CLINICAL, EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL EVIDENCE
FOR AN ADDITIONAL CIRCULATORY SYSTEM
By Björn E W Nordenström, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Diagnostic Radiology,
Karolinska Institute and Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden
1983, 295 x 210 mm, XVI + 358 p, ISBN 91-970432-0-6 , Cloth Richly illustrated in b/w and color. Published by and available from Nordic Medical Publications/Ursus Medical AB, Flygfältsgatan 15, SE-128 30 Skarpnäck, Sweden. Telephone: +46 8 6797475
Price: Sold Out.
We recommend you to to order The BCEC-extension.
You can read this book online at Google Book Search
“Nordenström’s theory offers important implications throughout the entire range of normal and pathologic physiology. With profound conviction, I dare assert that no vital process can be fully understood without considering this new electrophysiologic theory. A vast field of multidisciplinary research is opening before us. Numerous concepts which today are confusing, including chemotaxis, are here clarified. I cannot resist emphasizing the fascinating and broad medical scope of this book, i.e. a new view on carcinogenesis and a therapeutic mode against cancer which theoretically offers possibilities against diverse inflammatory states, fractures, atheromas and neurologic complications of various diseases. Moreover, this book offers new scientific bases which will reorient future research on a wide range of hitherto poorly understood processes, e.g., acupuncture, oral galvanism, meteorologic influences on human beings, types of adipose tissue, diverse secretory mechanisms, diurnal cycles and embryogenesis. This list of disparate functions leaves unmentioned many other applications. In particular, extrapolation of the theory at the intracellualar level offers many possible consequences.
The coming years will see a wealth of experimentation derive from this new approach to electrophysiology. Its full importance is today impossible to appreciate. For example, disparities of findings noted heretofore between in vitro and in vivo work can now be assessed anew. The implications of Nordenström’s theory appear far-reaching even beyond today’s most enlightened suspicions.”
Jacques C Hauton, D.M.D.Sc, Professor of Biochemistry, Institut National de la Santé, France
Content:
I. Summary. II. Radiographic detectability of corona structures. III. Corona structures around malignant and benign neoplasms in the lung. IV. Corona structures around inflammatory lesions, incl. those of silicosis. V. Discussion of the radiological observations of corona structures. VI. Electric potentials in normal lung, pleura and liver and in focal pulmonary lesions, incl. bronchogenic carcinoma. VII. Spontaneous development of the fluctuating injury potential in tissue. VIII. Concentration-dispersion forces: A brief review of intermolecular physical behaviour. IX. Water: Electroosmotic transport over closed electric circuits. X. Corpuscular movements and structrual development: Effects of molecular and electric field forces. XI. Structural effects on an artificial tumour in dog lung. XII. Biologically closed electric circuits (BCEC). XIII. Energetics of BCEC systems, ionars and ergonars. XIV. Experimental activation of vascular-interstitial closed circuit effects. XVI. Tissue transformations over BCEC in cancer of the breast. XVII. Applications of the principle of BCEC for treatment of cancer. XVIII. Afterword: A discussion of principles and consequences of biologically closed circuits (BCEC).
From Investigative Radiology; Book Review
Vol.19, Sept/Oct, N:o 5, 1984:
Editor’s Note
It has not been the policy of Investigative Radiology to publish book reviews. However, the work by Nordenström reviewed below presents such fundamental and far-reaching concepts that a review was deemed desirable in order to call this book to the attention of those who read Investigative Radiology. The importance of the concepts presented in Dr. Nordenströms book cannot be overemphasized. Those who are interested in fundamental biological observations will be fascinated by the logical progression of this most imaginative work.
Biologically Closed Electric Circuits, Björn E. W. Nordenström, MD,
(Nordic Medical Publications/Ursus Konsult AB, Arsenalsgatan 4, SE-1ll 47 Stockholm, Sweden),
This remarkable book introduces a new physiologic concept that could solve many long-standing biologic problems. This far-reaching concept evolved from a series of ingenious experiments that began with the author’s search for the explanation of a curious pattern that he observed on a chest x-ray about 30 years ago. His investigations carried him well beyond the original problem and produced original insights into such fundamental processes as wound healing, organ development and differentiation, and extra-cellular fluid dynamics. The primary direction of the book is understanding the interaction of malignant tumors with their surrounding tissues. It leads on the one hand to a possible mechanism of carcinogenesis and on the other to a proposed new mode of therapy of malignancies.
Dr. Nordenström has discovered a new circulatory system that is based on spontaneously occurring electrical potentials. Potential gradients have long been known to develop in normal organs as a result of metabolism and in injured or diseased tissue as a result of hemorrhage or necrosis. The investigations detailed in this book reveal that these potentials are more than just a source of error in bioelectric measurements, that, in fact, they drive electric current through what the author calls biologically closed electric circuits (BCEC).
