Randolph Stone (February 26, 1890 – December 9, 1981) was an Austrian-American chiropractor, osteopath and naturopath who founded polarity therapy, a technique of alternative medicine.[3][4][5] He had an interest in philosophy and religions, and encountered Ayurvedic philosophy on a trip to India.[3] His background in chiropractic was shaped by his studies of various Eastern concepts of energy medicine, including Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, yoga, and reflexology.[6]
Randolph Stone | |
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Born | Rudolph Bautsch February 26, 1890 |
Died | December 9, 1981 | (aged 91)
Main interests | Osteopathy, Chiropractic, Naturopathy, Naprapathy, Energy medicine[1] |
Notable ideas | Polarity Therapy[2] |
Stone was born Rudolph Bautsch in 1890 in Austria. He immigrated with his family to the United States in 1898 and changed his name to Randolf Stone in the 1920s.[3] During that period he began studying several different practices and became qualified in chiropractic. Dissatisfied with Western approaches, he also began traveling and studying non-Western medical practices.[7] He first published his concepts of polarity therapy in 1947 in a book entitled Energy,[5] and then published a series of books and pamphlets to explain his ideas and methods.[8][9][10] He had concluded that an observable (yet undetectable to mainstream scientific methods) 'electromagnetic polarity' was a reflection of health.[5][11] He held the opinion that this energy was influenced by touch, diet, movement, sound, attitude, relationships and by environmental factors.[11]
He had a successful private practice in Chicago and he also worked for about 10 years in a clinic in India.[12] Stone was initiated into the Radha Soami Satsang Beas tradition under Baba Sawan Singh in 1945 and in 1956 published his Mystical Bible, a Radha Soami interpretation of verses from the Bible. Stone spent the last eight years of his life with his niece Louise Hilger in a house at the Radha Soami center in Beas, India.[3][13] He died there in 1981.
Stone's ideas have been dismissed by medical health experts as quackery or untestable.[14][15][16] They have also been criticized as a discredited form of vitalism.[17] According to Nancy Allison in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Body-Mind Disciplines, even advocates of Stone's theory consider his books Health Building and Polarity Therapy to be difficult reading due to their inconsistencies and ambiguities.[18] His ideas are thus interpreted widely, and polarity therapists vary in their approaches.[18] His ideas were later popularized by Pierre Pannetier, a naturopath who had studied under Stone.[19][20] There are many polarity associations around the world.[21]
Stone invented "polarity therapy". It is a type of energy medicine based on the idea that the positive or negative charge of a person's electromagnetic field affects their health. Although it is promoted as effective for curing a number of human ailments, including cancer, the American Cancer Society says "available scientific evidence does not support claims that polarity therapy is effective in treating cancer or any other disease".[22]
Stone.