remained in these criminals, theyinspected those parts which nature previously had con-
cealed,.... For, they say, when pain occursinternally, it is impossible for one who has not
learned in which part eachinternalorgan or intestine lies, to know what hurts the patient.
Nor can that part which is ill be treated by one who does not know what it is....External
remedies also can be applied more suitably by people acquainted with the positions, shapes,
and size of theinternalparts (reprinted in von Staden 1992 : 236, emphasis in original).Perhaps it is not surprising that vivisections and dissections fell from favor for
centuries. Dissections started again in Italy in 1286, when a doctor in Cremona
studied corpses for clues about an epidemic. By the early 1300s, postmortems were
part of medical school instruction (Park 1995 ). From 1752 to 1832, London’s
College of Surgeons carried out public dissections on the bodies of criminals
executed for murder, while Britain’s“resurrection men”dug up bodies from graves
for anatomists to study (MacDonald 2005 ). However, the challenge continued for
how to see inside the intact living body.
Radiology began in 1895 with a presentation by Wilhelm Roentgen to the
Wurzburg Physical Medical Society. He examined his own hand and the hand of
his wife, Bertha (Fig.15.2). The X-ray photograph of a living hand“was so star-
tling, eerie, and yet informative”that popular journals as well as technical journals
Fig. 15.2 The hand of Mrs.
Wilhelm Roentgen: thefirst
X-ray image, 1895. In: Otto
Glasser,Wilhelm Conrad
Röntgen and the early history
of the Roentgen rays,London,
- Courtesy of the
National Library of Medicine.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/
dreamanatomy/da_g_Z-1.
html
314 L.L. Sievert and D.E. Brown