SEXPAND
In the history of medicine, machines became crucial parts of the diagnostic and treatment process in the first half of the 20th century. Scientists and doctors experimented with some really strange devices, and they developed a lot of creepy-looking health equipment—at least some of which seems almost horrific, seen through the eyes of today. The following 22 instruments are partly scary, partly weird, and partly awesome—just as inventions should be.
Pre-PET headgear (Positron Emission Tomography), built by the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Instrumentation Division to study the working brain.
SEXPANDLarge-sized eye models, moved by two small motors, developed by aero medical researchers.
1SEXPANDWinston Churchill's personal pressure chamber, created to enable him to make high-altitude flights safely.
SEXPAND
Image: Life, 10 Feb 1947.
Three plastic humanoid shells, filled with sodium chloride solution, used for measuring radioactivity.
Image: Health Physics/IHM
Bergonic chair for giving general electric treatment for psychological effect, in psycho-neurotic cases. (World War One era.)
4SEXPANDArtificial kidney machine, ca. 1950.
SEXPANDRoentgen steed, designed to hold children as they sit for chest X-rays, 1957.
5SEXPANDThis old man is sitting in a machine that is used to stimulate blood circulation in the legs.
6SEXPANDLos Alamos chemist, Wright H. Langham with Plastic Man, used to simulate human radiation exposures, 1959.
7SEXPANDElectro-retinogram: apparatus devised to measure the electric potential of the retina.
8SEXPANDCirca 1900: A woman inside an Electric Bath at the Light Care Institute.
9SEXPAND
Image: Reinhold Thiele/Thiele/Getty Images
The first electrocardiograph, introduced by Cambridge Scientific Instruments.
SEXPAND
Image: Central Press/Getty Images
1919: A woman wearing a flu mask during the flu epidemic after the First World War.
10SEXPAND
Image: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
Children around a radiating glow of ultraviolet light at the Institute of Ray Therapy.
11SEXPAND
Image: Fox Photos/Getty Images
Measuring the brainwaves, 1940.
12SEXPAND
Image: Fox Photos/Getty Images
1955: A portable respirator, or iron lung, designed to enable patients to recuperate at home.
13SEXPAND
Image: Hans Meyer/BIPs/Getty Images
1960: Dr G. H. Byford stands under an optokinetic drum wearing a contact lens with a miniature lamp cemented to the lens, during an experiment to investigate the reflex movements of the eyes and their association with visual illusions, at the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine in Farnborough.
SEXPAND
Image: Harry Thompson/Evening Standard/Getty Images
1960: A wire suit designed to measure body temperatures while researching the physiological effects of high speed and space travel.
SEXPAND
Image: Ron Case/Keystone Features/Getty Images
1955: A rotating cobalt machine swinging around the body of a patient, attacking cancerous tumors.
SEXPAND
Image: Carsten/Three Lions/Getty Images
A physician adjusts the beam path of the 2,000,000 volt Deep Therapy X-Ray Machine used to treat cancer at the Francis Delafield Hospital in New York City.
SEXPAND
Image: Grundy/Getty Images
Cobalt "bomb" treatment of a patient at a Paris clinic.
SEXPAND
Image: Népszerű Technika, 1959 április
A therapy unit installed at the Oak Ridge hospital in 1955 used a source of radioactive cesium-137 to kill diseased tissue, allowing maximum dose of radiation to the cancerous area and minimizing effects to healthy tissue elsewhere.
SEXPAND
Image: AP/Oak Ridge Associated Universities
No comments:
Post a Comment