 |
|
Early Use of X-ray Machines and Electrocardiographs at The Pennsylvania Hospital1897 Through 1927
Joel D. Howell, MD
JAMA. 1986;255(17):2320-2323.
|
|
| Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings. |
|
|
|
TODAY physicians accept machines as a desirable part of medical practice and use them to care for patients throughout the United States. Such was not always the case. Medical technology has been widely used only since the early 20th century.1,2 Many turn-of-the-century machines found their way into the growing number of hospitals.3-5 Perhaps the machines that had the greatest impact were those that revealed parts of the human body previously hidden from view, such as the x-ray machine, or made visible otherwise imperceptible actions of the body, such as the electrocardiograph.
This article examines how the x-ray machine became a part of routine patient care at the Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, between 1897 and 1927, and compares that process with the introduction of the electrocardiograph. It differs from most previous historical analysis of medical technology by focusing on how these instruments were actually used, not on how they were
. . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]
Author Affiliations
From the Division of General Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan Medical Center, Ann Arbor.
Footnotes
Portions of this article were read at the first Francis C. Wood Institute for the History of Medicine conference, Nov 3, 1984, Philadelphia.
Reprint requests to Division of General Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan Medical Center, Taubman Center—3116/0376, 1500 E Medical Center Dr, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0376 (Dr Howell).
 CiteULike  Connotea  Del.icio.us  Digg  Reddit  Technorati  Twitter
What's this?
|
