Lavine Matthew
Department of History, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, Mississippi 39762, USA.
J Hist Med Allied Sci. 2012 Oct;67(4):587-625. doi: 10.1093/jhmas/jrr047. Epub 2011 Sep 6.
The first x-ray machines were large, loud, sparking, smelly, and ostentatious devices, prone to mishap and injury even when fully under the control of the physicians who, in droves, invested money and prestige in them. Their bizarre and sometimes overwhelming presentation in the clinic reinforced the contemporary public understanding of x-rays as fantastically potent yet ambiguously helpful. As one of the icons of the new scientific medicine, x-rays bore much of the public's expectations for a technological panacea, a belief that was reinforced by the spectacle of their generation and their undeniable effect on the body. A quarter century later, refinement of the technology had made irradiation safer and more effective, but also made the operation of the machines themselves almost undetectable. This "domestication" of x-ray machines underscored their failure as a modern-day heroic medicine, while reinforcing an emergent understanding of radiation as a subtle, cumulative, and insidious threat.
最初的X光机体积庞大、噪音很大、有电火花、气味难闻且华而不实，即使完全由医生控制，也容易发生事故并造成伤害，而当时有大批医生在这些机器上投入了资金和声誉。它们在诊所里怪异甚至有时令人难以招架的样子，强化了当时公众对X光的理解，即X光极其强大但作用却模糊不清。作为新的科学医学的标志之一，X光承载了公众对技术万灵药的诸多期望，它们的产生景象以及对身体产生的不可否认的影响强化了这种信念。四分之一个世纪后，技术的改进使辐射更安全、更有效，但也使机器本身的操作几乎难以察觉。X光机的这种“驯化”凸显了它们作为现代英雄医学的失败，同时强化了人们对辐射是一种微妙、累积且隐蔽的威胁的新认识。
