PMID: 11625611Oct 20, 2001Paper

La radiologie est entree avant l'electricite dans les hopitaux de Paris

Histoire des sciences médicales
G Pallardy

Abstract

The paper looks at the period from 1896 to the beginning of the 20th century and uses as example the installation of radiological equipment by Antoine Beclere, at his own cost, in his department of medicine at the Hopital Tenon, and later at the Hopital Saint-Antoine. The important role of Antoine Beclere in French radiology is recalled as well as his visionary concept of the medical applications of X-rays. The solutions found to ensure the running of the indispensable high tension generators in the two hospitals without electricity are evoked: first, a hand operated electrostatic machine, then an induction coil energized by an accumulator battery that had to be recharched outside. At the end of 1899 at Saint-Antoine, the situation is improved by the decision of the "Conseil de Surveillance" (the Safety Committee) to hook up the radiological equipment to the dynamos which produces electricity for the maternity ward. The problem is definitively solved in 1904, eight years after the first radiological examinations, by the construction of an electric power plant in the hospital. An overview of the electricity available in the Paris region at that time, with the multiplicity of electric power plants, and the great variety of curren...Continue Reading

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