Medical Treatment by X-Rays and Other Radiation

Abstract

When you are subjected to radiation, for medical purposes, the radiations are applied for one of two reasons : either that the practitioner may through you, or that he may do work (that is, expend energy) on the surface of your body or on more deeply-seated zones. If he be employing X-rays to see through you, he may cast X-ray shadows of varying density on to a fluorescent screen so that light rays similarly varying in intensity are passed on to his eyes, and he interprets the shadows in terms of those normal or abnormal contents of your body that are casting the shadows; or he may cause the X-ray shadows to be cast on a suitable photographic plate, where the energy of the X-rays is absorbed by the plate emulsion, so that on development he can observe the relative absorption of the X-rays by different portions of the intervened body.