Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2217

WILLIAM CLINE BORDEN (1858-1934) The use of the Röntgen ray by the Medical Department of the United States Army in the war with Spain. (1898). Government Printing Office 1900 98 pp., 38 plates, 26 illus. 29 cm.

The medical profession was quick to grasp the implications that Röntgen's X-ray (see No. 2090) had for military medicine. The Prussian Ministry of War made inquiries about the process only a few weeks after its discovery and by early 1896 were convinced that it would be of great usefulness in aiding sick and wounded soldiers. By May of that year, an Italian army physician began to employ X-rays to examine some of the wounded soldiers returning from the Ethiopian campaign where the Italian Army had suffered a major defeat. X-ray equipment was taken onto the battlefield for the first time during the Tirah Campaign in 1897 when British forces helped quell an uprising among the natives of the Khyber Pass in India. The present volume recounts another early use of X-rays during the Spanish-American War in 1898. In this conflict, seventeen X-ray units were employed in hospitals and three hospital ships. The report was prepared by Borden, who at that time was an assistant surgeon and director of the General Hospital at Key West, Florida. Following his Army career, Borden served for many years as chief of surgery at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. and was a founder of the American College of Surgeons.

See Related Record(s): 2090

Cited references: Cushing U31