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Nonsense or ridiculous foolishness I have heard enough hipper fess I did not mean to offend you his mouth you were a friend to me young man. It is this is absolutely crucial to Professor if I am to write an article about you overlook I must know that he is not tool. That seems sensible gun scoot. Then say in your article that you have spoken to him Conrad Rincon who discovers x rays you can say that you can give us help officer. There was no professor I didn't get a servant or his pet dog or the post man who made this discovery. No matter about any Polish going to assess. Also please say that when I discovered the x ray it was not an accident it was because I was looking for something. I understood I understood half of it but if you please hippos has a VI did you call them x rays. Why you ask why. Because I did not know about they were. The American hospital supply corporation presents. March of medicine.
Some episodes in the history of hospitals and the people who work in them to protect your health and mine. Our story for today. The mysterious phrase. This is Paul Barnes. I have been thinking about how one of the most ancient and stubborn problems any doctor has ever had to face is the problem of determining what is going on inside his patient. How can you tell when you are shut off from your patients disease by the strongest and least transparent of protecting walls. The skin. Well today there are many devices for telling from a thermometer and the stethoscope. All the way to the electrocardiogram and the x ray and here to tell you something about the x ray and how it is used. Some 70 years after its discovery is our guest Dr. Earle Ebuyer professor and chairman of the department of Radiology Northwestern Medical School. Gold medalist of the American College of Radiology and past chairman of the national delegation from the United States to the International Congress of
Radiology. Dr. Barth. The X-ray asked Professor to name his new discovery in 1900. I became almost at once a public fad. It caught the popular fancy and was discussed in terms which nowadays could only be called foolish. But in medical circles there was an immediate and sober recognition of the vast importance of this new discovery for medical purposes. Today more than 70 years after Renton's announcement the use of X-rays is an everyday procedure to doctors and patients alike. It is an every day commonplace routine and absolutely indispensable in the diagnosis and treatment of many diseases. It is impossible to imagine what medicine would be without X-ray and highly skilled doctors and technicians who use it so well. The skilled physician who is specially trained in the use of X-ray is called a
radiologist. And now today almost day by day we find new wonders unfolding in the field of Radiology. Not only in diagnosis but in therapy. The treatment of disease with these miraculous techniques which we all in large part to the work of Wilhelm couldn't rad rent. Thank you Dr. Bart. The magic re the x ray has a long history. The story begins well before the time of Vilhelm Conrad Franken at first it is a rather foolish story. An account of powerful but bored gentleman who needed to be amused. In the years 16:50 the burgomaster all too often given love scientific experiment invited the Emperor Ferdinand and his court to see a wonderful toy in your front and off your head exhausted two of my strongest got.
You have cheated us on Mass-Time cheat your Majesty. Never. Here to cut my hemispheres which I have fitted together. Your Majesty saw how I pumped the air for me. There is nothing in the sizes gloop Majesty not even yet that cannot be pulled apart even by just the longest gentleman of your court it is unfortunate funny but I have yet to find some on my clock here. But then your Majesty shall we try with horses. Do horses for let us see how many it will take to put a pot on get is called the globe field with nothing. Eat horses Your Majesty ate. Think of feat I am impressed chapbook I missed it as a modernist device to me. Do you think it is good for anything.
