Very basic life forms, such as bacteria, are clearly pertinent to our well-being, and a number of experiments explored whether individuals can affect their growth rate. In France, for example, Dr. Jean Barry, sought to determine whether subjects could inhibit the growth of a disease-causing fungus. The fungus was cultivated in petri dishes, in a laboratory incubator, with careful controls of the genetic purity of the fungus and the composition of the culture medium. Environmental conditions, like temperature, humidity and lighting, were identical for ‘influence’ vs ‘control’ dishes; the handling of the dishes and measurement of results was performed by individuals who were not otherwise involved in the experiment.

Ten subjects participated in the study. Seated about 5 feet away from the dishes, each person attempted to mentally affect the ‘influence’ dishes, for about 15 minutes. At the end of the experiment, the cultures were all weighed; if the ‘influnce’ dish weighed less than its control, then a ‘hit’ was recorded (‘influenced’ bacteria indeed grew less); otherwise the experimental trial was a ‘miss’. Normally, then, we would expect a random ‘50-50’ distribution of hits and misses. In fact, in about 75% of the comparisons, the ‘influence’ dishes were lighter than the controls, showing a clear cut mental effect of the subjects on the bacteria.

This experiment was later repeated in the U.S. at the University of Tennessee by an American group of researchers. Here, subjects attempted to affect the petri dishes from large distances (up to 10 miles away). Nevertheless, the results confirmed the findings of Barry: subjects apparently could inhibit bacteria growth simply by mental concentration or visualization.

One of the most interesting laboratory healing experiments, by Dr. William Braud, involved the most vital juice of life - blood . The question was whether a psychic could ‘protect’ red blood cells from the destructive effects of a toxic environment. For each experimental session, a few drops of human blood would be placed in a saline solution. The differences in osmotic pressure between the inside of the cell and its surroundings ‘stresses’ the cell walls, which quickly explode; the blood cells’ haemoglobin then escapes into the surrounding solution. Thus, as more and more blood cells die, the appearance of the blood/saline solution changes from cloudy and opaque to clear, allowing more light to pass through. In this way, a spectrophotometer can constantly measure the process of cell destruction.

Over the course of ten trials, the psychic Mathew Manning attempted to prevent the solution from becoming clear (the sign that the cells were exploding and dying). Overall, compared to ‘control’ test tubes, the rate of destruction was indeed significantly lower for the ‘influence’ tubes. What was most striking was that the difference was strongest in the very last trial, in which Manning was separated from the apparatus, attempting to affect it from a distant room.

Braud later repated this same experiment with 30 ‘normal’ subjects, who claimed no psychic gift. This time, all trials were conducted at a distance: the spectrophotometer apparatus and the test-tubes were in one room, and subjects were in a distant room, observing the progress of the results through signals coming from the spectrophotometer. While all subjects did not succeed in retarding blood cell-breakdown, a third of them did, and the overall results were highly significant. Once again, by comparison with the control test tubes, ‘influence’ tubes took a much longer time to become transparent - that is, the influenced cells ‘resisted’ breakdown a much longer time.

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