When the X-ray machine was introduced in 1896, it was as if Hamlet's desire that "this too too solid flesh would melt" had become eerie reality. Public and physicians alike went wild. Gentlemen bought X-ray photographs of objects concealed in boxes, and fashionable ladies had X-ray portraits taken of themselves as gifts for friends and lovers. But it was physicians who were most intoxicated with the new device's possibilities. Without manual probing, they could now evaluate the extent of bone fractures and precisely locate where foreign bodies were lodged in tissues.
Seventy-six years...
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