One Physicist Who Worked...That All Doctors May See - Happy IDOR

Saturday, November 08, 2014.

Wilhelm Roentgen

 

November 8 of every year is the International Day of Radiology.

On this day in 1895, the German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen quite accidentally discovered X-rays. He had been exploring the path of electrical rays passing from an induction coil through a partially evacuated glass tube. Although the tube was covered in black paper and the room was completely dark, he noticed that a screen covered in fluorescent material was illuminated by the rays. He was later to realize that a number of objects could be penetrated by these rays, and that the projected image of his own hand showed a contrast between the opaque bones and the translucent flesh. He later used a photographic plate instead of a screen, and discovered, much to his excitement, that an image was captured! In this way, this gentleman had made the extraordinary discovery that the internal structures of the body could be made visible without the necessity of surgery.

This physicist had fulfilled his own charge to go into the earth and conquer it; he had by his discovery given all doctors the ability to see beyond what had hitherto been accepted as the ordinary. He had made gods out of men.

Today, it is all too easy for us to take those chest radiographs for granted; those skull XRs that tell us where the fracture lines are; those limb XRs that guide us in effecting orthopedic reductions and achieving bone healing. With a flick of the pen or by a few keystrokes on our computers, we request radiographs of almost any body part, and then, through the work of those radiographers and radiologists who we almost never see, we eventually are able to see those internal body parts that secretly beg for our attention.

This post is a note of thanks to all those radiologists and radiographers who by their work serve as those extra eyes that doctors sometimes so badly need in order to make our world a beautiful and healthy one.

To all my friends working at any radiology/imaging centre who will receive a request from me written like this [CXR - PA - TY], the TY is not an extra view, it is just a thank you!

Happy International Day of Radiology!