Meaning
In biorhythm the physical cycle is the 23-day wave. The books that made the theory popular tied its upper half to energy, strength and stamina and its lower half to a quieter stretch for the body. That is the theory's description.
On a chart the physical curve starts on the midline on the day of birth. It rises to its top during cycle day 6, comes back to the midline during cycle day 12, reaches its bottom during cycle day 18 and returns to the midline as the next cycle begins. Each turn takes 23 days, so a person of thirty has been through about 476 of them.
The two days that contain a midline crossing, cycle days 1 and 12, are the cycle's critical days. Biorhythm books of the 1970s attached warnings to them. On our chart they are the points where the curve passes from one half to the other.
Where the 23 days come from
The number is Wilhelm Fliess's. In 1897, in a book on the relations between the nose and the female sex organs, the Berlin physician proposed two constant periods, 28 days and 23 days, and called them female and male. He taught that every person carries both, and in his introduction he set out the belief that the two periods carry the building up and breaking down of the organism, fixing the day of death as much as the day of birth. That was Fliess's doctrine.
Fliess did not draw a wave. He combined whole multiples of 23 and 28 days in sums and differences, as arithmetic, and the one figure in his 1906 book Der Ablauf des Lebens is a stepped line. It was Hermann Swoboda in Vienna who, in 1904, counted the 23-day period from the birth date and called the period day "the critical day". The smooth sine curve and the name "physical" came later, with the American books of the 1960s; Casio's calculator patent of the 1970s calls the same cycle "physique".
What the studies found
The physical cycle was the most tested part of the theory, because accidents and sporting results are easy to count. Terence Hines summed up accident studies covering more than 25,000 accidents in 1979; William Sims Bainbridge reported studies of Arnold Palmer's winning days, other golfers' wins and no-hit baseball games in 1978; and Hines reviewed 134 studies in 1998. What they found is set out on the biorhythm page, under Evidence and criticism.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Fliess's name for it
- Male: the 23-day series, against the 28-day female series sourced
- The label "physical"
- Standard in the American books by the 1960s and 1970s; who used it first is not traced sourced
- Casio's name
- Physique, in the patent of the Biolator calculator sourced
- Swoboda's critical day
- The period day itself, once per cycle sourced
- Critical days on our chart
- Cycle days 1 and 12, the days containing the midline crossings, as the 1970s calculators counted sourced
- Colour
- Red on the old popular charts; a convention of the charts, not of the theory sourced
- Who first drew it as a wave
- Not traced; Fliess drew none disputed
How the schools read it
- Fliess (1897, 1906)
- A male period of 23 days, combined with the 28-day period in sums of whole multiples to time the events of a life. No curve and no label "physical".
- Swoboda (1904)
- The 23-day period counted from the birth date, with the period day itself as the critical day.
- The American books (1961 onwards)
- A sine wave named physical, its upper half tied to energy and stamina; also the source of the day-by-day advice we leave out.
- The calculators of the 1970s
- Critical days on cycle days 1 and 12: the counting convention we follow.
- The critics (1978 to 1998)
- Tested the cycle against accident records, sports results and exam scores.
- EsoTerrier
- Draws the cycle from the birth date, with its critical days on cycle days 1 and 12.
Claims about it
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The physical cycle governs bodily condition and accidents, so physical effort should be planned by it.
falseWhat the record shows: Accident and sports studies covering tens of thousands of cases did not bear it out.
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Fliess drew the 23-day cycle as a sine wave and called it physical.
falseWhat the record shows: Fliess worked with sums of whole multiples of 23 and 28 days and called this period male. The curve and the label belong to the books of the 1960s and 1970s.
