Medicine: Making the Body Transparent

The mysteries of illness are revealed as never before

The throbbing of the brain to the beat of the heart, the coursing of blood through a maze of vessels, the dance of molecules in a working muscle, the stealthy growth of a tumor. For generations doctors have hunted for ways to see through skin and bone and into the whirring processes of life. The discovery of the X ray in 1895 by Wilhelm Roentgen opened the first window into the living body and inaugurated a new age in medicine. But anyone who has ever glanced at an X-ray film can perceive...

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