ACCIDENTAL MEDICINE

MEDIcal breakthroughs discovered by accident. This week: X-rays INQUISITIVENESS, observation and dumb luck caused German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen to stumble on one of our most vital diagnostic tools: the X-ray.

He had been playing with a Crookes tube (a British invention), a sealed glass vacuum that glows when a high-voltage current passes through it. But what was that glow?

The breakthrough came in 1895 when Roentgen noticed the beam was causing a screen 9ft away to turn fluorescent green, even though a sheet of cardboard stood between the tube and screen.

He realised the tube was creating a ray that could cast the shadow of a solid object when shone through it.

To test his discovery, Roentgen made an image of his wife’s hand, showing her bones and wedding ring. Unsure of what kind of ray he was creating, he called it an X-ray. His work won him the Nobel Prize in 1901.