The vacuum device of auto if one get AK was good for something. It stimulated the curiosity of other experimenters and it served to amuse yet another king. A century later. This time the demonstrator was the Abbaye no late preceptor in natural philosophy to the French royal family. Observe Sire this globe of glass as you have seen I have exhausted the air with it. A type done kucing could not name so if I go mad it is quite correct. But now I pass an electrical charge through this empty globe and sean being a sean being good oh as it becomes us to do it you have created. You stood a good. Well there were others more serious or at least with more serious colleagues than the Abyei in
L.A. was blessed with Robert Boyle. So William Crookes and at last came the time when Bill had been professor of physics in bits book in Bavaria had a strange experience with a device known as the Crookes tube. He told a writer about it years later and he will try to make it simple cause a scientific mind has a zygote. You understand all this happened on the date of November 8th 1895. You want to stand I heads a Crookes tube a vacuum tube. She did with the black cloud but no visible light could escape this material. Twenty feet away there was a sheet of fluorescent material batting but do you know cyanide. You understand I I think so hippos hasn't here it doesn't matter the point is simple. My barium screen should shine only when exposed to the light from the tube. Yet when I switch on as electrical current it did shine. Kind of like some kind of parade at Bennett but he did not count toward me Stevie's ray which I could not see and
and what did you think I think I did not think I investigated. Hi this is Robert Q. Lewis. You know in the little I have read about the history of medicine one fact always amazes me the way in which wonderful new advances in medical treatment and hospital care seem to grow from such modest announcements of research done when Professor Renton published his first paper on those mysterious rays which he had found and called x rays. He said simply that these rays made it possible to see the bones of the hand through the living flesh. That was all. Yet today hardly more than 70 years later teams of skilled specialists use the X-rays radium and radio isotopes not only to diagnose disease but to treat it in ways which seem to me as a layman absolutely miraculous. Did you ever think that there might be a place for you on a team of that sort. Well there just
might be if you keep listening for the next few minutes I might be able to tell you what that is. The mysterious X-ray of Vilhelm Conrad was only mysterious in 1895 and for a few years thereafter. Today it is no more mysterious than a stethoscope or a tongue depressor. Just a few moments ago standing outside a hospital office I overheard a conversation which is almost too commonplace to tell you about. Oh Mrs. Kane I'm glad you're still here. I had to wait to talk to if you found out what's wrong with Charles. I think so. Or here. Look at this X-ray. You see this small dark shadow. Yes. Well that seems to be the problem. Do you mean that that small thing is that the cause of all these pain.
Well you can hardly see it. I'm sure that's the cause Mrs. Kane. It means minor surgery that's all. Isn't it wonderful that you can see so clearly I mean with these X-rays. Wonderful. Well I suppose it is. We get used to it you know. I'm glad you reminded me Mrs. Kane. It really is wonderful. But in 1895 and to a different wife the x rays were not so wonderful. Initially quite frankly they were new since your missive is that you ya father had given up a face of it you know Connecticut for about 19 years lavatory. Yes you need to go from here. He said he'd be home shortly. He seemed impatient with me.
You do and that is what he said yes that day on the day before death and the day before that is as red as the day before that but he got the house to pick up some papers. Did you remind you that he has been home once in those four days that he hasn't moved already. You need to go for the sake. He said that he would be home shortly. What experiment is he working on now you know if he didn't say a big need to get for and I couldn't tell it was only a black box and a light of some kind of black box. Also Infosys gives up the pace so I'll put up a fork. Yeah. Was. It is difficult to tell whether Professor ren can finally came home to the best seller bottom in bits Borg that early winter of
1895. But it is certain that rent can eventually came to the laboratory and the black box. All right but. You know as you said you wanted to see me they are legion. Yeah yeah yeah I need your help. Yeah what can I do. One of your colleagues cannot do much better. It's not a matter of knowledge or skill is a matter of trust. In such a case should I turn to another you know as much as I do. I have found something I think important that I don't know quite how to do this but before I announce it I think I must be sure you know much as I do. But your hand is this box that box. It's going to happen to it nothing I assure you. All right if if nothing is going to happen by my side but I'll expand not do anything to your hand but it will do something is that I can tell you you should see for yourself.
Now now it throws a switch. At least it is a success. Yeah yeah it is success now. Now me I see you of course leap you keep your hand it is and look in here. Oh I have a book that is your hand. Did not my dad don't you think I know but there is a skeletal structure as a broom is in your hand. Those dock shadows there are your rings. I don't like your machine it it frightens me and you are mistaken my machine will not cause fear but will erase it. Redken was right. His new machine did erase fear because it gave doctors their
first means of seeing directly inside the living human body. In short a magic Ray a ray which looked through paper and brick cloth. The X-ray became at once a favorite topic with newspaper writers in need of copy. Helen this X-ray machine is a dreadful thing dreadful. What's wrong with it. First of all there was an advertisement from a clothing perm in London which now sells I'm too close guaranteed to be impenetrable to X-rays. Do you know you don't mean well. That's exactly what they meant. Not only that the state of New Jersey is considering making it illegal to use x rays in opera glasses. Oh my oh my. And then there's a school in New York where they use the xrays to reflect charts and diagrams right into the brains of the students. Well that's how it was to make them remember what they learned for a longer time. Just think how one anybody could reflect Heaven knows what kind of ideas into our brains and we might never know what that's all Felice isn't it.
