This Won’t Hurt a Bit: 1942

My husband's mother (and therefore my husband) was X-rayed every two to three weeks during her pregnancy. If that weren't enough, she was a two-pack-a-day smoker during her entire term. Now elderly, but otherwise in good health, she is amazed anyone survived those days. And my husband... Come to think of it, this could explain a lot. Just kidding, hun!

I too, played around a shoe store looking at our bones. We stuck everything in the opening to see what we looked like under the skin. All except our heads. I'm 75 now, and have good blood. Although there are isolated cases.

The kid's expression is great, but the nurse's is priceless. She's obviously an expert at keeping kids calm in this sort of situation.

My folks have always wondered if the time my brother spent at my grandma's place of work (a shoe store) playing with the fluoroscope to see his foot bones contributed to his death from leukemia in his childhood.

My kid had to have a chest x-ray a few months ago and it didn't look much different than this!

but lots of interesting comments...

http://fantasygoat.livejournal.com/94832.html

I forget sometimes how dangerous early X-Ray technology was, before we knew to protect patients and doctors from the radiation. My great uncle was one of the early pioneers of the technology, and as a consequence, never was able to have children and died rather young. Eesh.

This is a fascinating picture, though.

Our family dentist in the 50's and early 60's first lost a thumb, then later his life to cancer caused by X-rays in the early use of that in dentistry.

And I can remember seeing my foot bones in the fluoroscopes they used to have in shoe stores. My family spent the summer in Los Alamos, New Mexico in 1955 and my mother used to tell how the local shoe stores had been told by scientists at Los Alamos Labs to pull the plug on those fluoroscopes!

Is this an X-ray machine or a fluoroscope? Any radiologists out there?

A generation or two ago, cancer in the forefinger was common in dentists, from holding the film in the patient's mouth while taking X-rays.

My source: a 75-year-old friend whose father was a dentist who developed cancer in his finger.

The kid looks calm, but not at all trusting.

What amazes me is the child is so calm. Most children are screaming their heads off by now ;o)

yeah i'm thinking ... are they just posing for the photoshoot or is that how they remain during the radiation release? ! !

In those "early" days of x-ray, it's easy to see why the life span of such health care workers was probably shorter than those not working with x-rays.