CHAPTER I

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LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 1050

Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius

X-Ray, Violet Ray

and Other Rays

With Their Use in Modern Medicine

Maynard Shipley

HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY

GIRARD, KANSAS

Copyright, 1926,

Haldeman-Julius Company

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Introduction 4

Chapter I. Everyday Uses of X-Rays 5

Chapter II. Curative Value of X-Rays—X-Rays Cure Whooping

Cough—X-Rays for Malaria 18

Chapter III. Martyrs to Radiology 32

Chapter IV. Discovery and Nature of X-Rays 43

Chapter V. Ultra-Violet Light in Health and Disease—Sunlight

and Infantile Paralysis 48

INTRODUCTION

Highly important as are the phenomena of Radioactivity from the

physical, chemical, medical, and philosophic points of view, they

are hardly comparable in their relations to the affairs of our

everyday life to the Roentgen or X-rays, and to the invisible violet

or ultra-violet rays. The X-rays are utilized today in hundreds of

practical ways, and are vastly important also in surgery, medicine,

dentistry, and in biological investigations. It is perhaps not too much

to say that the discovery of the so-called X-rays should be numbered

among the two or three most important revelations of modern science.

This will be clearly demonstrated in the course of the chapters to

follow.

X-RAY, VIOLET RAY AND OTHER RAYS

CHAPTER I

EVERYDAY USES OF X-RAYS

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.

Serious defects in the steel axles of railway and automobile “under

carriages” have been discovered by radiography. In one case, at least,

the axles had been drilled in the wrong position and the holes had been

simply filled with metal and covered over. An entire lot was rejected

in consequence and probably serious accidents were forestalled.

“Cracks in castings, bad welds and weak places which do not show on

the surface of metal are perfectly clear to the searching rays. How

much would you give to _know_ that that welded part in your automobile

is really solid and perfect, that it contains no flaw to break down

some day when you are twenty miles from a machine shop? A well-known

mechanical engineer said recently that in ten years a metallurgical

X-ray machine will be as vital a part of the equipment in an

automobile repair shop, a foundry, or machine shop as it is now in a

dentist’s office.”

We are assured by _The Iron Trade_ (73:26) that “the practice of

analyzing metals by means of X-rays is only in its infancy. There

is every reason to believe that soon great advances will be made in

determining the crystallization and therefore the properties of metals.

Students of metallurgy are well aware that the properties of metals

and other bodies depend on the nature of their crystallization. The

microscope has rendered valuable service largely because it enables

the form and arrangement of the crystalline grains to be studied. The

X-ray carries the same form of inquiry into a region 10,000 times more

minute, thereby furnishing new evidence as to crystalline structures,

so that it is now possible to see the atoms and the molecules, and

the way they form crystals. Every crystal has its characteristic

X-ray spectrum and can be identified thereby even when the individual

crystals are beyond the resolving power of the microscope and the

substance is in danger of being called amorphous. If a specimen

contains a mixture of crystalline substances, the spectrum shows the

combined effect of all the substances, and provided each individual

spectrum is known, the specimen can be analyzed.”

The X-rays are also used to determine the quality of the fabric in

automobile tires, and even to detect irregularities in the centers of

golf balls, and to reveal why some of them fly straighter and farther

than others.

“The professional detective, too,” says Mr. Wilfred S. Ogden (_Popular

Science Monthly_, August, 1923), “will find X-rays useful in his

business. Consider the detection of infernal machines, for example.

Two or three X-ray plates will tell an investigator just what is in a

suspicious-looking box. If it is a bomb the X-ray will show him how

to get it apart and render it harmless. Immediate detection of false

bottoms in trunks is child’s play with the X-ray. When the government

provided its customs inspectors with X-ray machines the gems which

smugglers try to hide in the linings of clothes or in hollow-handled

hairbrushes might as well be worn openly.

“The X-rays give us one of the easiest ways to detect the alteration

of checks and other documents. It is seldom that such an alteration is

made with exactly the same ink used on the original. Inks even of the

same color, differ in the way they affect the rays. In most cases all

that is necessary to detect an alteration is to place the suspected

document for a moment under the X-rays and make a photograph of it. The

new ink used in the alteration will stand out clearly as different from

the old.

“The industrial detective will find X-rays just as useful. The

adulteration of foods by sawdust, sand or clay; the adding of too much

filler to paper; the presence of grit in lubricating oil, all will be

revealed.

