USA. www.orgonomicscience.org

PS. (January 2007) We have recently bought and tested two models from Brunel Microscopes suitable for young orgonomists. The Westbury SP40 binocular seems to be the absolutely minimum that you can do the bion experiments with. Using only brightfield illumination, you can definitely see motile bions, bionous movement and bionous disintegration with this model. The cost, without extras, is 340, with a 10% discount to educational customers. We are delighted to have discovered this instrument. The model that we have tested does the job. If you get a few pounds pocket-money a week that is still quite a sum, but once you start earning, (you can earn on the side, doing jobs for friends and relations, even if you cannot legally work), you should be able to collect it, especially if you can persuade kind relations to add an extra 10 here and there. People are always impressed by commitment. If you can show you have already earned and saved 100, people will be much more willing to contribute to your microscope fund.

The second instrument that we have tested is the Brunel SP100 laboratory microscope, which costs 478. The phase-contrast kit for this model costs 295. You could start with the basic model and buy the phase-contrast set later. We give this information in the hope that it will be useful to potential students of orgonomy. Very young readers who decide to buy one of these models may need some basic physical help from an adult to set up the instrument. If you live within reach of C O R E we will be happy to help you set up your microscope.

Reich W (1979); The Bion Experiments on the Origin of Life, FS&G, New York.

2 Reich W (1973); The Cancer Biopathy, Vision Press, London.

3 Sharaf M (1993); Fury on Earth, chapter 17, The Bions 1936-1939, Andr Deutsch, London.

4 Reich W (1979); op cit, chapter 5, Culturability Experiments Using Earth, Coal and Soot.

Brown R (no date, actual date of first publication 1828); A Brief Account of Microscopical Observations, reprinted by the Ray Society, London.

Reich W (1979); op cit, chapter 1, the Tension-Charge Formula.

Reich W; ibid, pages 25-26.

Reich W ; ibid, chapter 2, Bions as the Preliminary Stages of Life.

Reich W (1973); op cit, pages 25-27.

Thain M and Hickman M (1994); Penguin Dictionary of Biology, page 446, Origin of Life, Penguin Books, London.

Dawkins R (1992); Fossil fool, review of The Facts of Life, by Richard Milton, in The New Statesman, London.

Reich W (1973); op cit, chapter II, 2, The Question of Brownian Movement.

Reich W (1973a); Ether, God and Devil, chapter I, The Workshop of Orgonomic Functionalism, page 5, FS&G, New York.

Reich W (1973); op cit, chapter II, Orgone Energy Vesicles and the Natural Organisation of Protozoa.

Reich W (1983); The Function of the Orgasm, chapter VII, 4, What is Biopsychic Energy?

ibid, page 154.

ibid, chapter VII, 5, The Orgasm Formula: Tension Charge Discharge Relaxation.

Reich W (1979); op cit, chapter 2, Bions as the Preliminary Stages of Life.

Burlinghame P (1984); The Amateur Scientist in Orgonomy, Basic Bion Experiments, in Annals of the Institute for Orgonomic Science, Vol 1, No 1, September 1984, Gwynedd Valley, Pennsylvania.

Baker C and Dew R (1984); ibid, Bion Migration.

Palm and Dring D (1997); Neue Untersuchungen zu den Seesandbionen von Wilhelm Reich, in Nach Reich (eds DeMeo J and Senf B), Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt.

Burlinghame P; op cit.

Reich W (1979); op cit, page 40

Reich W; ibid, pages 74-82.

Burlinghame P; op cit.

Reich W (1979); op cit page 40.

ibid, page 25.

Dew R (1987); The Amateur Scientist in Orgonomy, A Grass Infusion Project, in Annals of the Institute for Orgonomic Science, Vol 4, No 1, September, 1987, Gwynedd Valley, Pennsylvania.

Reich W (1979); op cit, pages 26-31.

Patterson D J (1996); Freeliving Freshwater Protozoa a Colour Guide, Manson Publishing London.

Dew R; op cit.

Dew R (1987a); An Air-Germ Experiment, in Annals of the Institute for Orgonomic Science, Vol 4, No1, GwyneddValley, Pennsylvania.

Reich W (1973); op cit, chapter III, 1, The Absurdities of the Air-Germ Theory.

Dew R (1987); op cit.

Bastian H C (1872); The Beginnings of Life, MacMillan, London.

Oparin A I (1936); The Origin of Life on the Earth, pages 34-35, Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh.

Reich W (1979); op cit, The Incandescent Coal Experiment.

Tyndall J (1878); Spontaneous Generation, in The Nineteenth Century, January, 1878, pages 22-47, London, and Spontaneous Generation: a Last Word, ibid, March 1878, pages 497-508.

Palm M and Dring D; op cit.

Lassek H and Gierlanger M (1997); Blutdiagnostik und Bionforschung nach Wilhelm Reich, in Nach Reich, page 538, op cit.

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