The X-ray is frequently presented as a classic case of technological innovation in medicine. Histories have presented the enthusiastic adoption and use of the new matter-penetrating radiation by the medical community as driven by diagnostic possibilities. However, this view obscures the complete story. Considering X-rays as one component of a technological configuration developed for `light' treatment of a specific disease, this article expands our understanding of the reception and adoption of X-rays, and medical technologies in general. The article focuses on the relationship between X-rays and another much less well known, but Nobel Prize-winning light therapy: the Finsen Lamp. By viewing these two simultaneously competing and complementary technologies through the lens of a specific skin disease---lupus vulgaris---I show that there was much more to early X-rays than diagnosis and that they were far from the only, or even the most useful, novel medical technology at the time.
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Thesis
Jamieson, A K;
(cited 2010)
An Intolerable Affliction: A History of Lupus Vulgaris in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Britain
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Thesis
Jeffrey C. Womack;
(2016)
Uncertainty Medicine: The Development of Radiation Therapy, 1895-1925
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Book
Jeffrey Womack;
(2020)
Radiation Evangelists: Technology, Therapy, and Uncertainty at the Turn of the Century
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Almond, Peter R.;
(2013)
Cobalt Blues: The Story of Leonard Grimmett, the Man behind the First Cobalt-60 Unit in the United States
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Projit Bihari Mukharji;
(2016)
Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda, Small Technologies, and Braided Sciences
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Tania Anne Woloshyn;
(2017)
Soaking up the rays: Light therapy and visual culture in Britain, c. 1890-1940
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Article
Vivien Hamilton;
(October 2017)
Medical Machines as Symbols of Science? Promoting Electrotherapy in Victorian Canada
(/isis/citation/CBB874878228/)
Article
Bogousslavsky, Julien;
Tatu, Laurent;
(2013)
French Neuropsychiatry in the Great War: Between Moral Support and Electricity
(/isis/citation/CBB001320358/)
Thesis
Cohen, Sara Jo;
(2011)
Medical Screening: Medical Imag[in]ing, the Body, and the Self
(/isis/citation/CBB001567331/)
Article
Silver, John R.;
Weiner, M.-F.;
(2013)
Electrical Treatment of Spinal Cord Injuries in the 18th and 19th Centuries
(/isis/citation/CBB001421952/)
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Dany Nobus;
(2020)
The madness of Princess Alice: Sigmund Freud, Ernst Simmel and Alice of Battenberg at Kurhaus Schloß Tegel
(/isis/citation/CBB157472221/)
Article
Blandin, Gaston;
(2009)
Le surprenant traitement de la teigne dans un hôpital nantais au début du XXème siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB000933281/)
Book
Peckham, Robert;
Pomfret, David M.;
(2013)
Imperial Contagions: Medicine, Hygiene, and Cultures of Planning in Asia
(/isis/citation/CBB001214650/)
Article
Goldberg, Daniel S.;
(2011)
Suffering and Death among Early American Roentgenologists: The Power of Remotely Anatomizing the Living Body in Fin de Siècle America
(/isis/citation/CBB001034205/)
Article
Lavine, Matthew;
(2014)
The Science of Automatic Precision: The Rise and Fall of Spectro-Chrome Therapy
(/isis/citation/CBB001201055/)
Book
Jonathan Simon;
(2016)
Diphtheria Serum as a Technological Object: A Philosophical Analysis of Serotherapy in France 1894-1900
(/isis/citation/CBB824886866/)
Article
Rodríguez-Ocaña, Esteban;
(2007)
The Social Production of Novelty: Diphtheria Serotherapy, “Herald of the New Medicine”
(/isis/citation/CBB000820144/)
Article
Anna Wexler;
(2017)
The Medical Battery in The United States (1870–1920): Electrotherapy at Home and in the Clinic
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Article
Watson, Lindsay R.;
(2013)
Tom Tiddler's Ground: Irregular Medical Practitioners and Male Sexual Problems in New Zealand, 1858--1908
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Book
Pierre-Yves Donzé;
(2018)
Making Medicine a Business: X-ray Technology, Global Competition, and the Transformation of the Japanese Medical System, 1895-1945
(/isis/citation/CBB953967669/)
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