Re: State of the Radiation Safety Art (1950 - 1955)

["Howard Long" <hflong@pacbell.net>]

In 1949, my rural FP preceptor treated a man with shoulder bursitis by long exposure from his diagnostic x-ray machine. Dr. Duniewitz had innovated ECGs to UCSF pediatric wards, so was unusual, but spoke as if it were standard treatment, at least for him.



Stimulation of circulation by needling is also effective for bursitis, so I believe docors recognized increased circulation from radiation in the early 1950s, as reported by Jerry Cuttler in a paper on treatment of gangrene with local 75 rem doses, discussed at Doctors for Disaster Preparedness meetings www.oism.org/DDP and on rad-sci-1@WPI.edu.



Also anecdotal, a health physicist on whom I removed an arm melanoma, calculated it got 4500 rem while he was an army X ray tech holding films in a field hospital in WW2 



Howard Long 

  ----- Original Message ----- 

  From: james.g.barnes@att.net 

  To: RadSafe Bulletin Board 

  Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004 5:22 PM

  Subject: State of the Radiation Safety Art (1950 - 1955)





  Dear all;







  I am working on a project that requires an understanding of what we knew about the hazards / benefits of radiation exposure in the 1950 - 55 time frame.  In other words, we probably didn't know as much about biological radiation effects back then that we now know.  What I'm trying to do is establish what we did know and when we knew it.







  I have purchased some second hand books that will be helpful, but I was wondering if anyone a) knows what radiation health textbooks were considered standard at the time, and b) knows where I might be able to find a copy of them.







  Also, if any of you know of any assumptions that were made in the 1945 - 1955 time frame about radiation effects than were then found to be false, I'd be interested in hearing about them (especially if you happen to have any references documenting these assumptions).







  Thanks,







  Jim Barnes, CHP



  james.g.barnes@att.net