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The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life
The most misunderstood force driving health and disease
The story of the invention and use of electricity has often been told before, but never from an environmental point of view. The assumption of safety, and the conviction that electricity has nothing to do with life, are by now so entrenched in the human psyche that new research, and testimony by those who are being injured, are not enough to change the course that society has set. Two increasingly isolated worlds--that inhabited by the majority, who embrace new electrical technology without question, and that inhabited by a growing minority, who are fighting for survival in an electrically polluted environment--no longer even speak the same language. In The Invisible Rainbow, Arthur Firstenberg bridges the two worlds. In a story that is rigorously scientific yet easy to read, he provides a surprising answer to the question, "How can electricity be suddenly harmful today when it was safe for centuries?"
The story of the invention and use of electricity has often been told before, but never from an environmental point of view. The assumption of safety, and the conviction that electricity has nothing to do with life, are by now so entrenched in the human psyche that new research, and testimony by those who are being injured, are not enough to change the course that society has set. Two increasingly isolated worlds--that inhabited by the majority, who embrace new electrical technology without question, and that inhabited by a growing minority, who are fighting for survival in an electrically polluted environment--no longer even speak the same language. In The Invisible Rainbow, Arthur Firstenberg bridges the two worlds. In a story that is rigorously scientific yet easy to read, he provides a surprising answer to the question, "How can electricity be suddenly harmful today when it was safe for centuries?"
564 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2017
549 people are currently reading
4097 people want to read
About the author
Arthur Firstenberg
10 books49 followersArthur Robert Firstenberg was an American author and activist on the subject of electromagnetic radiation and health. He was the founder of the independent campaign group the Cellular Phone Task Force. He is the author of Microwaving Our Planet: The Environmental Impact of the Wireless Revolution (Cellular Phone Task Force 1997) and The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life (Chelsea Green 2020).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 143 reviews
May 29, 2020
In TV’s “Better Call Saul” one of the main plot devices is Chuck McGill’s electrical sensitivity. It is so severe that he turns off power to his house and sits in the dark with a reflective blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His illness is so debilitating he is unable to leave the house. When he does there are serious repercussions to his health; to his ability to function. One wonders, watching this show, if electrical sensitivity can be so severe. According to author, researcher and medical doctor Arthur Firstenberg, the problem is even worse. This he documents in excruciating detail in The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life—the most interesting book I’ve ever read.
We have lived with electricity for our entire lives. We take it for granted. It is all around us. We don’t think about it or question it. Occasionally there is controversy. For example, people who live under main power transmission lines claiming the lines cause cancer. We do notice that when we drive under them in a car with the radio on static blares indicating some kind of electrical interference. But it goes away the farther we get from the power lines and we keep driving. We love our microwaves and cell phones and although some people allege they cause health issues, we ignore them.
Electricity is ubiquitous and necessary for life as we know it. It seems there might be a price to pay in addition to our monthly power and cell phone bill.
Could it be that electricity and all of its manifestations (telegraph, radio, radar, TV, telephone, cell phone, appliances, etc) can be the proximate cause for the world’s health problems since the middle of the nineteenth century when the Leyden jar was invented? This is the case that Firstenberg slowly builds with voluminous references and studies. Could the mass introduction of new electrical devices cause pandemics?
There will be massive pushback on this book as the implications are mind boggling and very timely as the world is going to be littered with 5G antennas and the globe circled with thousands and thousands of satellites owned by companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook as we are pushed toward an “internet of things.”
Firstenberg slowly and carefully connects the dots. Our earth and atmosphere are an electrical system. Our bodies are also bio-electric and at our best when our brains are tuned into the frequencies of the earth known as the Schumann Wave. Electricity and its historical offspring (telegraph, radio, radar, HARP, cell) interfere with the frequencies and cause imbalance resulting in all manner of health issues.
What can be done? Sadly, not much except to stop “progress.” But if progress is killing us by making a huge percentage of population ill, is it worth it?
The 5G controversy is illustrative of the problem. For most of us non scientists these concepts are hard to grasp. Here’s something that jumped out to me: claims are made that cell signals have killed or discouraged many forms of insect life and birds. Scientists can demonstrate that birds, for example, left locations where 3G and 4G antennas have been installed. People my age can recall that driving at night almost any time resulted in a multitude of bug splatters on the car windshield. When was the last time your windshield was covered with insect guts? I can’t recall and hadn’t even thought about it until I read a reference to in this book.
No safety studies have been done. Humans are the test tubes. Is it that far out to opine that 5G and the Wuhan virus pandemic are connected? If you study a map that shows 5G concentrations you can see there is a correlation with the areas hardest hit with deaths by Covid. But suggestions that 5G is involved with be met with charges of “conspiracy theory.” Making money, after all, is the most important thing we do. Money trumps health concerns.
Dr. Firstenberg deserves high praise for what he describes as his life’s work. As an electrical sensitive himself he was motivated and had the talent set to get to the bottom of the problem. The research based on the bibliography is voluminous and impressive. It’s hard for a short review to do justice so I only encourage anyone reading this to take a look.
Do you have some mysterious undiagnosed chronic ailment? Maybe you are a Chuck McGill.
We have lived with electricity for our entire lives. We take it for granted. It is all around us. We don’t think about it or question it. Occasionally there is controversy. For example, people who live under main power transmission lines claiming the lines cause cancer. We do notice that when we drive under them in a car with the radio on static blares indicating some kind of electrical interference. But it goes away the farther we get from the power lines and we keep driving. We love our microwaves and cell phones and although some people allege they cause health issues, we ignore them.
Electricity is ubiquitous and necessary for life as we know it. It seems there might be a price to pay in addition to our monthly power and cell phone bill.
Could it be that electricity and all of its manifestations (telegraph, radio, radar, TV, telephone, cell phone, appliances, etc) can be the proximate cause for the world’s health problems since the middle of the nineteenth century when the Leyden jar was invented? This is the case that Firstenberg slowly builds with voluminous references and studies. Could the mass introduction of new electrical devices cause pandemics?
There will be massive pushback on this book as the implications are mind boggling and very timely as the world is going to be littered with 5G antennas and the globe circled with thousands and thousands of satellites owned by companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook as we are pushed toward an “internet of things.”
Firstenberg slowly and carefully connects the dots. Our earth and atmosphere are an electrical system. Our bodies are also bio-electric and at our best when our brains are tuned into the frequencies of the earth known as the Schumann Wave. Electricity and its historical offspring (telegraph, radio, radar, HARP, cell) interfere with the frequencies and cause imbalance resulting in all manner of health issues.
What can be done? Sadly, not much except to stop “progress.” But if progress is killing us by making a huge percentage of population ill, is it worth it?
The 5G controversy is illustrative of the problem. For most of us non scientists these concepts are hard to grasp. Here’s something that jumped out to me: claims are made that cell signals have killed or discouraged many forms of insect life and birds. Scientists can demonstrate that birds, for example, left locations where 3G and 4G antennas have been installed. People my age can recall that driving at night almost any time resulted in a multitude of bug splatters on the car windshield. When was the last time your windshield was covered with insect guts? I can’t recall and hadn’t even thought about it until I read a reference to in this book.
No safety studies have been done. Humans are the test tubes. Is it that far out to opine that 5G and the Wuhan virus pandemic are connected? If you study a map that shows 5G concentrations you can see there is a correlation with the areas hardest hit with deaths by Covid. But suggestions that 5G is involved with be met with charges of “conspiracy theory.” Making money, after all, is the most important thing we do. Money trumps health concerns.
Dr. Firstenberg deserves high praise for what he describes as his life’s work. As an electrical sensitive himself he was motivated and had the talent set to get to the bottom of the problem. The research based on the bibliography is voluminous and impressive. It’s hard for a short review to do justice so I only encourage anyone reading this to take a look.
Do you have some mysterious undiagnosed chronic ailment? Maybe you are a Chuck McGill.