Blood plasma and interstitial fluid are examples of ionic media capable of effectively conducting current. Blood vessel walls and the cells and membranes that surround interstitial spaces insulate these conducting media from their surroundings. Plasma and interstitial fluid are electrically joined across capillary membranes. Thus, blood vessels and interstitial spaces function as insulated electric cables that carry current and transport charged particles over short and long distances. Other BCEC probably also exist, but the book examines this particular circuit in detail, documenting its existence and function with a series of experiments using physical analogs of biologic organs and organ systems, animal models, and tumor and tissue specimens obtained at autopsy or surgical resection. The resultant hypotheses are tested in a series of careful and humane diagnostic experiments and therapeutic trials performed on consenting human volunteers with malignant diseases.
Credit should be given to Dr. John Austin who spent many hours revising the manuscript. The book is written in a lucid, concise prose style and presents its material in approximately chronologic order. Thus, the reader is shown the stepwise development of this complex concept in what must be very close to the way that the author himself arrived at his conclusions. This method of presentation tantalizes the reader as it builds from the proposal of a simple hypothesis to its experimental documentation to the next hypothesis, and gradually but convincingly expands the reader’s understanding as the investigations progress to more and more basic levels of biologic insight. Like most significant scientific innovations, the ideas are simple and, once proposed, the reader must wonder why something so obvious took so long to surface. Yet the originality or the hypotheses, the thought processes that led to them, and the experiments that prove them are astounding.
In the mid 1950s Dr. Nordenström observed a peculiar series of radiating and circumferential patterns surrounding a primary carcinoma of the lung on a chest radiograph. He called this pattern corona structures, because of the similarity to the corona of the sun. A prospective study over several years revealed that corona structures were present with considerable frequency around pulmonary malignancies, pulmonary granulomas, and even hamartomas. The book begins the analysis of these structures with a careful description using radiographs of many patients and using serial radiographs of the same patient. The alteration of corona structures with time and the disappearance of some of them with the development of pneumothorax led Dr. Nordenström to postulate that some parts of this radiographic pattern resulted from an unexplained effect of pulmonary masses on distribution of lung water. Thus began a series of experiments that resulted in his conclusion that fluctuating electrical potentials originating within lung masses could alter extracellular fluid dynamics. The author demonstrated that electrical potentials do exist within lung masses by performing a series of measurements in patients undergoing needle biopsy. After preliminary experiments, he succeeded in reproducing corona structures in dogs by inplanting artificial “tumors” that produced potential gradients similar to those measured in human pulmonary masses.
The text proceeds to an investigation of the anatomy and physiology of these phenomena and leads to the development of the concept of energy conversion over BCEC. Along the way, explanations of a number of other biologic phenomena are proposed. After demonstrating that electrical potentials are spontaneously generated in organs such as the spleen, and that potentials of this magnitude lead to formation of fibrous tissue at electrical interfaces, the author postulates that organ capsules and other fibrous surfaces such as pleura and peritoneum are formed by BCEC.
Platelets and leukocytes carry a surplus of fixed electronegative surface charges. Thus a spontaneously occurring positive polarity in injured tissue results in accumulation of platelets and then thrombosis of capillaries surrounding a site of injury. This mechanism can also account for attraction of leukocytes to a site of positive electrical potential in injured or diseased tissue.
To test the possibility that BCEC alter the tissue environment around tumors in organs other than the lung, the author undertook a series of experiments with human and animal breast tissue and human breast neoplasms. He demonstrated in a series of mammograms that corona structures similar to those that surround lung masses are present quite commonly around tumors of the breast. Spontaneous electrical potentials occur in breast tumors, just as in lung masses, and have a similar effect on tissue water distribution. However, the abundant fat in breast tissue permitted some even more surprising observations. Histologically normal human breast fat obtained from mastectomy specimens, when subjected to electrophoresis, developed fibrosis similar to the desmoplastic reaction that surrounds breast tumors. Within this desmoplastic tissue, structures developed that were histologically similar to primitive ductal and vascular channels. The author suggests that this may explain the mechanism by which tumor angiogenesis occurs. Similar in vitro experiments produced microcalcifications similar to those found in breast malignancies in previously normal breast fat.
This seminal work opens important new subjects for research and may ultimately explain many heretofore inexplicable biologic phenomena. However, it is more than a scholarly report of a massive research effort. It is an interesting, often exciting account of a brilliant mind in vigorous action. It leaves the reader exhilarated.
Morton G. Glickman, MD, Professor of Diagnostic Radiology, Yale University School of Medicine