“Another use of the rays comes home to every cook and housewife. X-rays

constitute the only sure way to tell good eggs from bad. Pass each

egg in turn through the X-rays and let its shadow fall on a chemical

screen. You will see exactly what is inside each egg. The ones

containing hopeful chicks may be rejected.”

One of the most remarkable economic or biological uses of the X-ray

so far developed is the study of silk-worms and their diseases. The

Silk Association of America has established a laboratory—Department of

Sericulture—in the Canton Christian College, presided over by a staff

of Chinese and foreign entomologists. Here the silk-worm is X-rayed by

powerful microscopes, and all his disorders diagnosed and corrected,

says Mr. Philip A. Yountz (_Scientific American_, September, 1925).

“Numerous autopsies on deceased members of the silk-worm tribe revealed

that from 50 to 100 percent of the worms raised in South China were

infected with diseases that made the infant mortality rate excessively

high and destroyed the value of the silk from those hardy enough to

survive. The elimination of these diseases would enable South China to

produce four or five times as much silk.”

In Great Britain, X-rays are used in the analysis of coal, the method

being an adaptation of the X-ray stereoscope.

In Berlin, S. Nalken, a noted criminologist, has devised an important

improvement in finger-print identification. X-ray pictures are

obtained of the finger, with the muscles and bones. This is done

without the use of any chemicals that could obstruct the delicate

furrows of the finger lines. Moreover, the finger bone is shaped

so characteristically as to aid identification. Whenever a certain

likeness of finger-lines is discovered, the bones are examined to see

if further research is necessary.

Picture fakers have been dethroned by application of the X-ray to

paintings. Recently painted “old masters” are now easily detected.

Modern artists use white-lead, which is more opaque than the “priming”

or “sizing” used by the older artists; and the X-ray device “made in

Germany” in 1914 by Dr. Faber, and further developed by the French

expert, Dr. André Chéron, at once distinguishes the old from the new.

One picture by Van Ostade, of men drinking at a table, proved to be a

fraud when submitted to the X-ray; it had been painted over a study of

dead birds. Another, called “The Royal Child,” a supposed 16th century

work, now in the Louvre, was proved to have been painted during the

19th century over a picture of very much earlier date.

During a popular lecture on the X-ray in London, before the Royal

Institution, the distinguished physicist, Prof. G. W. C. Kaye, showed

a number of radiograph slides, among which were two pictures by Dutch

painters, one representing the Madonna and the other the Crucifixion.

In the former, the Madonna appeared to be looking at something which

was non-existent in the canvas, and a radiograph proved the missing

object was a child which some former owner of the picture had painted

out. In the second picture, a woman in the attitude of prayer was found

to have been painted over what was in the original the figure of a man

in monk’s garb.

The first X-ray pictures ever taken of a mummy were completed by

scientists at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City.

The pictures showing the skeleton in detail are expected to be a great

aid in studying the development of bone formations in the evolution of

man. This first subject of the scientists’ X-ray was a South American

Indian mummy. Fake mummies, like false gems, are instantly detected by

X-ray methods.

One of the methods used for detecting the theft of diamonds at the

mines is to examine the workmen with X-rays. Of course, a fluoroscope

is used to make the X-ray image visible, and this is the type used in

any regular X-ray work.

The X-rays are now being used in shoe-stores—“foot-o-scope”

instruments—to enable shoe salesmen to see the bones of a customer’s

foot and thus make correct fittings of shoes.

A few years ago there arrived from Germany a new kind of mechanical

doll. “A secret mechanism inside enabled it to walk, sit down or stand

up, and to do other unusual things. The importer in possession of the

sample doll would not allow it to be opened. But one of the competitors

borrowed the doll. He had promised not to open it. But he made some

X-ray photographs of it. Now he is manufacturing these dolls himself.”

During the World War every effort was made to introduce contraband

materials into Germany and if it had not been for the all-seeing eye of

the Roentgen ray, it would have been impossible to prevent materials of

the utmost importance to the enemy from reaching him by way of neutral

countries. Efforts were made repeatedly to smuggle rubber and copper by

burying them in bales or bundles of other materials. It would have been

impossible to have made a minute investigation of every bale that was

shipped, but by means of X-rays it was possible to see through these

bundles and packages and locate any substances that were more or less

opaque to the rays.

The X-ray has been found useful for examining timber up to 18 inches

thick for internal knots, resin pockets, cracks and other defects.

