![]() The objects were expensive and difficult to raise funds for – The Common Cause, the organ of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, reported that the London Society for Women’s Suffrage had sent an x-ray ambulance at the cost of over £1000. The equipment shown in the drawing is the smallest which can conveniently accommodate all the apparatus required while providing enough space to help the patient. A diagram of the ambulance equipment survives in our collections. Portable x-ray equipment was fitted into ambulances to help the speed with which this help could be given. X-ray machines were also fitted on hospital ships, such as the Formosa, challenging the technological advances of the time.ĭiagram relating to a motorised X-ray ambulance unit (catalogue reference: MUN 7/341) War Diaries survive for these X-Ray Units, such as the Number 2 Cheltenham College Mobile X-ray Unit which briefly details procedures done by the unit, and the Number 4 Mobile X-Ray Unit, which lists the amount of individuals needing x-rays each day of the conflict under the unit. Portable x-ray equipment was developed in response and military x-ray units were charged with providing this service. While this technology existed, how, practically, could you get this help as close to the front line as possible? As my colleague David explained in a previous post, there were many stages a casualty could go through – the closer the x-ray machine was, the more chance of saving a life. With the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research commenting that ‘The x-ray tube industry in this country is in the hands of only a few small firms, with limited funds and working largely without proper scientific assistance.’ ( DSIR 36/3367). Infection continued to be one of the biggest killers through out the war.ĭespite this urgent need for x-ray equipment towards the beginning of the conflict the skills and research in this area were in short supply, specifically the glass apparatus. Records in our collections of the Munitions Invention Department document two principle reasons these advances in technology were so important first, to save lives directly as a result of injuries and second, to prevent illness from the spread of infection from foreign objects. Browsing through pension records it also possible to note the wide variety of other conditions x-rays were used for, from neuralgia to deafness. Reading the samples of medical registers it is not surprising this apparatus was highly used, with gun shot wounds often mentioned as a cause of injury. X-rays in the context of the First World War were principally used to identify foreign metal lodged in the body. The image opposite shows an early photograph from 1905 of a Crookes x-ray tube showing Rontgen rays (so named after their inventor, and now commonly known as x-rays). One of the early ways x-rays were used is through an x-ray tube. Radiation was originally discovered by German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen in the late 19th century. ‘Photograph of a Crookes X Ray Tube showing Rontgen Rays’ from 1905 (catalogue reference: COPY 1/491/410)
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