Description: A Century Ago, the Idea of Looking Inside the living body seemed absurd. Until, that is, Wilhelm Roentgen produced a startling X-Ray image of his wife's hand -- with her wedding ring "floating" around a white bone. By the 1920s, the technology was common-place: army recruits had routinely lined up for chest X rays during WWI, and children were examining the bones of their feet in shoe store fluoroscopes, spectacularly unaware of the danger involved. Through lucid prose, vivid anecdotes, and over seventy striking illustrations, science writer Bettyann Kevles shows how X rays and the subsequent daughter technologies -- CT, MRI, PET, ultrasound -- transformed the practice of medicine (from pediatrics to neurosurgery), the rules of evidence in courts, and the vision of artists.

"Naked to the Bone brilliantly explores that liminal frontier terrain where medicine, technology, economics, and culture converge and interact". Science

Please Wait