November 8, 1995
Web posted at: 9:50 p.m. EST
From Correspondent Rhonda Rowland
ANN ARBOR, Michigan -- One hundred years ago, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen was fiddling around with a black box and cathode ray tubes in his laboratory when he made a serendipitous discovery that dramatically altered medical practice: the X-ray.
There was no scientific reason attached to the name. Roentgen simply didn't know what else to call it because he had no clue as to what the images he saw were made of.
Dr. Joel Howell, a medical historian and internist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, said the discovery had a tremendous impact almost immediately. "It was talked about on the streets," he said. "People wanted to get X-ray pictures of themselves to give to their friends, to give to their lovers."
But the excitement was not without fear -- fear that one's privacy would be violated. Preying on such paranoia were items like lead-lined underwear, the logic being that since the X-rays couldn't penetrate through lead, it left a patient's modesty intact.
X-rays also gave doctors, who were at the time prohibited
from looking at female patients during an examination, a way
around that problem.
Within a year of the discovery, most big city hospitals possessed an X-ray machine. Over the next decade, Howell said, the notion developed that an expert had to examine the X-ray to interpret it.
Early on, the X-ray's uses were simple. At best, it showed
broken bones and kidney stones. Today, Roentgen's mysterious
rays are used to diagnose and treat a wide range of medical
problems, including cancer. The X-ray has paved the path for
safer and more sophisticated technologies, such as the
ultrasound and MRI.
And, Howell said, the X-ray has changed forever the doctor-patient relationship. "X-rays are one way of distancing doctors from patients," he said. Still, he conceded, there's no denying that the X-ray has done more than its share of good.
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