MARTYR TO SCIENCE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 33, 2 November 1937, Page 13

MARTYR TO SCIENCE

Frederick Butt Dies . . FATAL X-RAY BURNS Tet another martyr to science has passed almost unnoticed by the great public he spent a lifetime serving. His name: Frederick Eowland Butt, of Walton-on-Thamos. He died during the fifth operation xendered necessary by complications set up by X-ray burns. Mr, Butt was 60. He was a pioneer of X-ray apparatus and created the portable set iised in the esamination of the late Joseph Chamberlain, and supervised its operation. When he started making X-ray apparatus a complete oufit cost no more thatt £30. But it was a crude alEair con* trasted with the modern £1000 equipment. The tube radiated its death-dealing , raya in all directions. That was why so many of the early workers received fatal hurns. There was no proteotion from the 100,000 yolts generated in the apparatus. At flrst he made the apparatus in co-operation with Mr. Harry Oox. Severe injuries from the ray compelled Mr. Cox's early retirement, and shortly afterwards he died. Mr. Butt then established the flrm of F. E. Butt and Company, Ltd., whieh wa? responsible for the provision of much of the X-ray apparatus used at the front during the war.« Thousands of soldiers* lives wqre saved by its speedy location of shrapnel and bullets, making operations for their s.wift extraction both possible and safe, *