June 8, 2020
Amazing book thoroughly researched and clearly written with voluminous footnotes and references.
This book will blow your socks off. What if heart disease, diabetes, anxiety disorders, and obesity were all caused by electricity and the resulting EMFs?
What if all viral pandemics of the last 150 years (including COVID19) were all caused by increased electromagnetic energies bathing us right now?
If these questions interest you, then read this book to get the full explanation and history of electricity's effects on human health over the last two and a half centuries.
This book will blow your socks off. What if heart disease, diabetes, anxiety disorders, and obesity were all caused by electricity and the resulting EMFs?
What if all viral pandemics of the last 150 years (including COVID19) were all caused by increased electromagnetic energies bathing us right now?
If these questions interest you, then read this book to get the full explanation and history of electricity's effects on human health over the last two and a half centuries.
May 12, 2020
Stunning. Terrifying. I can't be the only one contemplating how to incorporate a Faraday cage into daily life after reading this.
Review to come when I can sleep at night again.
Review to come when I can sleep at night again.
June 3, 2021
This is a Crazy Conspiracy Theory
I picked this ebook up from the library. I had no idea who the author was or what kind of book it was. This author has written a crazy book about other stupid coincidences and attaches it back to the discovery of electricity and wireless technology. You’d have to be totally uneducated and not much if a reader to believe this BS. Really shocking and really really stupid.
I picked this ebook up from the library. I had no idea who the author was or what kind of book it was. This author has written a crazy book about other stupid coincidences and attaches it back to the discovery of electricity and wireless technology. You’d have to be totally uneducated and not much if a reader to believe this BS. Really shocking and really really stupid.
Read
April 6, 2020Amr has the C0vid grasses hotline on speed dial the scumbag.
Get a grip and educate yourself. You're not a man or a woman if you submit your rights to the state because of a lie. You're an ignorant uninformed blank human.
Get a grip and educate yourself. You're not a man or a woman if you submit your rights to the state because of a lie. You're an ignorant uninformed blank human.
September 20, 2021
I just finished the 500+ page, The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life by Arthur Firstenberg.
Of everything related to health and medicine I’ve read (and it’s a lot), I must say that I am MOST impressed by this book, which devotes 171 pages just to scientific references, footnotes and bibliography. This book might be one of the most startling, eye-opening, and meticulously put together nonfiction books I’ve ever read, mostly because it turns the mainstream media’s paradigm completely on its head. I can’t see how anyone can read this book and come away the same after.
Of everything related to health and medicine I’ve read (and it’s a lot), I must say that I am MOST impressed by this book, which devotes 171 pages just to scientific references, footnotes and bibliography. This book might be one of the most startling, eye-opening, and meticulously put together nonfiction books I’ve ever read, mostly because it turns the mainstream media’s paradigm completely on its head. I can’t see how anyone can read this book and come away the same after.
April 15, 2020
This is an amazing book
The citations alone will blow your mind. So much important information. Should be required reading of every government official. I noticed the declines of certain insects and animals. It's not necessarily climate change. But we all need to wake up and change this picture, or one day there will be no life left on this earth
The citations alone will blow your mind. So much important information. Should be required reading of every government official. I noticed the declines of certain insects and animals. It's not necessarily climate change. But we all need to wake up and change this picture, or one day there will be no life left on this earth
August 5, 2020
The genocide that nobody questions because we’re tied so tightly to it at this point....
April 17, 2020
First of all, I’ve got to admit that I was a little sceptical about electromagnetic frequency and its effects on human health. Evenmore, I was not aware of the effect of radiowaves that were remitted from Marconi’s towers on Isle of Wight that may have caused hemorraging disease that led to Victoria’s death. The disease of electrical hypersensitivity on humans was examined with in-depth research and effects on psychoanalysis (especially that of anxiety that refuted Freud’s findings), reports of symptoms like headaches, neausea, chest pain, insomnia, rashes, exema, skin dermititis, heart palpitations, fatigue, infertility and dizziness. The author claims that In fact, anxiety disorder afflicting 1/6 of humanity, did not exist before the 1860’s when telegraph wires first encircled the world. No hint of it appears in the medical literature before 1866. Influenza, in its current form, was invented in 1889, along with alternating current. Prior to the 1860’s, diabetes was so rare that few doctors saw more than a couple cases in their lifetime. Cancer was also exceedingly rare. Even tobacco smoking did not cause lung cancer.
Our nerves are not eloborate messenger service to deliver chemicals to muscles. They could be intoxified by chemicals. As network of fine transmission wires, it can easily be damaged or unbalanced by unfamiliar electric load. This has effects on both mind and body that we know today as anxiety disorder.
In 2001, it was confirmed by scientists that flu pandemics have been most likely to occur during peaks of solar magnetic activity, that is at the height of each 11 year sun cycle. Edgar Hope-Simpson’s book states Essential known facts do not support a mode of transmission by direct human-to-human contact. Richard Shope and later Hope-Simpson proposed that flu is not in fact spread from person to person, or pig to pig, in the normal way, but that it instead remains latent in human or swine carriers, who are scattered in large numbers through-out their communities until the virus is reactivated by an environmental trigger of some sort. Hope-Simpson further proposed that the trigger is connected to seasonal variations in solar radiation and that may be electromagnetic in nature as good many of his predecessors during the previous 2 centuries suggested.
Acidification of soils in forests that led to dying trees in places where no environmental pollution has been observed is also striking. Pumping Pesticide on bees was no solution for certain diseases that were thought to create colony collapse disorder. Lest, it was EMF that caused the disappearance of bees, illness and death of house sparrows and many more species. Acupuncture methods were put under scope along with other methods of electrotherapy that was applied for relief of symptoms dated back to as early as 1793. Making deaf hear certain pulses was actually possible with experiments. Seeing and tasting electricity is also possible.
Our nerves are not eloborate messenger service to deliver chemicals to muscles. They could be intoxified by chemicals. As network of fine transmission wires, it can easily be damaged or unbalanced by unfamiliar electric load. This has effects on both mind and body that we know today as anxiety disorder.
In 2001, it was confirmed by scientists that flu pandemics have been most likely to occur during peaks of solar magnetic activity, that is at the height of each 11 year sun cycle. Edgar Hope-Simpson’s book states Essential known facts do not support a mode of transmission by direct human-to-human contact. Richard Shope and later Hope-Simpson proposed that flu is not in fact spread from person to person, or pig to pig, in the normal way, but that it instead remains latent in human or swine carriers, who are scattered in large numbers through-out their communities until the virus is reactivated by an environmental trigger of some sort. Hope-Simpson further proposed that the trigger is connected to seasonal variations in solar radiation and that may be electromagnetic in nature as good many of his predecessors during the previous 2 centuries suggested.
Acidification of soils in forests that led to dying trees in places where no environmental pollution has been observed is also striking. Pumping Pesticide on bees was no solution for certain diseases that were thought to create colony collapse disorder. Lest, it was EMF that caused the disappearance of bees, illness and death of house sparrows and many more species. Acupuncture methods were put under scope along with other methods of electrotherapy that was applied for relief of symptoms dated back to as early as 1793. Making deaf hear certain pulses was actually possible with experiments. Seeing and tasting electricity is also possible.
February 22, 2021
Mindblowing, heartbreaking, and terrifying. Everyone should read this.
My only criticism of this book is Firstenberg's neglect of the health benefits of electricity, such as SIS electrotherapy, an antibacterial / antiviral treatment which uses a low-intensity direct current (LIDC). I keep coming across other beneficial uses of electricity. My brother says his life was changed by the TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) treatment he received several years ago, and although I once suspected it had a placebo effect, I believe him more all the time.
Otherwise, this book is damn effective. I'd estimate that Firstenberg summarizes somewhere between 150 and 200 scientific studies in just 400 pages of text. It's simple stuff, not technical at all, really. Radio waves and microwaves are destroying the planet. They're destroying the lives of electrically-sensitive people. There's no clear solution to this problem, but we can at least recognize its seriousness.
