RONTGEN RAYS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 877, 25 July 1910, Page 5

RONTGEN RAYS.

DEATH OF A SCIENTIST. , By Telesraph—Press Association—Copyright. Berlin, July 22. Air. Robert Cedar, who was engaged in research work at Heidelberg University, died from the effect of Rontgen or X-Rays. RONTGEN'S GREAT DISCOVERY. .Medical men and scientists are well aware of the danger of X rays unless proper precautions aro taken in their use, and in several cases fatal consequences have resulted. In recent years methods have been discovered of greatly lessening the danger, and X rays and radium are now freely usedi by the medical profession. In the year 1895, Professor Rontgen, of Munich, made the first of the sensational discoveries in physical science for which the last few years have been remarkable. Many. other recent investigations have been as interesting, and several have more profoundly modified our outlook on Nature, but few have struck so readily the imagination of the plain man as the revelation of the skeleton within the living flesh. The origin of this discovery may be said to have been almost accidental, liontgen noticed that photographic plates, kept under cover in the neighbourhood of a highly exhausted tube through which electric discharges were passing, became fogged, as though they had been exposed to light. He investigated this effect, and found that, when cathode rays impinged' either on the glass of the tube, or on the anode, or on any metallic plate within the tube, a typo of radiation was produced which would penetrate many substances opaque to ordinary light. Dense bodies, like metal or .bone, absorbed the rays more fully than did lighter materials, such as leather or flesh, and Rontgen, at once putting this discovery to some purpose, was able to photograph the coins in his purse and the bones in his hand.