The Trail of Invisible Light: A Century of Medical Imaging
Early Military Radiology
| Shortly after the discovery of X rays, militarily powerful nations grasped the significant role radiology would play in battle. Physicians in the medical corps embraced the new means for locating bullets and broken bones and for assessing injuries to the nervous system. |
12. World War I X-ray truck, 1918. Courtesy of the American College of Radiology. |
| Although the German and British armies were the first to establish training schools for radiologists, Italy was first to use X rays to aid men wounded in conflict. X rays were used on the battlefield for the first time in the spring of 1897 during the Balkan War. There were many practical difficulties, however. For one thing, early X-ray units were bulky and delicate. Both the tubes and the glass photographic plates were fragile, making the whole apparatus difficult to move about. The most serious obstacle was the lack of a reliable electrical power; the British resorted to charging batteries on board naval vessels. By the time of the River War in 1898, field radiologists had learned to rig two stationary bicycles to a dynamo; cyclists pedaled madly to charge the batteries with needed power. |
The U.S. Army first used X rays in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. Although not very extensively employed (more soldiers were invalided in the war by typhoid fever than by battle wounds), at least three hospital ships were supplied with X-ray apparatuses. Portable X-ray machines from later conflicts are on display in the exhibit, one from the first World War and the other dating from about 1945. |
| 13. Hand-held fluoroscope, circa 1910. |
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