A chest X-ray in progress at Dr. Maxime at the Cochin hospital in Paris, 1914.

Medical Treatments Through History:

A chest X-ray in progress at Dr. Maxime Menard’s radiology department at the Cochin hospital in Paris, circa 1914. Mendard would later lose his finger to side effects from operating the X-ray machine.

Menard finger

(In a striking juxtaposition to modern medicine, Menard smoked a cigarette while his offending finger was surgically removed).

It also took a long time to figure out how to use technology safely. A French physician, Dr. Maxime Menard, had to have his finger amputated when he developed cancer from frequent exposure to radiation while manning an X-ray machine.

When Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered the X-ray in 1895, the New York Times was so skeptical that the paper referred to the medical breakthrough as the “alleged discovery of how to photograph the invisible”.