My only criticism of this book is Firstenberg's neglect of the health benefits of electricity, such as SIS electrotherapy, an antibacterial / antiviral treatment which uses a low-intensity direct current (LIDC). I keep coming across other beneficial uses of electricity. My brother says his life was changed by the TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) treatment he received several years ago, and although I once suspected it had a placebo effect, I believe him more all the time.
Otherwise, this book is damn effective. I'd estimate that Firstenberg summarizes somewhere between 150 and 200 scientific studies in just 400 pages of text. It's simple stuff, not technical at all, really. Radio waves and microwaves are destroying the planet. They're destroying the lives of electrically-sensitive people. There's no clear solution to this problem, but we can at least recognize its seriousness.
April 12, 2020
Undoubtedly the most important book of our times.
September 20, 2020
There were a few factors that made this book, at times, a struggle for me to read. First, it can get pretty technical, and for someone like myself without a background in science or medicine, it posed the occasional challenge to stay on track and understand the detail of what was being conveyed. Another issue is what I would call “information loading,” where a seemingly exhaustive series of examples were used instead of, say, three good, illustrative ones. In the historical sections it was often clear the author was building up to an important point, but sometimes it felt like the expositional and narrative buildup was too heavy. I think I understand the author’s choices in these areas, though; it seems he wanted to be sure his interpretations and conclusions were very firmly and broadly grounded. My last quibble was organization, since it sometimes felt like a paragraph was completely out of place and what's more, there were whole rafts of details that came near the very end that I thought might have been better introduced near the beginning. Putting these issues aside, this was a real mind-opener of a book. The strengths here are that the author goes back to original sources in his research rather than rehashing or repackaging the reshaped ‘consensus’ of some amorphous ‘community.’ As someone who once worked in an industry where ‘consensus’ was used to make the sausage that needed to be made (and sold), I know how malleable both data and professional opinions can be. The devil is, indeed, in the details. Firstenberg provides strong evidence to back up his claims and interpretations by going straight to the source(es). I’ve been aware of the purported dangers of electromagnetic radiation for quite awhile, but I’ve never seen these claims made so clear and convincing. That’s accomplished through the use of both historical research and contemporary evidence. While I don’t necessarily accept all of the author’s conclusions (yet) there is an awful lot in this book to chew on, and a hell of a lot to be learned (the material on humans’ early relationships and experimentation with electricity is fascinating, for example). What Firstenberg does here, in my opinion, transcends scientific and medical research and laps over into the realms of both historical and social domains. Highly recommended.
August 8, 2021
This book was dense. The notes alone took up about 1/3 pages of a 600 page book. However, that speaks to the thoroughness of the research done in order to make such an eye-opening, yet sort of depressing book. Our society thrives off profit, to the detriment of the health of its inhabitants. The denial by the scientific industry is incredible. Although, this book doesn’t touch on the spiritual aspects of all of this, I can’t help but see the nefarious agenda behind the technocracy we are forced to live in. If you too question the current state of affairs: 5G, viruses, and censorship then please read this book. However, my only warning after reading is to not be hopeless and to turn to The Most High for salvation.
June 4, 2020
The fundamental fluid of existence is electromagnetic. Everything is the product of and subject to electromagnetism, without exception. Arthur Firstenberg has done a good job of presenting a gathering of facts that will likely compel any reader that the missing information about the effects of #electrosmog is even more important to understand than at any time in recorded human history.
The powers that shouldn't be are the controllers of the narrative. It's obvious that discussions related to EMF influences are being stymied by those powers and the laws in place to protect their agenda.
Read this book and be alarmed. It's perfectly ok to know when your life and the life of this planet are under direct and immediate threat from a toxic unnatural source, in this case man himself.
If this kind of insight stimulates more interest please allow me to introduce you to: Royal Rife, Georges Lakhovsky, Elmer Nemes, Nikola Tesla, Steven A. Ross
“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” ― Nikola Tesla
There are three people in the early and mid twentieth century whose experimental results can and most certainly should revolutionize medicine again.
Dr. Royal Raymond Rife developed the Universal Microscope and used it to visually observe the results as he applied a resonant frequency to "devitalize" 60 diseases, including cancer.
Here's an excellent resource to learn more about Dr. Rife - http://www.lesscomplicated.net/health...
This link will take you to an excellent resource on Dr. Rife and his achievements - www.rife.org
Dr. Elmer Nemes created the world's most powerful optical microscope in the 1950's and was able to photograph the structure of atoms. The implication of this achievement speaks for itself. You will be delighted and amazed with the images you can see here: http://www.lesscomplicated.net/health...
The last gentleman I'm referring to is is Georges Lakhovsky. An excellent introduction to Lakhovsky's approach and a comparison to Rife's is made on Stephen A. Ross's blog here: http://www.lesscomplicated.net/health...
Knowledge is power and we need all the power we can get in these trying times. We must question everything we've been told and look for the missing information that is necessary to make informed decisions about our very existence. 😀
The powers that shouldn't be are the controllers of the narrative. It's obvious that discussions related to EMF influences are being stymied by those powers and the laws in place to protect their agenda.
Read this book and be alarmed. It's perfectly ok to know when your life and the life of this planet are under direct and immediate threat from a toxic unnatural source, in this case man himself.
If this kind of insight stimulates more interest please allow me to introduce you to: Royal Rife, Georges Lakhovsky, Elmer Nemes, Nikola Tesla, Steven A. Ross
“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” ― Nikola Tesla
There are three people in the early and mid twentieth century whose experimental results can and most certainly should revolutionize medicine again.
Dr. Royal Raymond Rife developed the Universal Microscope and used it to visually observe the results as he applied a resonant frequency to "devitalize" 60 diseases, including cancer.
Here's an excellent resource to learn more about Dr. Rife - http://www.lesscomplicated.net/health...
This link will take you to an excellent resource on Dr. Rife and his achievements - www.rife.org
Dr. Elmer Nemes created the world's most powerful optical microscope in the 1950's and was able to photograph the structure of atoms. The implication of this achievement speaks for itself. You will be delighted and amazed with the images you can see here: http://www.lesscomplicated.net/health...
The last gentleman I'm referring to is is Georges Lakhovsky. An excellent introduction to Lakhovsky's approach and a comparison to Rife's is made on Stephen A. Ross's blog here: http://www.lesscomplicated.net/health...
Knowledge is power and we need all the power we can get in these trying times. We must question everything we've been told and look for the missing information that is necessary to make informed decisions about our very existence. 😀
October 26, 2022
We’ve all heard of people who are electrically sensitive, often assuming they’re a rare breed before forgetting about them and going back to our daily routines. With this throughly researched work, Firstenberg demonstrates over and again that as electric beings, all life—not just so-called electrically sensitive folks—all life is responding dramatically to the ever-increasing electromagnetic pulses in our heavily polluted environment.
I was a skeptic before reading this, and I was wholly ignorant and wrong. Firstenberg documents the parallels between electrical developments and the rise of chronic diseases like you won’t (won’t want to) believe. If you or someone you love is chronically suffering, this book is very worth your time, essential for your understanding why the situation never seems to improve. We have massive cultural blinders to what is really going on. The true answers are not socially acceptable; they go against everything we accept as normal in this modern world. I will go as far to say this subject and work are more damning and devastating than most discussions on climate change; in fact, so much specie death can be traced to this silent radiation and the changing climate has been a scapegoat for a fair amount of it. Though it’s not mentioned specifically here, it seems evident that microwaving our atmosphere is also a major contributor to climate change.
Please read this. It is terrifying and illuminating, and I want to talk to you about it. I want everyone to talk about this because we need that before we can ever hope for things to change.
