Radiation Evangelists

Radiation Evangelists focuses on the researchers and practitioners who experimented with the curative powers of radiation and radium in the twenty years after their discovery at the turn of the twentieth century. Wilhelm Röntgen is generally regarded as having discovered X rays in 1895, followed a few years later by Marie Curie and Pierre Curie's identification of radium. Although the book focuses on the initial “evangelists,” its larger purpose is to explore how new technologies get transformed into therapeutic tools and the problems and possibilities entailed in that process. Jeffrey C. Womack distinguishes between the early use of X rays for diagnosis and therapy. The latter, “amounted to unregulated human experimentation with a technology that users knew could, and did, cause harm” (p. 26). The damage arose because early experimenters, called roentgenologists, did not use shields to protect the parts of the body that were not the focus of the

Business · Curie · Economic policy · Harm · Marie curie · Physics · Political science · Radium · History · Law · Twentieth Century Scientific Developments

• Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influence 2023

  James Evans, Tyler Reigeluth et al.•Isis•2023

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