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Chapter #3

Is it necessary to use a
Rife ray tube to output the frequencies?

Rife Ray Tube

It shouldn’t really matter if an instrument uses a ray tube or metal hand-cylinders and footplates (commonly called pad instruments) as long as it will devitalize the microorganism we desire. In the next photo, shown below, we see one of the first pad instruments built by John Crane and John Marsh back in 1957. You can see the aluminum disks which were used to come in contact with the skin of the body and deliver the frequencies.

In the strictest sense of the word just because a ray tube is used doesn’t mean its “Rife.” There are EM (Electro-magnetic) ray tube instruments that do not work anything like Dr. Rife's machines worked, but they incorrectly claim they do. By the time you read this whole report, you will find out that very few are doing exactly what Dr. Rife did. But does this mean that these instruments don’t work? Those who are just building pad instruments are not using ray tubes. Also, almost all are not using Dr. Rife’s original frequencies. Dr. Rife’s full frequency range on his laboratory notes went from 15,779 Hertz to about 18,000,000 million Hertz. His Rife Ray #4 machine frequencies ranged from 139,200 to 1,607,450 Hertz.

Almost all of those who are building ray tube instruments are also not using Dr. Rife’s original frequencies or methods. When we consider the problems we face today with building instruments, the least expensive instrument that can be built is a metal hand-cylinder type pad instrument. This type of instrument can produce all of Dr. Rife’s frequencies output by his Rife Machine. Therefore we should look at this method carefully and not reject it out of personal bias. 

First Pad Instrument

The method used determines the power level that is needed. With this in mind let’s look at the reasons why metal hand-cylinder type pad instruments were built in the first place. John Crane and John Marsh had really good reasons why they built pad type instruments. After nearly 50 years of research and use, there is enough evidence that a pad type instrument may work just as well as a ray tube instrument, but only if there is sufficient power used. In some cases, because of the electrical stimulation like a T.E.N.S. instrument, they may work even better than a ray tube on some problems. We will now take a look at some of the reasons that prompted John Crane and John Marsh to use metal pads: 

RIFE: “But the principle of this thing is basically built on a coordinative vibration. Just like one tuning fork pitched to the C. Another one here—you strike this one and this one vibrates.”

DR. LARA: “What kind of vibration is it? Electromagnetic vibration?”

RIFE: “We won’t say magnetic, we will say electronic frequency vibration. The same as put out on a broadcasting station for the radio. The same thing you know, only it’s transmitted into a tube. And the tube acts as a partial directional antenna you see.” (John Marsh Rife CDs - CD 6 track 2)

In the John Marsh papers describing his trip to Ohio we read a statement made by Dr. Rife:

RIFE: “You know we had an idea when we had our Clinic in La Jolla, of course that was battery and motor generator operated that set, you know, and boy it would sure raise the devil with all the radios so we had a couple of cars that was equipped with car radios and we sent them out and we would take the switch of that thing, and had a code you know like an S.O.S., and one of them went up north, and one of them went south from La Jolla. Before we started in we wanted to see how far we were going to disturb things with it you know, and incidentally we had it in a steel room, a steel lined vault about this size at the old Ellen Scripp’s home. It was the vault in the library of the Scripp’s home where they kept their valuable manuscripts and books in all steel lined and a door on it like a safe. We had the thing inside of that too, but it didn’t make much difference, but we started in, and one car lost the pick up on top of Torry Pines, and the other one half ways through Mission Beach picked it up, and then they could go a hundred feet and lose and then they would have to pick it up again. Old Henry [Henry Siner] the boy that was with us out there, one of the lab boys, boy he went up in the air. He says, “By God” he says “look, we’re going to fix them up right. At two o’clock we’ll hook this up to a big radio station, a big transmitting station, and at two o’clock next week we’ll broadcast for tuberculosis, and at half past three the week after we will broadcast for cancer, and everybody at the radio will pick it up”. See, boy I said Henry that really is an idea.” (1957 John Marsh Trip to Ohio Paper #24)

In 1960 one of Dr. Rife's close friends, Ben Cullen, stated in a talk given at a Rife Virus Microscope conference the following:

CULLEN: The fact is, had it not been for certain very, very unpleasant circumstances, Dr. Rife would've had an arrangement with KFI or KFSD [Radio stations] where he would have been broadcasting out over quite a large radius from each broadcasting station the rays which are responsible for eradicating these various viruses, which we now know as being "killing" viruses. Just imagine as you walked around shopping downtown, or out in the street, you would receive the rays of this wonderful current." (Ben Cullen's 1960 talk given at the First International Convention of the Rife Virus Microscope #G)

These two statements made by Dr. Rife and Ben Cullen were made over 20 years after the 1934 clinic. Dr. Rife knew that the frequencies would broadcast from a metal antenna just as well as from a ray tube. The fact that he felt that Henry Siner’s idea was a good idea and the fact that he wanted to use a radio station indicates that Dr. Rife knew a metal antenna would give the same results as a ray tube. It is apparent from what we have read that Dr. Rife believed it was the frequency that was devitalizing the organism and the method of application really didn’t matter. Clearly, Dr. Rife understood that the frequencies could be broadcast by a radio station, using a metal antenna, if they had enough power. These two quotes we read also give more evidence and confirm the fact the plasma tube had more than a 30-foot radius range, without using an RF carrier frequency in the 20 Megahertz range. This is more evidence proving “Resonate Capacitive Coupling” has nothing to do with the plasma tube 30-foot or greater radius treatment range.

