RADIOGRAPHER’S HEROISM

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 August 1933, Page 9

RADIOGRAPHER’S HEROISM

AGO XIES EX D U RE D FOR Al AX KIX.D LONDON, July 3. “I feel very fit, and am always cheerful.” It came as a surprise to hear such words from such a quarter; yet tin’s was the declaration made yesterday to a representative of The Daily Telegraph by a man who has undergone agonies in his unswerving duty towards suffering humanity. lie is Air. Harold J. Suggars, now chief of the photographic department at the London Hospital. For over twenty years—from 1902 to 1924— he was a radiographer at the hospital, and, though he seeks to minimise the facts, he must be ranked among the noble band of X-ray martyrs. Two of Mr. Suggars’s colleagues. Mr. Reginald Blackall and Air. E. E. Wilson, died victims to their work. Air. Ernest Harnack. the pioneer of the de partinent, is living in retirement —but minus both hands and wrists. Air. Suggars’s chest is pitted with numerous wounds, evidences ol his heroic del ermina.t ioli Io carry on his duties until be "as no longer allowed (» do so. His rishi eyelid, had to be taken away and. by a very skilful op•r,ai'on. I.he skin ol his cheek drawn ' J 11 'A ;»!■'] A Ami. hr r.trbt forcfnrTC’*. he aid: I hr deetors told me twenty-five

years ago that this must come off. But it is still here.” This hero, who resents the suggestion that he has done anything heroic, prefers, rather than dwell on his work and its resultant sufferings, to tell you funny stories that have come within the range of his experience. “1 remember,” he said, “a man who same here to be X-rayed for some tie-tacks that had lodged in his throat. While a radiograph was being taken he suddenly coughed up all the tacks. He was loud in his praise of the wonderful powers of the mysterious lamp! "Then there was a woman who came and told us she had swallowed the top row of her false teeth. "While preparations were being made to have a radiograph taken, the teeth —unknown to the patientdropped out of her blouse, where they hml been lost.’ She was greatly agitated. and thought that some sort of operation had been performed on her unawares. “Anyhow, when the teeth were handed to her she shouted out joyfully, •Well' 1 wouldn’t have believed such a thing possible.’ ”