I was a skeptic before reading this, and I was wholly ignorant and wrong. Firstenberg documents the parallels between electrical developments and the rise of chronic diseases like you won’t (won’t want to) believe. If you or someone you love is chronically suffering, this book is very worth your time, essential for your understanding why the situation never seems to improve. We have massive cultural blinders to what is really going on. The true answers are not socially acceptable; they go against everything we accept as normal in this modern world. I will go as far to say this subject and work are more damning and devastating than most discussions on climate change; in fact, so much specie death can be traced to this silent radiation and the changing climate has been a scapegoat for a fair amount of it. Though it’s not mentioned specifically here, it seems evident that microwaving our atmosphere is also a major contributor to climate change.
Please read this. It is terrifying and illuminating, and I want to talk to you about it. I want everyone to talk about this because we need that before we can ever hope for things to change.
June 4, 2020
The fundamental fluid of existence is electromagnetic. Everything is the product of and subject to electromagnetism, without exception. Arthur Firstenberg has done a good job of presenting a gathering of facts that will likely compel any reader that the missing information about the effects of #electrosmog is even more important to understand than at any time in recorded human history.
The powers that shouldn't be are the controllers of the narrative. It's obvious that discussions related to EMF influences are being stymied by those powers and the laws in place to protect their agenda.
Read this book and be alarmed. It's perfectly OK to know when your life and the life of this planet are under direct and immediate threat from a toxic unnatural source, in this case it's all man-made.
If this kind of insight stimulates more interest please allow me to introduce you to: Royal Rife, Georges Lakhovsky, Elmer Nemes, Nikola Tesla and Steven A. Ross
“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” ― Nikola Tesla
There are three people in the early and mid twentieth century whose experimental results can and most certainly should revolutionize medicine again.
Dr. Royal Raymond Rife developed the Universal Microscope and used it to visually observe the results as he applied a resonant frequency to "devitalize" 60 diseases, including cancer.
Here's an excellent resource to learn more about Dr. Rife - http://www.lesscomplicated.net/health...
This link will take you to an excellent resource on Dr. Rife and his achievements - www.rife.org
Dr. Elmer Nemes created the world's most powerful optical microscope in the 1950's and was able to photograph the structure of atoms. The implication of this achievement speaks for itself. You will be delighted and amazed with the images you can see here: http://www.lesscomplicated.net/health...
The last gentleman I'm referring to is is Georges Lakhovsky. An excellent introduction to Lakhovsky's approach and a comparison to Rife's is made on Stephen A. Ross's blog here: http://www.lesscomplicated.net/health...
Knowledge is power and we need all the power we can get in these trying times. We must question everything we've been told and look for the missing information that is necessary to make informed decisions about our very existence. 😀
The powers that shouldn't be are the controllers of the narrative. It's obvious that discussions related to EMF influences are being stymied by those powers and the laws in place to protect their agenda.
Read this book and be alarmed. It's perfectly OK to know when your life and the life of this planet are under direct and immediate threat from a toxic unnatural source, in this case it's all man-made.
If this kind of insight stimulates more interest please allow me to introduce you to: Royal Rife, Georges Lakhovsky, Elmer Nemes, Nikola Tesla and Steven A. Ross
“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” ― Nikola Tesla
There are three people in the early and mid twentieth century whose experimental results can and most certainly should revolutionize medicine again.
Dr. Royal Raymond Rife developed the Universal Microscope and used it to visually observe the results as he applied a resonant frequency to "devitalize" 60 diseases, including cancer.
Here's an excellent resource to learn more about Dr. Rife - http://www.lesscomplicated.net/health...
This link will take you to an excellent resource on Dr. Rife and his achievements - www.rife.org
Dr. Elmer Nemes created the world's most powerful optical microscope in the 1950's and was able to photograph the structure of atoms. The implication of this achievement speaks for itself. You will be delighted and amazed with the images you can see here: http://www.lesscomplicated.net/health...
The last gentleman I'm referring to is is Georges Lakhovsky. An excellent introduction to Lakhovsky's approach and a comparison to Rife's is made on Stephen A. Ross's blog here: http://www.lesscomplicated.net/health...
Knowledge is power and we need all the power we can get in these trying times. We must question everything we've been told and look for the missing information that is necessary to make informed decisions about our very existence. 😀
April 7, 2024
it got a little repetitive at points, but it was so so interesting and surprisingly accessible for a sciency book. i'm not going to get rid of my phone or stop using airpods or anything, but i've got a lot of new thoughts about electricity and its effects on everyone and everything.
April 9, 2025
I enjoyed the first few chapters that went over the history of how electricity first became popular in modern society and the health concerns that immediately arose. The book makes it very clear that electricity affects some way more than others and I found many of the arguments and supporting evidence to be very convincing.
Humans undoubtedly have an electric component to our nervous systems, so it makes sense that we can be thrown off by various electrical/waves frequencies. I was very overwhelmed while reading this because, if true, it is such a huge problem that is so ingrained it seems impossible to fix. However, the first step to fixing a problem is to recognize the problem. If all of our greatest minds were focused on still utilizing the benefits of electricity while mitigating or eliminating the risks, I think the problem could be fixed within a decade.
Humans and animals are very adaptable to our environments so it makes sense that we are able to survive and function despite the issues described in this book. However, I doubt it is possible for humans to truly thrive if the studies and evidence in this book are true. The book talks about how usually younger, healthier people are more likely to be affected. This is probably because healthier people have stronger currents in their nervous systems and are therefore more affected variations caused by external frequencies
The diet component also came to mind while reading this book. It seems that electricity could mess with the Cell's ability to process cholesterol - which would lead to heart disease. Is this why the American Heart Association has demonized Cholesterol since the 1930s? Maybe cholesterol is not the issue but rather our body's ability to process it. It makes me worried that the historically optimal human diet is no longer optimal because of the affects of man made electrical devices.
Lastly, it makes me sad that our environment appears to be so affected. The studies on impacts to Plants, Bees, and other animals that live around cell towers and Doppler radars were very sad and made logical sense as they likely do rely on an earthly natural electrical current that is currently out of whack because of EF pollution from man made electrical devices.
Overall, very interesting book. I would give it a 4.5 as I would like to see a little more caution in making claims that electricity is the cause of all the issues described in the book (i.e. Cancer/Flu, etc.). I wasn't totally convinced because I felt a bit like I was only getting one perspective, although that perspective was very convincing.
Humans undoubtedly have an electric component to our nervous systems, so it makes sense that we can be thrown off by various electrical/waves frequencies. I was very overwhelmed while reading this because, if true, it is such a huge problem that is so ingrained it seems impossible to fix. However, the first step to fixing a problem is to recognize the problem. If all of our greatest minds were focused on still utilizing the benefits of electricity while mitigating or eliminating the risks, I think the problem could be fixed within a decade.
Humans and animals are very adaptable to our environments so it makes sense that we are able to survive and function despite the issues described in this book. However, I doubt it is possible for humans to truly thrive if the studies and evidence in this book are true. The book talks about how usually younger, healthier people are more likely to be affected. This is probably because healthier people have stronger currents in their nervous systems and are therefore more affected variations caused by external frequencies
The diet component also came to mind while reading this book. It seems that electricity could mess with the Cell's ability to process cholesterol - which would lead to heart disease. Is this why the American Heart Association has demonized Cholesterol since the 1930s? Maybe cholesterol is not the issue but rather our body's ability to process it. It makes me worried that the historically optimal human diet is no longer optimal because of the affects of man made electrical devices.
Lastly, it makes me sad that our environment appears to be so affected. The studies on impacts to Plants, Bees, and other animals that live around cell towers and Doppler radars were very sad and made logical sense as they likely do rely on an earthly natural electrical current that is currently out of whack because of EF pollution from man made electrical devices.
Overall, very interesting book. I would give it a 4.5 as I would like to see a little more caution in making claims that electricity is the cause of all the issues described in the book (i.e. Cancer/Flu, etc.). I wasn't totally convinced because I felt a bit like I was only getting one perspective, although that perspective was very convincing.