“When submarines were active and the supply of the best kinds of wood

was uncertain, it was necessary to make some of the wooden parts out

of small pieces of ordinary wood fitted and glued together. The way

these pieces were joined and fastened was extremely important. A bit of

weak glue inside some little strut might mean a disastrous collapse in

the air. But real inspection seemed impossible, for the places where

important faults might exist were hidden from view. Finally scientists

solved the problem by building an X-ray apparatus with which they could

look into the inside of each built-up airplane part and tell whether it

held some little imperfection which might prove dangerous.

“This ‘internal inspection’ of wooden articles by X-ray has been

applied, since the war, to many other articles. Hidden joints inside

high-class furniture and cabinet work, invisible knots and flaws inside

the wood itself, can be determined easily by X-ray examination.” (W. S.

Ogden).

_The Scientific American_ (September, 1924) published an abstract of

a paper read before the _Deutschen Bunsen-Gesellschaft_, in which

Dr. D. Coster showed that “the relations between the X-ray spectra of

the different elements are so simple that, in some respects, they are

more useful for purposes of chemical analysis than ordinary luminous

spectra. An important advantage is the fact that the X-ray spectrum

of an element is quite independent of the nature of the compound

containing it. It is easy to detect the presence in a mixture of

which not more than one milligram is available. Certain precautions

are necessary in examining the X-ray spectra; although the number of

lines for each element is comparatively limited, recent observations

have shown the existence of a number of weaker lines; in addition to

this, with the high voltages now generally used, not only the spectrum

of the first order, but also those of higher orders appear. Slight

impurities in the material of the anticathode, and in the subject

under examination, also give their lines, so that there are often

various possibilities to be considered before a given line can be

explained. Not only the wave length, but also the typical appearance

of the suspected lines must be considered, as well as their relative

intensity. By measuring photometrically the intensity of the spectral

lines it is possible, in some cases, to obtain a quantitative estimate

of the amount of an element present in a mixture.”

Another method of rapid analysis of material in the laboratory by

the use of X-rays in a much shorter time than that required by the

older chemical methods is that devised by Professor Urbain, of the

Minero-Chemical Laboratory at the Sorbonne, with the assistance of

Eugene Delaunay. Mr. Delaunay, who did the actual work of testing the

new X-ray method, says there is no risk of error.

By employment of X-rays the scientist is now able to ascertain the

arrangement of the atoms and molecules within the crystal “network”

(structure—or “space lattice” of the crystal).[1] The results are

obtained from the study of the reflection and refraction of the rays by

the crystals, or, more precisely, the successive rows of molecules in

the crystal. These act toward the extremely short X-rays in the same

way as a grating spectroscope does to ordinary light-rays.

Man’s ability to lengthen the ultra-violet end of the spectrum is

limited by his capacity to provide a diffraction grating, or a mineral

prism, which can split up light-waves of increasingly greater frequency

(or shortness). The width of a grating space (a fine line on speculum

metal, which acts as a minute mirror) must be comparable to the wave

length of the light. Previous to the discoveries of Prof. Max von

Laue in Munich (now in Zurich), and Prof. William Henry Bragg, of the

University of London, no grating or other material was known whose

spaces were as small as the wave length of X-rays. Laue conceived the

brilliant idea that the regular arrangement of the atoms in a crystal

might serve the purpose. They did. Bragg, and later his son, Prof. W.

L. Bragg, of the University of Manchester, followed up the work of Laue

with results of immeasurable value to science.

A very important relation between the atomic number of an element

and its X-ray spectrum was discovered by the brilliant young English

physicist, H. G. T. Moseley (1888-1915), in his 26th year, a year

before his death by a Turkish bullet at the Dardanelles. While

analyzing the characteristic X-rays which are given off when any kind

of substance is bombarded with cathode rays, Moseley found that the

atoms of all the different substances emit radiations or groups of

radiations which are extraordinarily similar, but which differ in their

wave lengths as we proceed from substance to substance; the frequencies

(wave lengths) change by definite steps as one progresses from elements

of lower to elements of higher atomic weights. Through Moseley’s

epoch-making discovery we now know that each of the 92 elements,

from hydrogen to uranium, is built up by successive additions of one

positive charge (proton) and one negative electron, and that the atomic

numbers—from 1 to 92—correspond to the number of protons and electrons

in each successively heavier (and more complex) atom.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This phase of our subject can only be alluded to in this little

book. For an authoritative yet easily understood exposition of the

subject, see Bragg, W. H. and W. L., “X-Rays and Crystal Structure”;

also Kaye, G. W. C., “X-Rays”; and, for more advanced reading,

deBroglie, Maurice, “X-Rays”.