X-Rays and Living Matter1

THE possible importance of X-rays in the medical world was recognised so clearly by their discoverer, Röntgen, that the first communication on the subject was made by him to a medical society, and was published to the world in a medical journal. Nor were medical men slow to appreciate the potency of the weapon which had thus been placed in their hands. The medical profession, be it spoken to its praise, has been unremitting in its search for new weapons in the fight against disease. Dr. Gilbert, himself no mean physician, and author of the first treatise on magnetism, records, with perhaps undue scorn, how, in the days when magnetism was the latest scientific marvel, patients were dosed with decoctions of lodestone as a possible panacea for all ills. It was not likely that so startling a discovery as X-rays would be overlooked, and we find medical men among the pioneers of X-ray work in nearly all countries. Further, the economically effective demand of medical radiology for more power, and still more power, has persuaded engineers and manufacturers to produce the modern high-power X-ray plant which has made possible the recent advances in the subject.