July 30, 2020
I have a PhD in Astrophysics from UCL in London and I've practised yoga and Zen meditation for many years. During that time I've become very interested in the connection between the chi/qi/prana of Indian and Chinese arts and what's called energy in physics. For that reason I've been curious about the potential effects of background EM radiation on the flow of chi and people's ability to feel chi in the body. So I was very interested to read this book.
Overall, it's well written, engaging – and not a little bit terrifying. It's obviously extremely well researched and referenced (half the book is taken up with all the references!). The physics checks out as far as I'm concerned (although I'm not an expert in radio communications or cell phone towers). I don't suffer from any obvious signs of EM-sensitivity, and none of my friends do, but if there are some genuine, albeit subtle, negative effects on human and animal health from RF radiation, then it's important the world wakes up to it. Might what he's talking about be similar to the Teflon scandal (see the recent film Dark Waters)?
But what gives me just a hint of caution is Firstenberg's over-willingness to attribute the problems he sees purely to the effects of EM radiation. When he says things like "thus the only possible conclusion is that RF radiation is the cause" it makes me worried... The rapid spread in RF emission across the world has come together with all sorts of other changes - in exercise levels, in other environmental pollutants, in work stress, to name a few. I think he's too quick to dismiss them.
To me, the book would have been more convincing if he'd evaluated other possible causes of the effects he was seeing with a little more consideration. I want to believe what he's saying, but when you're speaking out against an overwhelming opposition, your arguments have got to be impeccable.
Overall, it's well written, engaging – and not a little bit terrifying. It's obviously extremely well researched and referenced (half the book is taken up with all the references!). The physics checks out as far as I'm concerned (although I'm not an expert in radio communications or cell phone towers). I don't suffer from any obvious signs of EM-sensitivity, and none of my friends do, but if there are some genuine, albeit subtle, negative effects on human and animal health from RF radiation, then it's important the world wakes up to it. Might what he's talking about be similar to the Teflon scandal (see the recent film Dark Waters)?
But what gives me just a hint of caution is Firstenberg's over-willingness to attribute the problems he sees purely to the effects of EM radiation. When he says things like "thus the only possible conclusion is that RF radiation is the cause" it makes me worried... The rapid spread in RF emission across the world has come together with all sorts of other changes - in exercise levels, in other environmental pollutants, in work stress, to name a few. I think he's too quick to dismiss them.
To me, the book would have been more convincing if he'd evaluated other possible causes of the effects he was seeing with a little more consideration. I want to believe what he's saying, but when you're speaking out against an overwhelming opposition, your arguments have got to be impeccable.
December 27, 2022
This book has A LOT of fantastic, mind-bending information that will make you rethink everything you believe you know about our modern electrified society. That being said…this is also a pretty tough read (which made it a slow read for me), with a lot of hard science and considerable (sometimes excessive) examination of many, many, many scientific studies done over 2+ centuries.
Overall I enjoyed it, although I feel it could have been done more concisely. I also wish it had come with some kind of recommendations at the end for how to better protect yourself in this electrically-bathed world we now all exist in, because by the end of the book all you can feel is impending doom.
Overall I enjoyed it, although I feel it could have been done more concisely. I also wish it had come with some kind of recommendations at the end for how to better protect yourself in this electrically-bathed world we now all exist in, because by the end of the book all you can feel is impending doom.
August 10, 2021
An important book; historical, well written and referenced. Lots of scientific terms to describe radiation and electricity but lacking was an overall discussion of these terms. We are fortunately an evolutionary species and some will adapt and survive. Now I want to learn more about the physics and look for effects in the natural world. I have moved the location of my wi-fi router!
June 29, 2020
Great writing -- ample history and context, with a lovely, lyrical style. But the assertion that EMFs are the root of all illness is not supported by the many odd bits of evidence. Gary Taubes thinks sugar is the root of all illness. I think mercury is....
July 24, 2023
A great example oh how to use voluminous footnotes to make crackpot conspiracy theories look legitimate by stringing bits of truth together in ways that make no sense either medically, scientifically or logically. Should be labeled fiction, at best
September 21, 2021
Meh, I don't like where this is going.
October 30, 2022
The MOST important read of our time!
#ThereIsNOvirus
#ThereIsNOvirus
December 7, 2023
A great and enlightening read.
Read
August 10, 2025(-)⭐️ no rating bc i didn’t pick out this book my mom made me read it😭 honestly it was pretty boring it was basically just the history of electricity and a recording of a bunch of experiments.
October 4, 2022
A book which provides compelling evidence for how electricity causes many health problems, including anxiety, flu, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc. Most of these conditions were never heard of or extremely rare before electricity.
The author is one of the 5-10% of people who suffer more than others from electrical sensitivity (154). Dr. William E. Morton “found that most people with electrical sensitivity had porphyrin enzyme deficiencies” (138). “Those of us who, genetically, have relatively less of one or more porphyrin enzymes, may have a ‘nervous temperament’ because our myelin is doped with slightly more zinc than our neighbors’ and is more easily disturbed by the electromagnetic fields (EMFs) around us. Toxic chemicals and EMFs are therefore synergistic; expsure to toxins further disrupts the porphyrin pathway, causing the accumulation of more porphyrins and their precursors, rending the myelin and the nerves they surround still more sensitive to EMFs” (152). Porphyrinologist Henry Peters discovered that his patients who had neurological symptoms were excreting up to 36 times normal amounts of zinc in their urine. “In fact, their symptoms correlated better with the levels of zinc in their urine than with the levels of porphyrins they were excreting” (154). Reducing the zinc load with chelation (BAL or EDTA treatments) worked to eliminate symptoms for up to several years (154). People who are electrically sensitive should avoid consuming zinc. In experiments, rats who got low levels of zinc had memory deficits. Zinc supplemented humans in Bangladesh scored worse on mental development tests. Zinc worsens Alzheimer’s disease. “It is common o have high levels of zinc in the brain while having normal or low levels of zinc in the blood. . . . It appears that the kidneys respond t the body’s total load of zinc, and not to the levels in the blood, so that blood levels can become low, not because of a zinc deficiency but because the body is overloaded with zinc and the kidneys are removing it from the blood as fast as they can” (155). ”While the recommended dietary allowance for adult males is 11 milligrams per day, a man can taken in as little as 1.4 milligrams of zinc a day and still maintain homeostasis and normal levels of zinc in the blood and tissues. But a person who increases his or her daily intake beyond 20 milligrams may risk toxic effects in the long term” (156).
To the electrically sensitive, electricity sounds like the g above middle c, the a low E-flat, or an A or A-flat (279, 308, 310). The author was able to avoid hearing the noise of electricity if he chose to live without TV and computers, but in the 90s, he could no longer find silence, even in Green Bank, WV, the only place on earth that is legally protected from radio waves (304). The author now lives in Santa Fe, NM where he only hears the hum infrequently (310). Another electrically sensitive person has to live 300 yards (.17 miles) away from neighbors in order to not be affected by the neighbors’ electronics (373). She used to use cell phones and computers a lot, but when she started using a new laptop, she began to feel many negative effects: dizziness, nausea, pressure in her chest, rapid pounding of her heart, difficulty breathing, pressure in her head, short term memory loss, inability to find the right words to speak, and her face became red and hot (374). She couldn’t use her cell phone anymore; putting it to her head would cause her extreme pain.
Many people are affected by electricity without even realizing it. You can be harmed by computers just by sitting in front of one that is turned on (33). A Japanese study found that spending more than four hours a day on a computer for 10 years more than doubles one’s risk for glaucoma (380-381). Electricity can cause bodily changes (such as blood pressure lowering) despite no change in body temperature (97).
—
Effects of electricity reported in the 18th century:
Electrificiation almost always caused dizziness, confusion, headaches, nausea, weakness, fatigue, and heart palpitations. It often caused joint and muscle pains. Sometimes it caused coughing, depression, shortness of breath, or asthma-like wheezing (25). Other negative effects were nervousness, irritability, numbness, tingling, backache, chest pains, colic, diarrhea, itching, tremors, seizures, paralysis, fever, respiratory infections, ringing in the ears, and eye pain/weakness/fatigue (28).
