Dr. Reich’s Background
I began my medical training from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario,” said Reich, and was licensed as an M.D., C.M. in 1943; immediately following which I served as Captain and Medical Officer in medical units and hospitals in Canada, England and Germany from 1943 to 1950. I did post graduate studies in Internal Medicine in London, Vancouver, B.C., and UCLA Medical Center San Francisco. And in 1950 I was licensed as an M.D. in California and a specialist in Internal Medicine in Canada. I started my medical practice first in British Columbia where I spent 15 years before moving to Calgary in 1983. From the beginning I practiced as a General Practitioner and Specialist in Internal Medicine, with emphasis on nutritional aspects of health, which was later redefined as Preventive-Alternative Medicine.
Reich’s plain-and-simple approach proved to be beneficial, eventually resulting in twenty-some thousand “healed and happy” patients across his lifetime; without a single complaint among them. At the same time, Reich’s successes, compared with the seeming apparent failures of half a dozen or so of his peers’ traditional therapies triggered their antagonism.
His Research
Between the years of 1950 to 1983, Reich continued I conducted clinical research in practice; resulting in my redefining symptoms of allergy and auto immunity as “ionic calcium deficiency reactions.” These reactions, I concluded, were caused by defects of lifestyle, maladaption, “biochemical inheritance,” and other important concepts. These concepts and related nutritional therapies were applied to approximately 20,000 patients, the beneficial results of which far exceeded those obtainable by orthodox patient management. Significantly, this evaluation process was accomplished without a single patient complaint to a College of Physicians and Surgeons! As early as 1954, after only four years of clinical research in office practice, I made a rather astounding discovery that seemed to point to a single causative factor for such apparently unrelated disease conditions as:
- chronic asthma,
- Crohn’s disease, or ileitis,
- hypertension,
- arthritis, and other “diseases of civilization.”
The causative factors in the above conditions were determined to be the deficiency of dietary calcium and sun-generated vitamins A and D. These two vitamins, Dr. Reich believes, are essential to provide dietary calcium with biological activity through the process of ionization, by which calcium becomes C++, or ionic; rendering it capable of entering into an immediate chemical reaction whenever required by the body. After checking and rechecking my data, I proposed that the above deficiency conditions could well be the basis for most symptoms and disease that afflict civilized societies.
Finding a Solution
By 1958 my continued research had further led me to believe that chronic asthma and related disease was not the direct result of the hitherto suspected deficiency state, but rather representative of the self-controlling function of the lung attempting to compensate for calcium deficiency. In this, respiratory disease and intestinal diseases characterized by chronic diarrhea, I suggested that the adaptive device was either . . .
- a lowering of body fluids pH by the retention of carbon dioxide, or the
- excessive production and rapid evacuation of alkaline intestinal contents.
Continuing his intense clinical in-practice research, by 1985 Reich had finalized his study of chronic ionic calcium deficiency syndrome arising from insufficient sun-generated A & D. Summarizing his findings in arthritic patients, he concluded that the two major forms of the disease represented calcium demineralization of the skeleton, and similar adaptive functions for nerve and muscle tissue, all having high priorities for this mineral.
The Problem
Not everyone was happy or accepting of Reich’s findings. Four conventional physicians ruled that Reich’s nutritional approach represented quackery and reported such to the College of Physicians and Surgeons. As a result his practice was examined and considered by them to be “reprehensible and dangerous” to the public. Coincident with this ruling, Reich and seven other physicians were reprimanded for the “overuse of pain-relieving drugs” and relieved of practice for six months. Although court recordings have apparently not survived, the charges were apparently upheld by the court and Reich was forbidden to practice. Appeals were costly and time consuming. By 1985 his finances were depleted as were his sources of income, making it impossible to continue writing his findings for publication. So regardless of their unproven charges, his detractors achieved their objective.
Dr. Bob’s Personal Note: At my present age of 91, my professional conclusions agree with Dr. Reich, and for me, my continuing good health confirms it. It is also worth noting that Reich’s detractors were not patients, but colleagues.
