November 8, 201111/8/11 1 comment It’s hard to imagine medicine
without x-rays, but the technology is a relative youngster in
health care. Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, professor of physics and
director of the Physical Institute of the University of
Wurzburg, Germany, stumbled on x-rays quite by accident working
late one November night in 1895 in his laboratory. Today, Nov.
8, is celebrated as X-ray Discovery Day in salute of this life-
changing, life-saving technology. In her book Wilhelm Roentgen
and the Discovery of X-Rays, Kimberly Garcia recounts that
Roentgen, then 50 years old, was experimenting with electricity
when he discovered the existence of this “invisible light.” He
repeated his experiments numerous times in the coming weeks,
isolating himself and sometimes sleeping on a cot in his lab. He
had his wife, Bertha, place her hand on a photographic plate for
15 minutes while x-rays passed through it. The resulting
picture, which alarmed Frau Roentgen, became famous. Not knowing
what exactly the rays were