Electricity has a taste. “When Humboldt touched the top of his own tongue with the piece of zinc, and its point with the piece of silver, the taste was strong and bitter. When he moved the piece of silver underneath, his tongue burned. Moving the zinc further back and the silver forward made his tongue feel cold. And when the zinc was moved even further back he became nauseated and sometimes vomited—which never happened if the two metals were the same. The sensations always occurred as soon as the zinc and silver pieces were placed in metallic contact with each other (22).
Electricity also used to be used to help people with their medical problems. In 1793, it had an 84% success rate at curing or relieving symptoms (18). It restored hearing in the deaf (19-20). It could bring pain relief, restore muscle tone, stimulate appetite (28). It could be used as a sedative (28). Dr. Robert O. Becker “designed machines that delivered minuscule electric currents—as small as 100 trillionths of an ampere—to fractured bones to stimulate the healing process, with great success: his devices were the forerunners of machines that are used today by orthopedic surgeons in hospitals throughout the world” (148).
“Since electricity could initiate contractions of the uterus, it became a tacitly understood method of obtaining abortions” (12).
Electricity can make people and other animals lose consciousness and become unresponsive to pain. Passing an electric current from front to back through the center of the head causes the animal to lose consciousness. When the current is turned off, the animal wakes up (149-150). “The first publications describing this procedure specified short pulses of 10-15 microamperes each, 5 to 25 times per second, which gave an average current of only about 30 billionths of an ampere. Although larger currents will cause immediate unconsciousness in a human, just like in a salamander, those tiny currents are all that is necessary to put a person to sleep. This technique, called ‘electrosleep,’ has been used for over half a century to treat mental disorders, including manic-depressive illness and schizophrenia” in the eastern part of the world (150). “The abolition of pain in a person’s arm, for example, wether caused by a chemical anesthetic, hypnosis or acupuncture, is accompanied by a reversal of electrical polarity in that arm” (150).
Embryologist Sylvan Meryl Rose found that salamander’s severed limbs were “strongly positive during the first few days after injury, then reversed polarity to become strongly negative for the next couple of weeks, finally reestablishing the weakly negative voltage found on all healthy salamander legs. Rose then found that salamanders would regenerate their legs normally, even without a nerve supply, provided he carefully duplicated, with an artificial source of current, the electrical patterns of healing that he had observed” (151). I wonder if humans could regenerate limbs in the same way.
Electricity “augmented all the secretions of the body”: salivation, tears, sweat, ear wax, nasal mucus, gastric juice (stimulating appetite), milk, menstrual and other bleeding, serum from blisters, urination, pooping (24-25). But “repeated electrification could result in constipation” (25).
It could also cause both insomnia and drowsiness (25). It could cause weight loss (27) and obesity. It could make plants grow faster (27) and also damage plants.
Electricity can increase the human pulse rate (24). “The electric bath increased the pulse rate by anywhere from 5-30 beats per minute, when positive electricity was used. Negative electricity had the opposite effect. In 1785, Dutch pharmacist Willem van Barneveld conducted 169 trials on 43 of his patients—men, women, and children aged 9 to 60–finding an average 5% increase in the pulse rate when the person was bathed with positive electricity, and a 3% decrease in the pulse rate when the person was bathed with negative electricity. When positive sparks were drawn the pulse increased by 20%. But these were only averages: no two individuals reacted the same to electricity. One person’s pulse always increased from 60 to 90 beats per minute; another ‘s always doubled; another’s pulse became much slower; another reacted not at all. Some of van Barneveld’s subjects reacted in a manner opposite to the majority: a negative charge always accelerated their pulse, while a positive charge slowed it down” (24).
The fourth century Chinese understood electricity long before 18th century europeans did. Qi is electricity (123), and yin and yang are negative and positive. “The pure Yang forms the heaven, and the turbid Yin forms the earth. The Qi of the earth ascends and turns into clouds, while the Qi f the heaven descends and turns into rain” (42). “Every acupuncture point has a double function: as an amplifier for the internal electrical signals, boosting their strength as they travel along the meridians; and as an antenna that receives electromagnetic signals from the environment. The dantians, or energy centers of Chinese medicine, located in the head, heart, and abdomen—equivalent to the chakras of Indian tradition—are electromagnetic oscillators that resonate at particular frequencies, and that communicate with the meridians and regulate their flow” (123-124). “When the surface of the skin was stained with the dye, only points along the meridians absorbed it” (126).
“Because for every atom of coal or oil that we burn, for every molecule of carbon dioxide that we produce from them, we destroy forever one molecule of oxygen. The burning of fossil fuels, of ancient plants that once breathed life into the future, is really the undoing of creation. Electrically, too, life is essential. Living trees rise hundreds of feet into the air from the negatively charged ground. And because most raindrops, except in thunderstorms, carry positive charge down to earth, trees attract rain out of the clouds, and the felling of trees contributes electrically towards a loss of rainfall where forests used to stand” (117).
Having a fever makes you a nonconductor of electricity (34). When a person had chills, they were a super-conductor (34). Although people “with a more robust temperament, more hot-blooded, more fiery” were more susceptible to electricity (35). It’s hereditary (38). Electricity has more of an effect on adults (age 15/20-40/50) than children or old people (35, 38, 61). Women were a little more susceptible than men (38).
—
Plants too are affected by electricity (68). it makes them sprout earlier, grew faster and longer, pen their flowers sooner, send out more leaves, and sometimes grow to be sturdier (69).
Electricity makes some plants grow more: sprouts (taller but with weaker, thinner stems), wheat, rye, barley, oats, beets, parsnips, potatoes, celeriac, beans, leeks, raspberries, strawberries (69-70). Vernon Blackman found that barley grew the most with a 50 picoampere current for 1 hour a day. “Increasing the time of application diminished the effect. Increasing the current to a tenth of a microampere was always harmful” (73). It stunted the growth of other plants: peas, carrots, turnips, tobacco, cabbage, kohlrabi, and rutabaga (70).
Jagadis Chunder Bose experimented on himself and “applied an electromotive force of 2 volts to a skin wound, and to his surprise the cathode, both at make, and as long as the current flowed, made the wound much more painful. The anode, both at make and while the current flowed, soothed the wound. But exactly the opposite occurred when he applied a much lower voltage. At a third of a volt, the cathode soothed and anode irritated (71). In plants, “the anode stimulated the nerve and the cathode made it less responsive” (72). “If the applied current was in the same direction as nervous impulses, the speed of the impulses became slower and, in the animal, the muscular response to stimulation became weaker. If the applied current was in the opposite direction, nervous impulses traveled faster and muscles responded more vigorously (72). “An incredibly tiny current was all that was needed: in plants, 1 microampere, and in animals a third of a microampere, was enough to slow or speed up nerve impulses by about 20%. This is about the amount of current that would flow through your hand if you touched both ends of a one-volt battery, or that would flow through your body if you slept under an electric blanket.” (73)
—
Telephone operators in 1915 had headaches, dizziness, tinnitus, eye floaters, racing pulse, heart pains, palpitations, weakness, inability to concentrate, insomnia, depression, anxiety, tremors, memory loss, quick tempers, abdominal pains, vertigo, chest pressure, weight loss, suicidal thoughts (60). I remember that I got floaters shortly after I got my new Windows 7 laptop. School computers would make my eyes water. My Windows 3.1 laptop wouldn’t do this though because it had an LCD screen, and I turned the brightness all the way down (I still do this on my new laptop). In 1982, 17% of adults complained of tinnitus; in 1996, it rose to 22%; between 1999 and 2004, it rose to 25% (319). 12% of people were able to hear unusually low levels of electricity (39). 30% of people are weather sensitive, and since weather is determined by electricity, they are also electrically sensitive (39). 80% of weather sensitive people could predict weather changes 12-48 hours in advance (40).