When John Crane and John Marsh, Dr. Rife’s two business partners in the 1950’s, came to understand this, they eliminated the ray tube and used pads or hand cylinders to apply the frequencies. The metal pads and hand-cylinders work just like a metal antenna except you do not want too much power so that they are safe to use. The body also becomes an antenna when you hold the hand cylinders or use the pads and this is why pad type radio frequency (RF) instruments work. Bertrand Comparet stated this in his interview:

COMPARET: “Now, Crane said “Well now look, Rife himself admits that no matter how much tube and ray, and so on, you have, you can’t get any results unless you’ve got the right frequency. Therefore the real clue to the thing is the frequency and not the means by which you deliver it.” Comparet also said: “Well, Crane originally was, with more modern techniques, duplicating the Rife machine, tube and all for early experiments. And, as I say, he came to the conclusion that you just weren’t getting anything additional by the use of the tube. If you didn’t get the frequency, you could run the rest of it indefinitely and nothing happened. So, what Crane did, he got an audio frequency generator. Now, you could make them up yourself by an awful lot of work, or you could buy a Heathkit audio frequency generator and get all the same results with a lot less time and effort. So he was using these Heathkit generators. Now, instead of a beam projected from a tube, a ray, he simply had two wires. I think they were aluminium knobs on the end of them, which would be used. They would be put on the body in such a position that the natural flow of the current from one to the other would go through the diseased area, and he got astonishing results.” (1970’s Bertrand Comparet Interview #33 & 47)

These metal pads or metal hand-cylinders act just like an antenna when in contact with the body, but only if you have an RF carrier frequency and sufficient power. This is where John Crane and John Marsh made a critical error, we believe, and the reason Dr. Rife probably did not like their pad type instrument. Without an RF carrier frequency, you cannot use enough power and the audio frequencies will only go through the connective tissue and not the cell. There are exceptions to the cell and they have to do with the waveform of the frequency. If a square wave audio frequency is used then the higher harmonics produced from this waveform may penetrate the cell to some degree. How much power from these harmonics penetrates the cell is not known. But this may explain why instruments that do not use an RF carrier frequency also seem to work well on small areas of the body. Even John Crane and John Marsh understood that their 1/5th of 1-watt pad instrument was limited to small areas of the body due to its low power output. In the 1959 “Electron Therapy Report” page 5 we read the following:

ELECTRON THERAPY: “In the last years this technique has received new impetus due, on one hand to the availability and tremendous progress in electronic parts and test equipment, and on the other hand, to the discovery of direct application to the body [Metal hand cylinders and footplates] without the need of an applicator tube [Ray Tube]. The problem of adequate coverage with this method is manifold as only small areas of the body are treated at one time with a single instrument. Additional amplification with metal harnesses or electrodes covering many areas simultaneously are contemplated for future development.” (Electron Therapy Report).

As you can see from this report they understood that the low power level limited their pad instrument to "small areas of the body." Dr. Rife expressed his dislike for John Crane and John Marsh’s pad instrument. Bertrand Comparet talked about this fact in a 1970's interview:

COMPARET: “And I asked Rife, because I thought Rife would certainly say that the way Crane was working on it then was still using the Rife principle, but he indignantly denied it.”

DR. HUBBARD: "All right, I see. But, getting back, you say that Rife was very indignant, that the machine that Crane was building was really his [Cranes] idea. I suppose he did not compromise on that, did he?

COMPARET: "Oh no, he just blew up." (1970's Comparet interview papers #32 & 40)

It is apparent that Dr. Rife was upset about John Crane and John Marsh’s new pad instrument. Dr. Rife understood that frequencies could be broadcast from a metal antenna because he was looking at using a radio station antenna to broadcast the frequencies over a large area. So the concept of using metal hand cylinders and footplates does not appear to be the problem. Dr. Rife had built and used machines for thirty years and he understood what power levels it took to devitalize microorganisms. Since the concept of using metal hand-cylinders and footplates has been eliminated then the only thing left is the power level. So it appears it was the low power level that was the problem. It wasn’t until about 2003 that the first powerful metal “Pad” or metal hand-cylinder instrument was developed which used an RF or radio carrier frequency. Using an RF or radio carrier frequency finally made it possible to build “Pad” instruments with high power levels. Using this new method made it possible to have up to 15 to about 20-watts output power.

In a newspaper article found in "The Evening Tribune entitled “Dread Disease Germs Destroyed By Rays, Claim Of S.D Scientist” from May 5, 1938 we read that Dr. Rife’s first instrument had an 8 to 10 watt power output:

EVENING TRIBUNE: "Rife built a simple frequency generating apparatus of about 8 or 10-watts output. He grew some cultures of bacteria. Then he began the studies whose reported results now promise to revolutionize the entire theory and the whole treatment of the human diseases, other than those of a functional or accidental nature.”

