152 PKOGRESS IN EADIOGRAPHY. 



giving only uninteresting and indistinct images. This together with 

 the fact that only imperfect silhouettes at best could be obtained, 

 calmed somewhat the zeal of a majorit}^ of curious practitioners. 

 Most of those who for a moment had anticipated finding in the new 

 discovery a valuable method of research were disappointed, and con- 

 demned it utterly. 



The excess of curiosity and anticipation naturally resulted in a 

 reaction, which was accentuated by the organization of enterprises 

 for public exhibition, where for a few cents or even for nothing, any- 

 one was shown wdiatever part of his body he wished to see, or he was 

 ^iven a picture of such part of his skeleton as could be easily radio- 

 graphed. 



Although this commercial exploitation did little for the good name 

 of radiography, and in some cases resulted in personal injury by 

 burning the patient, yet it served at least to advertise it widely. Hap- 

 j)ily, however, while this popularization of Roentgen's discovery was 

 going on, truly scientific research occupied the attention of many 

 serious and comj^etent persons. Students took up the application of 

 radiography to anatomy, then to medicine and surgery, and to some 

 of them it seemed to be a simple operation. Apparently all that was 

 necessary was an electric current, a Ruhmkorff coil, a Crookes tube, 

 and some ordinary photographic plates with the simple chemicals 

 for developing them. Such was the reasoning with the advent of 

 radiography. It has not yet greatly improved, though, despite mis- 

 apprehensions and misuses, radiography has continued its progress. 

 Physicists like Villars perfected the Crookes tube; technicians like 

 Contremoulins devised exact instruments for their practical applica- 

 tion. Indistinct images were superseded by radiographs of admira- 

 ble clearness in which the most delicate details of the bone structure 

 were exactly reproduced. 



The radiograph was in time applied to the skeletons of mice, fish, 

 snakes, frogs, to small mummies, fossils, and shells. Finally a suc- 

 cessful attempt was made to penetrate the more bulky parts of the 

 human body. As early as 1896 investigators had obtained silhouettes 

 not only of the bones but also of the more or less penetrable parts of 

 the organism, like the heart and the lungs. These successes encour- 

 aged more vigorous attacks on other portions, and with special meth- 

 ods they finally oA^ercame obstacles and rendered i)ossible radiographs 

 of iDarts of the skull, the muscles, and even of the arterial system in the 

 hand. It is only fair, however, to state that most of this progress 

 was made in the laboratory of the Faculty of Medicine, at Paris, 

 and the results were scarcely known by the majority of those busily 

 engaged in making radiographic researches by less scientific methods. 

 Anxious merely to get good j^ictures, and without accurate knowledge 

 of the physical, geometrical, and anatomical conditions which must 



