X-Ray Protection Advances, Radium Protection Still Lags, 1902–13

By World War I, radiation therapy would expand dramatically as physicians began to use effects on deeper-lying tissues in clinical practice. Awareness of deep effects also greatly expanded public and professional fears, as did the confirmation of X-ray-induced carcinoma. Physicians reacted by claiming exclusive control over the diagnostic and therapeutic use of X-rays, but nonphysicians in the medical radiological community recognized that physician control alone could not avoid harm or satisfy the public. Protection and measurement techniques were essential. Real and imagined public concerns prompted professional societies, starting in Germany and Britain, to actively promote protection measures. A broad array of measuring and protective devices became commercially available. With their introduction, scientific and medical radiology would draw closer together in principle, but the laboratory physicist and the medical clinician continued to use different methods and units of X-ray measurement. Economic considerations and scientific concerns would force more uniformity in radium measurements, which by 1913 were internationally comparable to within a few parts per thousand. The laboratory and the clinic were virtually on a par in measuring capabilities, but radium protection would remain a haphazard affair, with public and professional enthusiasm for the benefits of radium and radium emanation outweighing isolated voices of concern.