X-Ray, Violet Ray, and other Rays

X-Ray, Violet Ray, and other Rays

X-Ray, Violet Ray, and Other Rays by Maynard Shipley is a popular-science survey, part of the Little Blue Book series, that catalogs the practical, industrial, forensic, artistic, medical, and biological applications of X-rays and ultraviolet light as understood in the mid-1920s. Shipley opens not with theory but with utility, cataloging an eclectic sweep of industrial and forensic uses: radiography detecting flaws in bridge girders, airplane cylinders, and gasoline tanks; exposing mis-drilled railway axles; verifying welds and castings; grading tire fabric and golf-ball centers; and enabling crystallographic analysis of metals via their characteristic X-ray spectra. He turns to detective work, describing X-rays used to disarm bombs, expose false-bottomed trunks and smuggled gems, detect check and document alterations, uncover food adulteration, distinguish good eggs from bad, and—via the Silk Association of America's Canton laboratory—diagnose silkworm diseases threatening China's silk industry. Coal analysis in Britain and a Berlin criminologist's finger-bone identification technique round out the industrial applications. A recurring theme is art authentication: X-rays exposing forged "old masters," including a fraudulent Van Ostade and a repainted Louvre canvas, plus Royal Institution demonstrations revealing overpainted figures beneath Dutch religious works. Shipley also covers X-ray studies of Egyptian and South American mummies, diamond-mine theft detection, shoe-fitting "foot-o-scopes," reverse-engineering a German mechanical doll, wartime contraband detection, and internal inspection of glued airplane wood and furniture joinery. The book's center of gravity shifts to physics and medicine. Shipley explains Dr. D. Coster's work on X-ray spectral analysis of elements, the crystal-lattice diffraction discoveries of Max von Laue and William and Lawrence Bragg, and H. G. J. Moseley's landmark correlation of atomic number with X-ray spectra—establishing the proton-electron structure underlying the periodic table shortly before Moseley's death at Gallipoli. Medical applications receive extensive treatment: high-voltage cancer therapy pioneered in Germany and advanced by William Duane at Harvard; massive-dose protocols tested at Bellevue and in Philadelphia; new vitreosil and Coolidge/Ulrey tubes improving exposure times and safety; and Dr. Jacques Forestier's lipiodol contrast technique, which for the first time allowed safe X-ray visualization of the brain, spinal cord, and bronchial tree by using an iodized oil rather than toxic bismuth compounds. Shipley reports experimental X-ray cures for whooping cough and malaria, immunological research linking lymphocyte increases to tumor resistance, and studies on X-ray-induced sterility and regeneration suppression in animals. A substantial and somber section chronicles the martyrdom of early radiologists—Walter James Dodd, John L. Bauer, Henry Green, Eugene Caldwell, Charles Infroit, Charles Vaillant, Cecil Lyster, Ironside Bruce, Adolphe Leroy, and Frederick Baetjer—who suffered chronic burns, amputations, and death from unshielded exposure before the dangers of cumulative radiation were understood. Shipley details Dr. Pesch's red-light antagonism treatment for radio-dermatitis and Dr. G. Contremoulins's alarming demonstrations of X-ray penetration through walls and floors, which prompted a French Ministry of Hygiene investigation. He closes the X-ray discussion with William Conrad Roentgen's 1895 discovery narrative, his 1901 Nobel Prize (donated entirely to research), and the physics of secondary "cathodic" radiation and the photoelectric effect, contrasted with Philipp Lenard's cathode-ray work. The book's latter portion pivots to ultraviolet and visible light therapy—heliotherapy. Shipley traces the field from Niels Finsen's Nobel-winning sunlight research through Auguste Rollier's Alpine tuberculosis clinics at Leysin. He surveys experiments showing ultraviolet-irradiated cow's milk, and ultraviolet-exposed olive oil and lard, cure rickets in chicks and rats by activating an antirachitic factor (later understood as vitamin D), citing work by Steenbock, Hart, Gowen, C. C. Little, and Harriette Chick. Other topics include hemato-porphyrin photosensitization and its lethal interaction with sunlight, Dr. G. Murray Levick's ultraviolet/infrared treatment of infantile paralysis and neurasthenia, polarized light's effect on bacterial growth and starch digestion, W. D. Coolidge's germicidal and insecticidal cathode-ray experiments, and speculative research into insects' ultraviolet vision and flowers' ultraviolet coloration. Throughout, Shipley writes as a popularizer synthesizing contemporary periodical sources—Scientific American, Popular Science Monthly, Science, and newspaper reports—rather than as a research scientist, aiming to convey both the marvel and the human cost of the era's rapid, often reckless expansion of radiation science into industry, criminology, art, agriculture, and medicine.

By Maynard Shipley · First published 1926 · Genre: Science, Non-fiction, Technology · 5 chapters · 13,803 words

First lines

To enumerate and describe all the practical uses of X-rays, apart from medicine and scientific research in general, would require a good many more pages than can be devoted to the subject here. To take a few cases at random, without describing the instruments and methods employed: radiography reveals flaws in the structure of iron and steel building and bridge materials, and in the cylinders of airplane engines, and so avoids accidents. In England a gasoline or petrol tank was shown to have rivet heads on the outside and none on the inside.

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science · physics · popular science · electromagnetic radiation · radioactivity · scientific discoveries · experimental science · atomic theory · electricity · light · invisible radiation · medical imaging

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