Since Dr. Rife’s first instrument was an 8 to 10-watt instrument then it was between 40 to 50 times more powerful than the first pad instrument built by John Crane and John Marsh. Dr. Rife eventually increased the power level to 50-watts and one of his ray tube instruments was about 500-watts. His 50-watt instrument was 250 times more powerful than the first “Pad” instrument. It is no wonder that Dr. Rife was doubtful about the capability of John Crane and John Marsh’s first “Pad” instrument with its 1/5th of 1-watt power level. All of these statements we have quoted show that an instrument that only has a 1/5th of 1-watt power output is greatly underpowered. Even with Dr. Rife’s 50-watt ray tube instrument, he treated the animals within 24 inches of the ray tube because this distance gives the greatest power absorption range. The doctors that used his ray tube instrument usually treated their patients within 12 inches of the patient’s body. Common sense tells us if we are going to use a ray tube why should we sit 30-feet away when we can sit right next to it for the greatest possible benefit.

In the photo, shown below, we see another pad type instrument built by John Crane back in the 1960s. You can see the same disks that he used to come in contact with the body.

John Crane Pad Instrument

Some people have thought that it was the color of the light from the ray tube that made the Rife Machine work. But the evidence doesn’t seem to support that concept either because, in the Gonin Papers of John Marsh, Dr. Rife said this with regard to the light that came from the ray tube:

RIFE: “We don’t care about the color or anything of that sort.” (John Marsh Collection, Gonin Papers, Page 25)

Dr. Couche, while visiting Dr. Rife’s lab with some other men, said:

DR. COUCHE: “There was fifteen inches of concrete on the floor so as to stop any earthquake shocks from interfering with his work. And in his laboratory upon the ground floor he had a microscope with a slide on it that this group of people and myself looked at. And this was not stained, there was no killing of the bacteria on it. It was just a fresh culture of the colon bacillus…..Well we all went down under the stairs into the cellar right immediately under the microscope upon the floor above us and the Rife machine was down in underneath there under the culture in the cellar probably I suppose about ten feet away, eight or ten feet away. And he turned the machine on and gave it less than a half minute’s frequency for the colon bacillus...Then he turned the machine off and we all came upstairs and waited for ten or fifteen minutes. And presently he came back to his microscope and he said, “Well gentlemen come and look at the slide now.” Well to my astonishment the bacilli all had been killed and they were all stacked up on the slide.” (John Marsh Rife CDs - CD 3 track 1)

There is no possible way the light from the ray tube of the Rife Machine could have penetrated that fifteen-inch concrete floor. It is obvious that the light didn’t make any difference but that it was the frequencies that were broadcast through the ray tube. It is easy to see that there is more than one way to deliver the frequencies. The ray tube could be easily replaced with metal hand-cylinders and footpads. It is interesting to note here that Dr. Rife said Abrams’ Oscilloclast would devitalize the BX cancer virus and it was a contact type device. The waveform the Oscilloclast produced is shown in Dr. Rife’s 1936 film. John Crane and John Marsh probably used this contact method because of the success of Abrams’ instrument. The Abrams’ instrument proved that a contact type device would work and it was used before Dr. Rife even started using a ray tube. In fact, Abrams’ contact instrument predates all of Dr. Rife’s work. Metal “Pad” type instruments like Abrams’ instrument come in contact with the body. Abram's instrument worked on the same RF principles as Dr. Rife’s instruments. Pad instruments with an RF carrier turn the body into an antenna and work on the same principle as a metal antenna or ray tube. People have been using pad type instruments without an RF carrier for almost 50 years now and have had good results. But, in order to work the way the ray tube instruments do, an RF carrier frequency is necessary.

Also in this above-quoted statement from Dr. Couche, we again see that the ray tube radius distance did not depend on a higher RF carrier frequency in the 20 Megahertz range or “Resonant Capacitive Coupling.” The treatment frequency went through 15 inches of concrete and an 8 to 10-foot distance demonstrating a large radius range well over 30 feet.

Chapter Summary: Dr. Rife knew that a metal antenna could be used in place of a ray tube. Frequency generators that use metal hand-cylinders or footpads or footplates may work as well as a ray tube instrument as long as sufficient power is used. The only way to increase the power level in a pad type instrument is with the use of an RF (Radio Frequency) carrier. Dr. Rife did not approve of John Crane and John Marsh’s pad instrument due to its lack of power and its lack of an RF carrier frequency. Unless you can have a frequency generator with sufficient power you are better off using a ray tube instrument with 50 to 75-watts of power output. If a person is dealing with a very serious condition they may want to use a ray tube instrument instead of a pad type instrument if they have access to one.

Many people have wondered if the frequencies that Dr. Rife used are safe. In chapter 4, we will discuss the safety of these frequencies.

To fully understand how metal hand-cylinder or pad instruments work this chapter should be read in conjunction with Chapter 17 and Chapter 18.