I wish you hadn't told me. In Great Britain an editorial writer for the pellmell Gazette made only slightly better sense. He said We are sick of the rent can raise. It is now said we hope and truly that Mr. Edison has discovered a substance stage of calcium is it's repulsive name which is whatever that means to the said raise the consequence of which appears to be that you can see other people's bedrooms with the naked eye and also see through eight inches of salted wood on the voting in decency. There is no need to dwell. But what we seriously put to people all the attention of the government is that the moment tongue stage of calcium comes into general use it will call for legislative
restriction of the sieve in a sky. Perhaps the best thing would be for all civilised nations to come by to burn all the books on the rent can raise to execute all the discovery and to quote all the tongues stage in the world and drop it in the middle of the ocean. Let the fish contemplate each other's bedrooms if they like but not us. I am. But the reception the professor reckons x rays was not wholly frivolous or ignorant in New York. A doctor sat down to write a note to a colleague. It has just been communicated to me that Dr WB can and at Harvard as well as whole snecked in holodeck in Vienna have demonstrated that the outline and movements of the stomach and intestines can be seen by means of the X-ray. It is only necessary to feed the
patient a meal mixed with some such salt as bismuth which casts a shadow on the X-ray plate. I need hardly point out to you with the enormous significance of this finding from medical diagnosis. We can again give thanks to pay our rent was. Once again this Robbie Q Who is at this point I I must say a good word for doctors or rather from medicine as a career. I know the training is long and demanding and expensive. Maybe you've never felt that you were qualified enough or patient enough or well maybe you've just been too Don modest to look beyond all those years of study and work for a moment. Imagine a fascinating and special and truly rewarding posts you might hold doctors with specialized training go every where they do almost everything these days. Part of exploring expedition
and Greenland in the Himalayas they work in quite so the law they guide the health of Navy Frogman and of astronauts out in space. They work with the most advanced devices in atomic medicine. Yeah maybe it does take a long time and all lot of determination to qualify yourself for one of these special jobs but well just think. Wouldn't it be worth the trouble. Why don't you find out now about medicine as a career. This is Paul Barnes speaking. BILL him Conrad Franken announced his discovery of the X-rays on December 28 1895 by February 19th 1896. A report had been made on his discovery to the French Academy of Science on April 1st of that year. A clinical demonstration was made before the Societe did
and on April 17th the first French X-ray machines were shown and on August 6th 1896 there was another clinical demonstration before the Congress of Ponce dimity scene. If there were attempts to played a role in the discovery of X-rays they failed no matter what anyone said. The fame was his and he got the recognition that he deserved perhaps rather more than he wanted. Congratulations poured in from all over the world. Newspapers and Medical Journal spoke of little but rent can rent can post cards bearing his signature never reach their destination. Professor Renton there was no escape from fame. Say something I must ask you you know.
It is not that I agree that your great success if I do this or not but again I believe should I really can not. Would not be pleasant to leave time and travel perhaps to Munich should have to be very quiet but it would be better than more near death really head it would be ruined. I was just about to suggest it. Yeah let's consider calmly excuse me by him. Surely you are the president. I suppose I must admit that the new spot of light is you know the time when you know just what I have in my life and I love you both have
called on your later to be no trouble to locate you would have wanted me to be at your doorstep. What I missed. Entirety perhaps. I see that there is a train for Rome. It leaves in five minutes. Hardly arrived and already two invitations to lecture. I am afraid it is no use to I do escape when you are famous. Everything is a very nice they're all kind people about how ridiculous wrong. Now Switzerland everywhere for talk of US people collaborating. I'm going to try to resist. I don't buy it.