“Births, deaths, suicides, rapes, work injuries, traffic accidents, human reaction times, amputees’ pains, and complaints of people with brain injuries all rose significantly on days with strong VLF sferics” (lightning) (121).
Johannes Mygge noticed that his migraines almost always happened “on the day of, or one day before, a sudden severe rise or drop in the value of the atmospheric voltage” (83).
The reason why electricity causes illness: “With very steady sine waves, nerve and muscle are not stimulated. The passage of the current nevertheless is responsible for profound modification of metabolism as shown by the consumption of a greater amount of oxygen and the production of considerably more carbon dioxide. If the shape of the wave is changed, each electrical wave will produce a muscular contraction” - Jacques-Arsene d’Arsonval (96).
“Although enough oxygen and nutrients reach the cells, the mitochondria—the powerhouses of the cells—cannot efficiently use that oxygen and those nutrients, and not enough energy gis produced to satisfy the requirements of heart, brain, muscles, and organs. This effectively starves the entire body, including the heart, of oxygen, and can eventually damage the heart. In addition, neither sugars nor fats are efficiently utilized by the cells, causing unutilized sugar to build up in the blood—leading to diabetes—as well as unutilized fats to be deposited in the arteries (187-188).
Summary continues in the comments below.
The author is one of the 5-10% of people who suffer more than others from electrical sensitivity (154). Dr. William E. Morton “found that most people with electrical sensitivity had porphyrin enzyme deficiencies” (138). “Those of us who, genetically, have relatively less of one or more porphyrin enzymes, may have a ‘nervous temperament’ because our myelin is doped with slightly more zinc than our neighbors’ and is more easily disturbed by the electromagnetic fields (EMFs) around us. Toxic chemicals and EMFs are therefore synergistic; expsure to toxins further disrupts the porphyrin pathway, causing the accumulation of more porphyrins and their precursors, rending the myelin and the nerves they surround still more sensitive to EMFs” (152). Porphyrinologist Henry Peters discovered that his patients who had neurological symptoms were excreting up to 36 times normal amounts of zinc in their urine. “In fact, their symptoms correlated better with the levels of zinc in their urine than with the levels of porphyrins they were excreting” (154). Reducing the zinc load with chelation (BAL or EDTA treatments) worked to eliminate symptoms for up to several years (154). People who are electrically sensitive should avoid consuming zinc. In experiments, rats who got low levels of zinc had memory deficits. Zinc supplemented humans in Bangladesh scored worse on mental development tests. Zinc worsens Alzheimer’s disease. “It is common o have high levels of zinc in the brain while having normal or low levels of zinc in the blood. . . . It appears that the kidneys respond t the body’s total load of zinc, and not to the levels in the blood, so that blood levels can become low, not because of a zinc deficiency but because the body is overloaded with zinc and the kidneys are removing it from the blood as fast as they can” (155). ”While the recommended dietary allowance for adult males is 11 milligrams per day, a man can taken in as little as 1.4 milligrams of zinc a day and still maintain homeostasis and normal levels of zinc in the blood and tissues. But a person who increases his or her daily intake beyond 20 milligrams may risk toxic effects in the long term” (156).
To the electrically sensitive, electricity sounds like the g above middle c, the a low E-flat, or an A or A-flat (279, 308, 310). The author was able to avoid hearing the noise of electricity if he chose to live without TV and computers, but in the 90s, he could no longer find silence, even in Green Bank, WV, the only place on earth that is legally protected from radio waves (304). The author now lives in Santa Fe, NM where he only hears the hum infrequently (310). Another electrically sensitive person has to live 300 yards (.17 miles) away from neighbors in order to not be affected by the neighbors’ electronics (373). She used to use cell phones and computers a lot, but when she started using a new laptop, she began to feel many negative effects: dizziness, nausea, pressure in her chest, rapid pounding of her heart, difficulty breathing, pressure in her head, short term memory loss, inability to find the right words to speak, and her face became red and hot (374). She couldn’t use her cell phone anymore; putting it to her head would cause her extreme pain.
Many people are affected by electricity without even realizing it. You can be harmed by computers just by sitting in front of one that is turned on (33). A Japanese study found that spending more than four hours a day on a computer for 10 years more than doubles one’s risk for glaucoma (380-381). Electricity can cause bodily changes (such as blood pressure lowering) despite no change in body temperature (97).
—
Effects of electricity reported in the 18th century:
Electrificiation almost always caused dizziness, confusion, headaches, nausea, weakness, fatigue, and heart palpitations. It often caused joint and muscle pains. Sometimes it caused coughing, depression, shortness of breath, or asthma-like wheezing (25). Other negative effects were nervousness, irritability, numbness, tingling, backache, chest pains, colic, diarrhea, itching, tremors, seizures, paralysis, fever, respiratory infections, ringing in the ears, and eye pain/weakness/fatigue (28).
Electricity has a taste. “When Humboldt touched the top of his own tongue with the piece of zinc, and its point with the piece of silver, the taste was strong and bitter. When he moved the piece of silver underneath, his tongue burned. Moving the zinc further back and the silver forward made his tongue feel cold. And when the zinc was moved even further back he became nauseated and sometimes vomited—which never happened if the two metals were the same. The sensations always occurred as soon as the zinc and silver pieces were placed in metallic contact with each other (22).
Electricity also used to be used to help people with their medical problems. In 1793, it had an 84% success rate at curing or relieving symptoms (18). It restored hearing in the deaf (19-20). It could bring pain relief, restore muscle tone, stimulate appetite (28). It could be used as a sedative (28). Dr. Robert O. Becker “designed machines that delivered minuscule electric currents—as small as 100 trillionths of an ampere—to fractured bones to stimulate the healing process, with great success: his devices were the forerunners of machines that are used today by orthopedic surgeons in hospitals throughout the world” (148).
“Since electricity could initiate contractions of the uterus, it became a tacitly understood method of obtaining abortions” (12).
Electricity can make people and other animals lose consciousness and become unresponsive to pain. Passing an electric current from front to back through the center of the head causes the animal to lose consciousness. When the current is turned off, the animal wakes up (149-150). “The first publications describing this procedure specified short pulses of 10-15 microamperes each, 5 to 25 times per second, which gave an average current of only about 30 billionths of an ampere. Although larger currents will cause immediate unconsciousness in a human, just like in a salamander, those tiny currents are all that is necessary to put a person to sleep. This technique, called ‘electrosleep,’ has been used for over half a century to treat mental disorders, including manic-depressive illness and schizophrenia” in the eastern part of the world (150). “The abolition of pain in a person’s arm, for example, wether caused by a chemical anesthetic, hypnosis or acupuncture, is accompanied by a reversal of electrical polarity in that arm” (150).
Embryologist Sylvan Meryl Rose found that salamander’s severed limbs were “strongly positive during the first few days after injury, then reversed polarity to become strongly negative for the next couple of weeks, finally reestablishing the weakly negative voltage found on all healthy salamander legs. Rose then found that salamanders would regenerate their legs normally, even without a nerve supply, provided he carefully duplicated, with an artificial source of current, the electrical patterns of healing that he had observed” (151). I wonder if humans could regenerate limbs in the same way.
Electricity “augmented all the secretions of the body”: salivation, tears, sweat, ear wax, nasal mucus, gastric juice (stimulating appetite), milk, menstrual and other bleeding, serum from blisters, urination, pooping (24-25). But “repeated electrification could result in constipation” (25).
It could also cause both insomnia and drowsiness (25). It could cause weight loss (27) and obesity. It could make plants grow faster (27) and also damage plants.
