SAFE X-RAYS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 83, 9 April 1910, Page 10

SAFE X-RAYS.

A DANGER-PROOF ROOM. The final conquering of X-rays and the successful harnessing of them for the treatment of diseased condition* without danger to the operator have been brought a decided step nearer by a clever arrangement of apparatus just installed at the London Hospital. It will bo remembered, says the Daily Mail, that Dr. HallEdwards and Mr. Harry Cox suffered serious injuries through experiments wilh X-ray*. The initial principle of tho apparatus, which was explained to a medical correspondent by Dr. Blackall, the chief operator, is that the operator cannot inadvertently come within tho range of the rays, A middle-aged woman with a red and angry lupus scar on her face who came for treatment afforded a striking objectlesson of tho advances in treatment by X-rays which have been made in the past few years. The patient lay on a leather couch in a white-painted cubicle, in the front wall of which were two ordinary glass windows and a door having two glass panels. An X-ray tube surrounded by a shield of Bohemian lead glass (impermeable to the rays) was arranged to protect her from the light at every point except the one where a narrpw shaft of rays could fall directly on the lupus patch. The patient being in position, the operator left the cubicle, carefully closing the door beiund him. Then, and then only, the current was turned on. SERIES OF SAFEGUARDS. The ordinary-looking partition with its commonplace-looking glass windows and door-panels held the key of tho situation The glass — more than a quarter of an inch thick — was ft Bohemian lead glass, and though perfectly transparent was impervious to the rays, while the woodwork of both door and partition was a oandwich of two layers of half-inch boards enclosing two sheets of lead and iron, each an eighth of an inch thick. "In testing that glass," said an informant, "it was bombarded by rays from an X-ray tube held close to it while a photographic plate was placed, on its other side. After an hour's exposure the plate was still unaffected." Even the spark gap (which warns the operator of any rise in tho vacuum of an active tube) and tho mechanism for lowering, the vacuum are controlled by the operator from his position of safety outside the ligbt-chaniber A further safeguard is an automatic switch on the door leading into the lightchamber. If the operator unthinkingly attempt* to enter while the light i& on, th© mere opening of the door breaks the electric circuit and the yellow green flickering immediately ceases in the tube.