A Man with An X-Ray Vision
Several
streets in my neighborhood are named after former astronauts. I live on Cooper
Drive; Grissom Drive is nearby. I often think about these brave men who
explored the cosmos. Virgil (Gus) Grissom gave up his life as a modern-day
pioneer. Men have a compelling urge to
explore and to discover. The thrust of their curiosity leads them to try to go
where no one has gone before. Most of the surface of the earth has now been
explored so men now look to outer space as their next objective, sometimes at
their own peril. But before men journeyed into space, there were those who
also went where none had ventured previously, to satisfy their own curiosity,
yes, but for the benefit of mankind and the cost was often high.
Streets
may not be labeled in their honor nor are they often the subject of dinnertime
conversations. Still, they should not be forgotten. Clarence Madison Dally is
one.
Born in 1865, Dally grew up in Woodbridge, New Jersey, in a family
of glassblowers employed by the Edison Lamp Works in nearby Harrison. After
serving in the Navy, he went to work at Edison’s West Orange laboratory, where
he would assist in Edison’s experiments with incandescent lamps.
In
1895, the German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen, who was experimenting with
gas-filled vacuum tubes and electricity, discovered a strange green,
fluorescent light coming from a vacuum tube he had wrapped in heavy black
paper. Roentgen did not know what to call it, so he just named it “X.” X - ray, a previously unknown type of
radiation.
I do not know how he convinced his wife to do
it, but about a week later, he produced an image of this wife’s hand showing
her finger bones and wedding ring.
When
Thomas Edison got wind of this he immediately started to experiment with his
own collection of fluorescent tubes, chemicals, and gases. He wanted to know
more about X-rays and Clarence was right there to help.
Here,
I must put Clarence Dally’s story on pause.
Thaddeus
(Ted) Lisowski was my high school Chemistry teacher – a man I admired. Mr. “L”
always offered good advice and encouragement to his students. He was a positive
role model, a fun figure, worthy of respect and something of a back-up parent.
In winter, on his way “in,” he would often pick up Weber High School students
standing on corners freezing while they waited for a CTA bus to get to school.
When talking about chemical experiences and repercussions, he would repeatedly
say:
“A
little knowledge, can be a dangerous thing.”
How true that is.
Equally
fascinated with X-rays, Clarence Dally took to the work enthusiastically,
performing countless tests, holding his hand between the fluoroscope (a
cardboard viewing tube coated with fluorescent metal salt) and the X-ray tubes,
and unwittingly exposing himself to X-ray radiation for hours.
Clarence
tagged along with Edson when the inventor went to the National Electric Light
Association exhibition in New York City in 1896 where the two men demonstrated
Edison’s fluoroscope. Hundreds lined up for a chance to stand before a
fluorescent screen, peek into tube to see their own bones. The potential
medical benefits were immediately apparent.
Dally
went back to Edison’s lab and continued to conduct various tests over the next
few years. Unfortunately, he did not realize he consequences of choosing to be an
X-ray guinea pig. By 1900, he began to show lesions and strange skin conditions
on his hands and face. His hair began to fall out, then his eyebrows and
eyelashes. Soon his face was heavily wrinkled, and his left hand was swollen
and painful. OK, he thought, I will just let my left hand heal and the right
one instead. That didn’t work as you probably guessed by now. At night, Clarence
slept with both hands in water because of the burning. Plan B was to step away
from the testing and give everything a rest following what other researchers
often did. Things got worse.
By
the following year, the pain in Dally’s hands was becoming intolerable, and
they looked as if they had been scalded. They were the result of radiation
burns. Dally had skin grafted from his leg to his left hand several times, but
the lesions remained. When evidence of carcinoma appeared on his left arm,
Dally agreed to have it amputated just below his shoulder. Seven months later,
his right hand began to develop similar problems; surgeons removed four
fingers. When Dally—who had a wife and two sons—could not work anymore, Edison
kept him on the payroll and promised to take care of him for as long as he
lived. Edison gave up on X-rays, fearing they were too dangerous.
Dally’s condition continued to deteriorate, and in 1903, doctors
removed his right arm. By 1904, his 39-year-old body was ravaged by metastatic
skin cancer, and Dally died after eight years of experimenting with radiation.
But his tragic example eventually led to a greater understanding of radiology.
Edison,
for his part, was happy to leave those developments to others. “I did not
want to know anything more about X-rays,” he said at the time. “In the hands of
experienced operators, they are a valuable adjunct to surgery, locating as they
do objects concealed from view, and making, for instance, the operation for
appendicitis almost sure. But they are dangerous, deadly, in the hands of
inexperienced, or even in the hands of a man who is using them continuously for
experiment. When an eye doctor told me that one of my eyes was over a foot out
of focus, I told Clarence that there was a danger in the continuous use of the
tubes. The only thing that saved my eyesight was that I used a very weak tube,
while Clarence always chose the most powerful.”
During
the next few decades, many investigators and physicians developed radiation
burns and cancer, and more than one hundred of them died from exposure to X-
rays. These unfortunate early experiences eventually led to an awareness of
radiation hazards for professional workers and stimulated the development of a
new branch of science—namely, radiobiology.
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