c.2024, Bloomsbury Academic
$14.95
121 pages
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Truth Contributor
Is it broken?
Doesn’t look like it, but it sure does hurt. You can’t bend it, can’t bear to touch it, and it’s swelling and turning a little red. Maybe you should see a doctor. As in the new book X-Ray by Nicole Lobdell, your injury may need some looking into.
It was a late fall day, nearly 129 years ago when it happened. German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen was messing around with equipment in his laboratory when he noticed an unexpected fluorescence on a screen across the room. His curiosity piqued, he placed a few random objects between a Crookes tube and the screen and was astounded to see “shadow-like images” on the screen. Six weeks later, on December 22, 1885, he asked his wife, Anna Bertha, to place her hand in the in-between, and her skeletal fingers appeared.
And from there on, says Lobdell, “no one was safe from the X-ray’s gaze.”
Early in the last century, hobbyists made their own X-ray machines at home, and hospitals made them “the cutting edge of medical technology.” Historians wanted them, courtrooms were happy X-rays existed, and hundreds of women were trained to operate the machines in field hospitals.
“If Instagram had been around, Lobdell says, “it would have been full of skeletal hands.”
But even then, around Marie Curie’s time, some called attention to the dangers of X-rays. Thomas Edison complained of vision problems after experimenting with his X-ray machine, and too much exposure caused burns and cancerous sores in others.
Over time, the fact became obvious that X-rays were not completely safe at all times, but they were fun, movies and songs were made about them, and they helped sell shoes! People loved imagining that superheroes had “X-ray eyes.”
Today, we know the dangers of overexposure, and physicians strive to avoid that situation with their patients. Still, as the first X-ray emoji proves, we haven’t lost our fascination…
What, you might think, could you possibly learn from a skinny little book like X-ray?
A lot, as it turns out.
Author Nicole Lobdell packs a ton of information inside just over 100 pages, ranging from a surprisingly exciting account of a lazy afternoon’s Eureka! to battlefields and modern ICUs. Along the way, we sit in Edwardian parlors with folks who play with radiation, we meet those who regret having done so, and we learn one rather embarrassing use for X-rays.
If that sounds very not-so-stuffy to you, you’re right. The info Lobdell shares is told, insider-like, with just enough fluff to remain entertaining, but not so much that this book gets silly. Nope, it’s the real deal, with authentic history and facts in bite-size, succinctly-told, easy-to-understand chapters that will appeal to science lovers – but that won’t scare away anyone who just wants a quick, fun book to enjoy.
You don’t have to have a PhD to read this book. You’ll only need a desire for an interesting slice of Americana to want X-ray. Pick it up soon. You’ll truly enjoy looking through it.