Electricity can increase the human pulse rate (24). “The electric bath increased the pulse rate by anywhere from 5-30 beats per minute, when positive electricity was used. Negative electricity had the opposite effect. In 1785, Dutch pharmacist Willem van Barneveld conducted 169 trials on 43 of his patients—men, women, and children aged 9 to 60–finding an average 5% increase in the pulse rate when the person was bathed with positive electricity, and a 3% decrease in the pulse rate when the person was bathed with negative electricity. When positive sparks were drawn the pulse increased by 20%. But these were only averages: no two individuals reacted the same to electricity. One person’s pulse always increased from 60 to 90 beats per minute; another ‘s always doubled; another’s pulse became much slower; another reacted not at all. Some of van Barneveld’s subjects reacted in a manner opposite to the majority: a negative charge always accelerated their pulse, while a positive charge slowed it down” (24).
The fourth century Chinese understood electricity long before 18th century europeans did. Qi is electricity (123), and yin and yang are negative and positive. “The pure Yang forms the heaven, and the turbid Yin forms the earth. The Qi of the earth ascends and turns into clouds, while the Qi f the heaven descends and turns into rain” (42). “Every acupuncture point has a double function: as an amplifier for the internal electrical signals, boosting their strength as they travel along the meridians; and as an antenna that receives electromagnetic signals from the environment. The dantians, or energy centers of Chinese medicine, located in the head, heart, and abdomen—equivalent to the chakras of Indian tradition—are electromagnetic oscillators that resonate at particular frequencies, and that communicate with the meridians and regulate their flow” (123-124). “When the surface of the skin was stained with the dye, only points along the meridians absorbed it” (126).
“Because for every atom of coal or oil that we burn, for every molecule of carbon dioxide that we produce from them, we destroy forever one molecule of oxygen. The burning of fossil fuels, of ancient plants that once breathed life into the future, is really the undoing of creation. Electrically, too, life is essential. Living trees rise hundreds of feet into the air from the negatively charged ground. And because most raindrops, except in thunderstorms, carry positive charge down to earth, trees attract rain out of the clouds, and the felling of trees contributes electrically towards a loss of rainfall where forests used to stand” (117).
Having a fever makes you a nonconductor of electricity (34). When a person had chills, they were a super-conductor (34). Although people “with a more robust temperament, more hot-blooded, more fiery” were more susceptible to electricity (35). It’s hereditary (38). Electricity has more of an effect on adults (age 15/20-40/50) than children or old people (35, 38, 61). Women were a little more susceptible than men (38).
—
Plants too are affected by electricity (68). it makes them sprout earlier, grew faster and longer, pen their flowers sooner, send out more leaves, and sometimes grow to be sturdier (69).
Electricity makes some plants grow more: sprouts (taller but with weaker, thinner stems), wheat, rye, barley, oats, beets, parsnips, potatoes, celeriac, beans, leeks, raspberries, strawberries (69-70). Vernon Blackman found that barley grew the most with a 50 picoampere current for 1 hour a day. “Increasing the time of application diminished the effect. Increasing the current to a tenth of a microampere was always harmful” (73). It stunted the growth of other plants: peas, carrots, turnips, tobacco, cabbage, kohlrabi, and rutabaga (70).
Jagadis Chunder Bose experimented on himself and “applied an electromotive force of 2 volts to a skin wound, and to his surprise the cathode, both at make, and as long as the current flowed, made the wound much more painful. The anode, both at make and while the current flowed, soothed the wound. But exactly the opposite occurred when he applied a much lower voltage. At a third of a volt, the cathode soothed and anode irritated (71). In plants, “the anode stimulated the nerve and the cathode made it less responsive” (72). “If the applied current was in the same direction as nervous impulses, the speed of the impulses became slower and, in the animal, the muscular response to stimulation became weaker. If the applied current was in the opposite direction, nervous impulses traveled faster and muscles responded more vigorously (72). “An incredibly tiny current was all that was needed: in plants, 1 microampere, and in animals a third of a microampere, was enough to slow or speed up nerve impulses by about 20%. This is about the amount of current that would flow through your hand if you touched both ends of a one-volt battery, or that would flow through your body if you slept under an electric blanket.” (73)
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Telephone operators in 1915 had headaches, dizziness, tinnitus, eye floaters, racing pulse, heart pains, palpitations, weakness, inability to concentrate, insomnia, depression, anxiety, tremors, memory loss, quick tempers, abdominal pains, vertigo, chest pressure, weight loss, suicidal thoughts (60). I remember that I got floaters shortly after I got my new Windows 7 laptop. School computers would make my eyes water. My Windows 3.1 laptop wouldn’t do this though because it had an LCD screen, and I turned the brightness all the way down (I still do this on my new laptop). In 1982, 17% of adults complained of tinnitus; in 1996, it rose to 22%; between 1999 and 2004, it rose to 25% (319). 12% of people were able to hear unusually low levels of electricity (39). 30% of people are weather sensitive, and since weather is determined by electricity, they are also electrically sensitive (39). 80% of weather sensitive people could predict weather changes 12-48 hours in advance (40).
“Births, deaths, suicides, rapes, work injuries, traffic accidents, human reaction times, amputees’ pains, and complaints of people with brain injuries all rose significantly on days with strong VLF sferics” (lightning) (121).
Johannes Mygge noticed that his migraines almost always happened “on the day of, or one day before, a sudden severe rise or drop in the value of the atmospheric voltage” (83).
The reason why electricity causes illness: “With very steady sine waves, nerve and muscle are not stimulated. The passage of the current nevertheless is responsible for profound modification of metabolism as shown by the consumption of a greater amount of oxygen and the production of considerably more carbon dioxide. If the shape of the wave is changed, each electrical wave will produce a muscular contraction” - Jacques-Arsene d’Arsonval (96).
“Although enough oxygen and nutrients reach the cells, the mitochondria—the powerhouses of the cells—cannot efficiently use that oxygen and those nutrients, and not enough energy gis produced to satisfy the requirements of heart, brain, muscles, and organs. This effectively starves the entire body, including the heart, of oxygen, and can eventually damage the heart. In addition, neither sugars nor fats are efficiently utilized by the cells, causing unutilized sugar to build up in the blood—leading to diabetes—as well as unutilized fats to be deposited in the arteries (187-188).
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October 5, 2024This is not a review; it's an explanation to my friends on what I thought.
This is a book that lays out the problems electricity and cell signals, etc, have caused, but provides no solutions. It is like writing a book 500 years ago about the evils of slavery without providing suggestions on how to extricate society from something so integral to it. The outlook is grim, but I don't see any way to fix it or even for one individual to protect himself.
I don't know how to rate this book. If it's all true, it's important to know. If not, it's terrible. Some of his logic and sources struck me as suspect, but I couldn't put my finger on why. Maybe it's because I recently read "Quackery," and Firstenberg spends a good part of the book quoting ancient quacks as though they knew what they were talking about. Or maybe it's because he kept saying things like "modern science doesn't know this," which seem like simplistic overstatements meant to convince the gullible.
On the other hand, it's easy to chalk it up to conspiracy theory madness, but that doesn't seem honest either. I'd like to hear a reasoned critique by someone who knows.
This is a book that lays out the problems electricity and cell signals, etc, have caused, but provides no solutions. It is like writing a book 500 years ago about the evils of slavery without providing suggestions on how to extricate society from something so integral to it. The outlook is grim, but I don't see any way to fix it or even for one individual to protect himself.
I don't know how to rate this book. If it's all true, it's important to know. If not, it's terrible. Some of his logic and sources struck me as suspect, but I couldn't put my finger on why. Maybe it's because I recently read "Quackery," and Firstenberg spends a good part of the book quoting ancient quacks as though they knew what they were talking about. Or maybe it's because he kept saying things like "modern science doesn't know this," which seem like simplistic overstatements meant to convince the gullible.
On the other hand, it's easy to chalk it up to conspiracy theory madness, but that doesn't seem honest either. I'd like to hear a reasoned critique by someone who knows.
October 15, 2022
Very interesting links electricity to health.
All at charge is messing people up.
All at charge is messing people up.
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