Guest Post: Little Ilford School ‘Science Club’

In our latest posting from the Science Club, Rebekah and friends report on a day in the Wellcome exploring X-rays:

'On Wednesday 18 April we accompanied some of the year nine students on a trip to the Wellcome Collection.  We were led to the Wellcome Library and directed to a room with a double glass door and into a place which blocked out the environment of the library and enclosed us in peace and serenity.

We had the opportunity to look at artefacts and archives which the public did not have access to.  The artefacts were handled carefully and we got a chance to analyse them and see them in detail.

Our individual research was about the history of X-rays.  We got a chance to look at German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen's life and the first X-ray, which was created by him.

On 8 November 1895, he was believed to be experimenting with Crooke’s vacuum tube equipment.  When the cathode ray beam he generated hit the interior wall of the vacuum tube, he noticed an image on a screen nearby.  The rays generated by the tube could penetrate many kinds of matter.

After he had discovered this Röntgen took the first X-ray. The hand in the X-ray belonged to Anna Bertha, his wife. The X-ray clearly showed the bones in her hand, and the black blob on the fourth finger is a gold ring which absorbs the X-ray. Some believe it’s her wedding ring.

The photograph was then shown to the general public. Röntgen named his invention X-radiation, now known as the X-ray.  It was later reported that his wife was not very impressed with the photography.

Röntgen’s findings became the beginning of a revolutionary change in our understanding of human anatomy.  His invention of the X-ray was a huge step forward in the history of medicine.  Inner parts of the body can now be made visible without the need to cut flesh open.

We would like to thank the women who took the time to educate us on the history of medicine.' [You’re welcome]

Posted on behalf of Rebekah and friends

Image: Print from early radiograph (X-ray photograph), possibly showing the hand of Röntgen's wife, 22 December 1895 (Wellcome Library no. 32971i)

X-Ray Anniversary

On this day 115 years ago, Wilhelm Röntgen became the first person to observe X-Rays.

Like many a groundbreaking discovery, this process occurred rather fortuitously. Röntgen, a German physics professor, was in his laboratory in Wurzburg, Germany, testing if cathode rays could pass through glass. Whilst doing so, he noticed a glow coming from a nearby chemically coated screen. Unsure as to what caused the glow, he dubbed the rays that had caused it "X-Rays" because of their unknown source.

Before long Röntgen had produced such iconic images as the one shown: the hand of his wife, bones and ring visible against the silhouette of the flesh. Röntgen sent this and other radiograph (x-ray photograph) prints to a selected number of like-minded researchers, including the British physicist Sir Arthur Schuster [1]. His correspondents, by following Röntgen's techniques, were able to repeat his findings (and so able to support him when he published a paper on his discovery later in 1896).

As news of Röntgen's discovery was disseminated, its applications to medical research quickly became apparent. For the first time, doctors were able to see inside the human body without surgery. Bone fractures were observed, gallstones were spotted and by the turn of the century X-Rays were being used on military battlefields to search for bullets. Recognition for Röntgen came in the form of the 1901 Nobel Prize for Physics (the first ever awarded).

Scientists were, however, slower to comprehend the harmful effects of radiation. At first, researchers believed X-Rays harmlessly passed through flesh. Within several years, cases of burns and skin damage after exposure to X-Rays were being reported. (Taken slightly out of context, the reported comment of Frau Röntgen when viewing the X-Ray of her hand - "I have seen my death!" - has a chilling edge).

The collections of the Wellcome Library can help chart how X-Rays developed and were utilised by the medical profession. Our relevant collections includes copies of the initial prints sent out by Röntgen and his first article on the subject, to a huge array of material tracing the relationship between medcine and X-Rays (as one example, note the differening ways x-rays crop up in Wellcome Film). For a different approach, a relevant sources guide lists archive and manuscript material on Radiology, Radiotherapy and Radiobiology, and includes our recently catalogued Alice Stewart papers.

As one small example though, let's conclude with the image shown below.



The rather idealised image consists of discoverer, discovery and patient: by showing all three, it does make us consider the process by which X-Rays were produced and remind us of the non-surgical nature of the medium. Ultimately, it also hints at the ways and means of how science was being considered at the turn of the twentieth century. As the text indicates, this was not a trade card for X-Ray machinery: turn the original over and you'll find two advertisements for chocolate. Evidence indeed, for X-Rays not only extending medicine's gaze but also embedding themselves in everyday life.

Images:
Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen looking into an X-ray screen placed in front of a man's body and seeing the ribs and the bones of the arm (Wellcome Library no. 38591i). (For another perspective on this image, see this Wellcome Image of the Month post on the Wellcome Trust blog).
The bones of a hand with a ring on one finger, viewed through x-ray. Photoprint from radiograph by W.K. Röntgen, 1895 (Wellcome Library no. 32971i).

[1] Dr Nora H. Schuster, Sir Arthur's daughter, presented the prints he received to the Wellcome Institute Library - as we were then called - in 1962.

Images That Changed the World

Over the last week, BBC Radio 4 have broadcast Images That Changed the World, a series in which Dr Mark Lythgoe explored the development of medical imaging techniques and their wider cultural influences.

The five episodes explored X-Rays, Brain Scanning, Ultrasound, Microscopy and the Double Helix, and featured contributions from scientists, authors and historians.

Friday's episode included commentary from Helen Wakely, Archivist, Wellcome Library on the images shown here: two early sketches of the DNA Double Helix, from the papers of Francis Crick held by the Wellcome.

All the episodes are still available to listen to in the UK through the BBC's iPlayer, and Dr Lythgoe can also be heard discussing the discovery and impact of X-Rays in this BBC audio slideshow.

Proteins and Prizes

Wellcome Image Award winner and current Wellcome Trust grant holder, Venkatraman (Venki) Ramakrishnan, has been named as one of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009.

Venki's computer-generated molecular model of a ribosome, showing its 3D structure in great detail, impressed the judges of the Wellcome Image Awards in 2008. It is for his research on the structure and function of the ribosome, which converts DNA information into proteins, that the Nobel Prize has been awarded.

Specifically, it is Venki's use of X-ray crystallography to map the atomic structure that has been recognised. This technique has advanced from the standard X-ray, early examples of which are held in the Library's collections.

Venki's Wellcome Award-winning image, the accompanying protein-synthesis animation and a recording of Venki describing his image, background and research are available online.

Author: Louise Crane