By Wickes Wamboldt
Having X-ray photographs of our interiors is not uncommon nowadays. Consequently, the process is no longer regarded with awe or apprehension. The time was, however, when people looked on the taking of an X-ray picture as a large event.
I well remember my first experience with the X-ray. I had consulted a physician regarding some inharmony in my digestive machinery. He looked me over and said something about “adhesions.” I asked him what he would suggest doing. He waved his hand deprecatingly. “Oh, just cut you open and break them up,” he said, “A trivial matter.”
Not wishing to put him to unnecessary trouble, I consulted a diagnostician. He said he would X-ray me and discover my innermost secrets. I hesitated between the operation and the X-ray. I didn’t know which would be worse—but finally decided on the latter.
The diagnostician took me into an ominous-looking room filled with wires running here and there to apparatus of dangerous aspect. I remember regretting I had not kissed my wife good-bye that morning.
He made me take off some of my clothes, then stood me up against something or other and switched off the light. The room was black as the pit. Then things began to roar like Niagara Falls.
The diagnostician shouted to me to stretch out my left hand straight from my side. I did so fearsomely. I expected to touch something that would complete the circuit and give me the terrific shock that must be necessary to take a photograph of one’s insides.
“Take hold of this,” said the diagnostician in a sepulchral tone. He thrust into my h and a hard, round, cold object. I took hold of it, expecting the worst, but I was surprised—it didn’t hurt.
“Drink it,” he commanded.
That was almost too much. It was enough to ask me to stand in that inferno with only a part of my clothes on and grab into the dark for I knew not what. But to ask me to drink what I grabbed was going too far.
However, being a married man and accustomed to instant and unquestioning obedience, I obeyed. I bumped the edge of the receptacle over my face until it reached my mouth and then I drank. That it would be a hideously nauseous fluid was, of course, a foregone conclusion.
Then came another surprise. The mixture was delicious. Compared to what I expected to get, it was delectable beyond all imagination.
Then the lights came on and the awful roar ceased.
“When are you going to take the picture?” I asked.
The diagnostician grinned. “It’s taken,” he said. “You’re in good shape.”
I knew of a young woman who had 149 internal photographs made before she discovered she could get the same drink at a drug-store for 15 cents.
From the front page of the Tri-City Daily Gazette, January 15, 1924
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