RifeOwnVoice

In 1920, the speaker conceived the idea that cancer could be caused by a microorganism. Despite initial skepticism, they isolated a virus and developed a microscope for analysis. However, they did not find an organism that could be identified as the cause of cancer. They continued their research and built more powerful microscopes. In 1931, they successfully isolated a filterable form of bacteria from cultures brought by Dr. Kendall. The smallest filterable form, known as BX, was isolated from cancer but it is not claimed to be the causative agent. As far back as 1920, I conceived the idea and the possibility of when the causative agent of malignancy, so-called cancer, would be discovered and found and proven that it would be caused by a microorganism. Of course, reception that I received that far back from the medical profession and scientists was nil, but I kept at the work, and I succeeded in eventually isolating a virus. First, I began sectioning tissues of every known type of malignancy. I sectioned over 20,000 of those, cut them down with a special microtome to very thin, some of them were only a micron in thickness. I studied those under the microscope, and I eventually built my first high-powered microscope for the purpose of analyzing and checking those sections. The only result that I obtained over all those years was I succeeded in developing a very excellent technique of tissue preparation, but I never found an organism that I could say was the causative agent of malignancy. I went through with this, and then I developed other instruments of greater amplitude of magnification than the old original number one, which was very lacking in resolution beyond about 8,000 or 9,000 times. It was a lens microscope, and all of the air was extruded from the body and replaced with glycerin. The lenses were homogeneous with glycerin all the way through the whole thing, and the result was that in allowing the rays to separate and not cross in the interference band of reflection, such as they do in the ordinary standard tube of the regular research microscope, we held them apart, we separated them, and then brought them back together and picked them up again at a needle point. But, as I say, the resolution of this instrument beyond about anywhere from 9,000 to 10,000 times dropped off decidedly rapidly. We could go up on some occasions, on some preparations, up to 17,000 times, but we didn't consider the resolution anything out of the ordinary beyond about 8,000 or 9,000 or 10,000 times, depending entirely upon the specimen we were examining. Which results that those tissues gained us absolutely nothing, and as I say, I built other microscopes beyond this one. But that instrument we used up until 1931. With that instrument, Arthur Kendall and I, working jointly in the Pasadena General Hospital, succeeded in isolating what we classify the first filterable form of bacteria ever seen. It was isolated from the bacillus typhosus from cultures that Dr. Kendall brought from his laboratory at Northwestern University in Chicago, and we succeeded definitely in isolating a filterable form of that bacteria. Now these filterable forms are very minute in size. The smallest of all is the one from the BX, which we isolated from cancer. We have never made a positive claim that that is a causative agent of cancer. But that is the smallest, and it's less than a one-twentieth of a micron in dimension and highly motile. We succeeded in isolating this organism, this BX.