Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1896-02-03
TO SEE THROUGH YOU.

A dispatch from London says: No
| discovery of modern times has created
such sensation in scientific circles as
that of Professor Roengen, of Wurtz-
berg University, who has been enabled
to photograph Opaque bodies. OF course
the discovery is yet in its infancy, but
enough has been shown to indicate its
tremendous possibilities. 1t is now al
most what the first telephone was and
the first phonograph was. The most
startling feature of the discovery is
the photographing of the human body.
The pictures taken thus far, though
wonderful in the extreme, are only
shawdow prints or sun pictures. All
leave but the substance penetrated by
the new rays and show black shadows
of impervious objects.
We read to-day in the correspon-
dence from the Continent that Belgium
has already adopted the new process,
and that her government has ordered
every hospital to be supplied with para
phernalia for aiding the surgeon.
With these mysterious pictures bull
lets and other foreign substances in the
flesh and bones OF patients have already
been located successfully in innumera-
BILE instances in half the countries in
what we used to consider 'slow old
Europe"
Perhaps the most interesting success
thus far attained is that recorded i'll the
news from Vienna, where calcsreous
deposits in various parts of the human
system have seen maryelously exposed.
Practically the same thing has been
shown in the photograph of mans
hand obtained by Campbell Swinton
for one of the newspapers here. The
hand was that of wealthy man, but
shows slight protuberances at the mid
die joints of two fingers, whereupon
medical men deduce the theory that its
owner is certain to be victim OF gout
before many years.
Swinton is now deluged with letters
from medical men who wish to make
use of the new discovery. One hopes
to find 6shbone in patients TIN oat;
another hopes to trace coin man has
swallowed, and still another wants the
photographers proof that patients
broken wrist has been badly set.
All this leads the Chronicle to assert
that we shall soon be living in "Pal-
ace of Truth" with all the discomtorts
set forth in Gilbert's play. "Your Skel
eton While You Wait, says the Chron-
icle, will be common street sign. :.
A Vienns man has already had his
brain photographed and has been un-
able to sleep ever since. But much the
hest witticism on the all-engrossing SUBJ
ject is that of the city promoter who
says he intends to have the invention
adopted for use on the camera and to
sell machines at a hundred guineas
$500 each, go that snap shots at fash
ionable men and women in Regent
street can be taken as if the pedestrians
left their clothes at home.
What the new invention cannot do is
almost as wonderful as what it will do,
The light, or electric current, or rays,
or whatever it is, passes through many
Opaque substances, yet refuses to pass
through materials considered transpar-
ent. Wood, carbon, aluminium, ebonite,
paper, papier-mache, human flesh and
leather are transparent to this new cur
rent, and copper is partially SO; but
nearly all metals and bone are Opaque.
Professor Wright, of Yale University, has
completed series of experiments which fully
confirm all that has been claimed for Professor
Roontgens remarkable method OF photograph
ing invisible objects by means Of cathode
rays.