Subtitle: Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Century
Author: Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles
Subject: General Interest / Medicine / History of Science
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2358-3
Pages: 400 pp. 72 b & w illus.
"A gripping book. Kevles paints a terrifying picture of the tradition of scientific self-experimentation from Roentgen's oozing burns, to Dally's 'death by inches,' to Marie Curie's raw and itching fingers, to Purcell's insertion of his head into a 2 Tesla magnetic field. Indispensable for anyone interested in how the opacity of the body has increasingly melted into translucence during the course of the twentieth century."--Barbara Stafford, William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago, and author of Body Criticism
"A most timely and readable survey of the vast field of imaging research. It provides a rare, sweeping perspective."--Antonio Damasio, M.D., Ph.D., author of Descarte's Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
"Probably no single discovery has had as profound and widespread an impact on humankind as the 1895 invention of x-rays. In this fascinating book, Bettyann Kevles takes us on a sweeping journey through the twentieth century, showing us the many ways in which the ability to see within the human body has fundamentally transformed the way human beings relate to each other. This book will be of interest to patients, health care workers, and anyone else who has ever contemplated images of the inside of the human body."--Joel D. Howell, M.D., Ph.D., University of Michigan, and author of Technology in the Hospital: Transforming Patient Care in the Early Twentieth Century
X-rays, fluoroscopy, ultrasound, CT, MRI, and PET scans--medical imaging has become a familiar part of modern health care today. A century ago, however, the idea of looking inside the living body seemed absurd. Wilhelm Roentgen's X-ray image of his wife's shadowy hand--with her wedding band "floating" around a white bone--convinced doctors to rush the new tool into use for diagnosis and treatment.
By the 1920s, the technology was a commonplace wonder: army recruits had routinely lined up for chest X-rays during World War I, and children delighted in seeing the bones of their feet in the green glow of shoestore fluoroscopes. By the late 1960s, the computer and television were linked to produce medical images that were as startling as Roentgen's original X-rays. Computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MR) made it possible to picture soft tissues invisible to ordinary X-rays. Ultrasound allowed expectant parents to see their unborn children. Positron emission tomography (PET) enabled neuroscientists to map the brain.
In this lively history of medical imaging, the first to cover the full scope of the field from X-rays to MR-assistant surgery, Bettyann Kevles explores the consequences of these developments for medicine and society. Through lucid prose, vivid anecdotes, and more than seventy striking illustrations, she shows how medical imaging has transformed the practice of medicine--from pediatrics to dentistry, neurosurgery to geriatrics, gynecology to oncology.
Despite their formidable power to reveal the inner secrets of the body, no form of medical imaging can claim to be the product of a technological imperative. As Kevles points out, few of these costly inventions made it easily to the marketplace, and all are vulnerable to the changing economics of the health-care system. In the early years of X-rays, many doctors, technicians, and patients died from overexposure to the invisible radiation. Although we may still find delayed repercussions from these newer technologies, a different kind of danger may lie in our conviction that an early diagnosis is equivalent to a cure.
Beyond medicine, Kevles describes how X-rays and the newer technologies have become part of the texture of modern life and culture. They helped undermine Victorian sexual sensibilities, gave courts new forensic tools, provided plots for novels and movies, and offered artists from Picasso to Warhol new ways to depict the human form.
Naked to the Bone offers readers an unparalled picture of a key technology of the twentieth century.
Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles is a writer whose reviews of books on science and medicine have appeared on National Public Radio's Science Friday and in other publications. She is the author of Females of the Species: Sex and Survival in the Animal Kingdom.
Key Points
o 1996 is the "Centennial Year of the Discovery of X-Rays"
o The only complete, up-to-date history of medical imaging for the general reader
o Based on original scholarship and interviews
o Seventy plus illustrations, including examples of every kind of medical imaging, advertising, cartoons, and art
o Ideal gift for a medical student, doctor, or hypochondriac
(A volume in the Sloan Technology Series, sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which seeks to present to the general reader the stories of the development of critical twentieth-century technologies.)
