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<\/a>\nClarence Madison Dally<\/em><\/p>\n
In 1895, the German physicist\u00a0Wilhelm Roentgen\u00a0was experimenting with gas-filled vacuum tubes and electricity; that November he observed a green fluorescent light coming from a tube that had been wrapped in heavy black paper. He\u2019d stumbled, quite accidentally, onto an unknown type of radiation, which he named an \u201cX-ray.\u201d A week later, Roentgen made an X-ray image of his wife\u2019s hand, revealing finger bones and a bulbous wedding ring.\u00a0The image\u00a0was quickly circulated around the world to a dazzled audience.<\/p>\n
Edison received news of the discovery and immediately set out to experiment with his own fluorescent lamps. He\u2019d been known for his background in incandescent lamps, where electricity flowed through filaments, causing them to heat and glow, but Edison had a newfound fascination with the chemical reactions and gasses in Roentgen\u2019s fluorescent tubes and the X-rays he had discovered. Equally fascinated, Clarence Dally took to the work enthusiastically, performing countless tests, holding his hand between the fluoroscope (a cardboard viewing tube coated with fluorescent metal salt) and the X-ray tubes, and unwittingly exposing himself to poisonous radiation for hours on end.<\/p>\n In May 1896, Edison, along with Dally, went to the National Electric Light Association exhibition in New York City to demonstrate his fluoroscope. Hundreds lined up for the opportunity to stand before a fluorescent screen, then peer into the scope to see their own bones. The potential medical benefits were immediately apparent to anyone who saw the display.<\/p>\n Dally returned to Edison\u2019s X-ray room in West Orange and continued to test, refine and experiment over the next few years. By 1900, he began to show lesions and degenerative skin conditions on his hands and face. His hair began to fall out, then his eyebrows and eyelashes, too. Soon his face was heavily wrinkled, and his left hand was especially swollen and painful. Like a faithful mucker committed to science, Dally found what he thought was the solution to prevent further damage to his left hand: He began using his right hand instead. The result might have been predictable. At night, he slept with both hands in water to alleviate the burning. Like many researchers at the time, Dally assumed he\u2019d heal with rest and time away from the tubes.<\/p>\n In September 1901, Dally was asked to travel to Buffalo, New York, on a matter of national importance. One of Edison\u2019s X-ray machines, which was on display there at the\u00a0Pan-American Exposition, might be needed.\u00a0President William McKinley\u00a0had been about to give a speech at the exposition when an anarchist named\u00a0Leon Czolgosz\u00a0darted toward him, a pistol concealed in a handkerchief, and fired twice, hitting McKinley in the abdomen.<\/p>\n Dally and a colleague arrived in Buffalo and quickly set about installing the X-ray machine in the Millburn House, where McKinley had been staying, while the president underwent surgery at the Exposition hospital. One of the bullets had merely grazed McKinley and was discovered in his clothing, but the other had lodged in his abdomen. Surgeons couldn\u2019t locate it, but McKinley\u2019s doctors deemed the president\u2019s condition too unstable for him to be X-rayed. Dally waited for McKinley to improve so that he might guide the surgeons to the hidden bullet, but that day never came: McKinley died a week after he had been shot. Dally returned to New Jersey.<\/p>\n By the following year, the pain in Dally\u2019s hands was becoming intolerable, and they looked, some people said, as if they\u2019d been scalded. Dally had skin grafted from his leg to his left hand several times, but the lesions remained. When evidence of carcinoma appeared on his left arm, Dally agreed to have it amputated just below his shoulder.<\/p>\n Seven months later, his right hand began to develop similar problems; surgeons removed four fingers. When Dally\u2014who had a wife and two sons\u2014couldn\u2019t work anymore, Edison kept him on the payroll and promised to take care of him for as long as he lived. Edison put an end to his experiments with Roentgen\u2019s rays. \u201cI stopped experimenting with them two years ago, when I came near to losing my eyesight, and Dally, my assistant, practically lost the use of both of his arms,\u201d Edison would tell a reporter from the\u00a0New York World<\/em>. \u201cI am afraid of radium and polonium too, and I don\u2019t want to monkey with them.\u201d<\/p>\n When an oculist informed him that his \u201ceye was something over a foot out of focus,\u201d Edison said, he told Dally \u201cthat there was a danger in the continuous use of the tubes.\u201d He added, \u201cThe only thing that saved my eyesight was that I used a very weak tube, while Dally insisted in using the most powerful one he could find.\u201d<\/p>\n Dally\u2019s condition continued to deteriorate, and in 1903, doctors removed his right arm. By 1904, his 39-year-old body was ravaged by metastatic skin cancer, and Dally died after eight years of experimenting with radiation. But his tragic example eventually led to a greater understanding of radiology.<\/p>\n Edison, for his part, was happy to leave those developments to others. \u201cI did not want to know anything more about X-rays,\u201d he said at the time. \u201cIn the hands of experienced operators they are a valuable adjunct to surgery, locating as they do objects concealed from view, and making, for instance, the operation for appendicitis almost sure. But they are dangerous, deadly, in the hands of inexperienced, or even in the hands of a man who is using them continuously for experiment.\u201d Referring to himself and to Dally, he said, \u201cThere are two pretty good object-lessons of this fact to be found in the Oranges.\u201d<\/p>\n Culled from:\u00a0Smithsonian Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/a>
\nThe first X-ray image, of which Roentgen’s wife Anna said, “I have seen my death”.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nThomas Edison peers at Clarence Dally’s hand through his fluoroscope<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nDally’s Red Right Hand<\/em><\/p>\nCrime Scene Du Jour!<\/h3>\n