Royal Rife - Life and Work

Life and Work

Little reliable published information exists describing Rife's life. In 1929, he was granted a patent for a high-intensity microscope lamp. On November 20, 1931, forty-four doctors attended a dinner advertised as "The End To All Diseases" at the Pasadena estate of Milbank Johnson, honoring Arthur I. Kendall of Northwestern Medical School and Rife, the developer of the 'Rife microscope'. Moving microorganisms from prepared, diseased human tissue were reportedly seen, still-photographed and also filmed with motion-picture equipment.

In a 1932 report in Science, Mayo Clinic physician Edward C. Rosenow wrote that in addition to other small particles viewable with the standard lab microscope, small turquoise bodies termed 'eberthella typhi' not visible with the standard lab microscopes were seen in filtrate using a Rife microscope. Rosenow attributed their detection to "the ingenious methods employed rather than excessively high magnification". Subsequently, one of Rife's microscopes was mentioned in the 1944 Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution.

Rife claimed to have documented a "Mortal Oscillatory Rate" for various pathogenic organisms, and to be able to destroy the organisms by vibrating them at this particular rate. According to the San Diego Evening Tribune in 1938, Rife stopped short of claiming that he could cure cancer, but did argue that he could "devitalize disease organisms" in living tissue, "with certain exceptions".

Rife's work and claims were ultimately discredited by the medical community, a result which Rife blamed on powerful conspiracies against him. An obituary in the Daily Californian described his death at the age of 83 on August 5, 1971, stating that he died penniless and embittered by the failure of his devices to garner scientific acceptance.