But the honors poured in. There seems no end to them. A bronze statue was erected to him in Berlin and one in Munich. And yet another in St. Petersburg. There were Matter All right. Society of London takes great pride in bestowing a medal on Professor president of the Franklin Institute to award the medal to professor Columbia University considers it a high privilege and honor to present the fun of the professor is therefore awarded by majority vote of the committee to Professor and discoverer of the x ray. Professor good to see you know these
guys professor he was a teacher I once had given as him so high school you know an unpleasant file and nobody like him. One day somebody drew a picture of it but he thought it was a blackboard. He found me laughing at it happened. I wouldn't tell him there was a picture. So he actually had me expelled from school showed clearly that it was a roast. Later I got special permission to take a private college entrance examination for the year studying to take that test. Then when I arrived I learned that the regular exam I had been taken sick. And you know who took place in the bipap and what happened to me of course is that God never has a consistent problem. You know if he had had his way I might have gone into the army or become a way to be rich too. I never about my wonderful little razor poll.
At my age. Is it ever frightening to look back and realize how much luck and vision and good sense you must have when you are young. I this Robert Lewis again a moment ago I spoke to you about the radio logical team which does such wonderful work in the diagnosis and treatment of many diseases. Well maybe for one reason or another you can't quite imagine yourself as a doctor of medicine specializing in the use of X-rays. OK but have you heard of the X-ray technologist. He is the fellow who handles and cares for the X-ray equipment. The photographs he takes of the internal parts of the body are needed for diagnosis. He is a skilled person in an important highly responsible job and yet he needs
only a high school diploma plus two years training in one of the special schools approved by the American Medical Association X-ray technologists are in great demand now and the demand for them will increase as time goes on. How about you. Maybe you should consider a career in this truly rewarding field. Simply write health careers. Post office box for 27. Evanston Illinois. This is Paul Barnes speaking. Bill Hemmer was a modest man. He was pleased and I think a little amused at the many honors which came to him. But no one could persuade him to take more credit for his great discovery than was strictly due. Professor why did you call your discovery the X-ray. You know I know it.
You know algebra X is an unknown quantity isn't it. I didn't really know what I had found only that I had found it. Still you did discover the right way and in your first paper you indicated what it could do for a medical diagnosis. My friend I only said that with it you could see the bones through the living flesh. That was wonderful enough to me. Still there are many who call it the rent can re. Shouldn't you accept that name. What I found was a natural phenomenon. It was there long before me. By God's grace. Such things come from above and if we are lucky we find them and use them for good. But such a discovery should not bear the name of any man my friend. And least of all mine. The. March of medicine. Some episodes in the history of hospitals and the people who work in them.
To protect your health and mine. Much of medicine is brought to you by the American hospital supply corporation. Appearing on today's program where you'll can deal Ellie's comer Paul Barnes Maurice Copeland and Norman got to talk. This is Mark Maloney speaking if you would like a copy of the script for this program more information on careers in health and medicine. Please send your name and address on a postcard to health careers. Post Office Box four to seven. Evanston Illinois Why that's health careers. Post Office Box four to seven. Evanston Illinois. This program was distributed by national educational radio. This is the national educational radio network.
Series
The march of medicine
Episode
Wilhelm Roentgen: The magic rays
Producing Organization
WMAQ (Radio station : Chicago, Ill.)
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-zp3vzp02
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Description
Episode Description
This program focuses on the story of Wilhelm Roentgen. It also includes a public service announcement by Robert Q. Lewis.
Series Description
Drama series highlighting important moments in medicine. Each program also includes a public service announcement related to medicine or hospitals.
Date
1967-01-02
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:29:26
Embed Code
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Credits
Producing Organization: WMAQ (Radio station : Chicago, Ill.)
Speaker: Lewis, Robert Q.
AAPB Contributor Holdings
University of Maryland
Identifier: 67-4-5 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:29:10
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Citations
Chicago: “The march of medicine; Wilhelm Roentgen: The magic rays,” 1967-01-02, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-zp3vzp02.
MLA: “The march of medicine; Wilhelm Roentgen: The magic rays.” 1967-01-02. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-zp3vzp02>.
APA: The march of medicine; Wilhelm Roentgen: The magic rays. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-zp3vzp02