X-ray, violet ray, and other rays

With Their Use in Modern Medicine
Maynard Shipley
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1926, Haldeman-Julius Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Highly important as are the phenomena of Radioactivity from the physical, chemical, medical, and philosophic points of view, they are hardly comparable in their relations to the affairs of our everyday life to the Roentgen or X-rays, and to the invisible violet or ultra-violet rays. The X-rays are utilized today in hundreds of practical ways, and are vastly important also in surgery, medicine, dentistry, and in biological investigations. It is perhaps not too much to say that the discovery of the so-called X-rays should be numbered among the two or three most important revelations of modern science. This will be clearly demonstrated in the course of the chapters to follow.
X-RAY, VIOLET RAY AND OTHER RAYS
To enumerate and describe all the practical uses of X-rays, apart from medicine and scientific research in general, would require a good many more pages than can be devoted to the subject here. To take a few cases at random, without describing the instruments and methods employed: radiography reveals flaws in the structure of iron and steel building and bridge materials, and in the cylinders of airplane engines, and so avoids accidents. In England a gasoline or petrol tank was shown to have rivet heads on the outside and none on the inside.
Serious defects in the steel axles of railway and automobile “under carriages” have been discovered by radiography. In one case, at least, the axles had been drilled in the wrong position and the holes had been simply filled with metal and covered over. An entire lot was rejected in consequence and probably serious accidents were forestalled.
“Cracks in castings, bad welds and weak places which do not show on the surface of metal are perfectly clear to the searching rays. How much would you give to know that that welded part in your automobile is really solid and perfect, that it contains no flaw to break down some day when you are twenty miles from a machine shop? A well-known mechanical engineer said recently that in ten years a metallurgical X-ray machine will be as vital a part of the equipment in an automobile repair shop, a foundry, or machine shop as it is now in a dentist’s office.”