The ability to look inside a person
It is impossible to imagine life without the next great discovery. Imagine not knowing where to operate on a patient, or which bone is broken, where the bullet is lodged, or what the pathology might be. The ability to look inside a person without cutting them open was a turning point in the history of medicine. At the end of the 19th century, people were using electricity without fully understanding what it was. In 1895, the German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen experimented with the electron beam tube, a glass cylinder with highly rarefied air inside.
X-ray was interested in the glow produced by the rays emanating from the tube. For one of his experiments, Röntgen surrounded the tube with black cardboard and darkened the room. Then he turned on the tube. And then, one thing struck him – the photographic plate in his laboratory glowed. X-ray realized that something, very unusual, was going on. And that the beam coming out of the tube was not a cathode ray at all; he also discovered that it didn’t respond to a magnet. And it could not be deflected by a magnet like cathode rays. It was a completely unknown phenomenon, and Röntgen called it “X-rays. Quite by accident, Röntgen discovered radiation unknown to science, which we call X-rays. For a few weeks he acted very mysteriously, and then he called his wife into his office and said: “Berta, let me show you what I’m doing here, because no one would believe it.” He put her hand under the beam and took the picture.