In answer he took up the photograph of the box of weights. "Here are already modifications," he said, indicating the various degrees of shadow produced by the aluminium, platinum, and brass weights, the brass hinges, and even the metallic stamped lettering on the cover of the box, which was faintly perceptible.
"But Professor Neusser has already announced that the photographing of the various organs is possible."
"We shall see what we shall see," he said. We have the start now; the developments will follow in time."
"You know the apparatus for introducing the electric light into the stomach?"
"Yes."
"Do you think that this electric light will become a vacuum tube for photographing, from the stomach, any part of the abdomen or thorax?"
The idea of swallowing a Crookes tube, and sending a high frequency current down into one's stomach, seemed to him exceedingly funny. "When I have done it, I will tell you," he said, smiling, resolute in abiding by results.
"There is much to do, and I am busy, very busy," he said in conclusion. He extended his hand in farewell, his eyes already wandering toward his work in the inside room. And his visitor promptly left him; the words, "I am busy," said in all sincerity, seeming to describe in a single phrase the essence of his character and the watchword of a very unusual man.
Returning by way of Berlin, I called upon Herr Spies of the Urania, whose photographs after the Röntgen method were the first made public, and have been the best seen thus far. The Urania is a peculiar institution, and one which it seems might be profitably duplicated in other countries. It is a scientific theatre. By means of the lantern and an admirable equipment of scientific appliances, all new discoveries, as well as ordinary interesting and picturesque phenomena, when new discoveries are lacking, are described and illustrated daily to the public, who pay for seats as in an ordinary theatre, and keep the Urania profitably filled all the year round. Professor Spies is a young man of great mental alertness and mechanical resource. It is the photograph of a hand, his wife's hand, which illustrates, perhaps better than any other illustration in this article, the clear delineation of the bones which can be obtained by the Röntgen rays. In speaking of the discovery he said:
"I applied it, as soon as the penetration of flesh was apparent, to the photograph of a man's hand. Something in it had pained him for years, and the photograph at once exhibited a small foreign object, as you can see;" and he exhibited a copy of the photograph in question. "The speck there is a small piece of glass, which was immediately extracted, and which, in all probability, would have otherwise remained in the man's hand to the end of his days." All of which indicates that the needle which has pursued its travels in so many persons, through so many years, will be suppressed by the camera.