Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Century (Sloan Technology Series)

It is difficult for us to imagine how mysterious the inside of a living person seemed only 100 years ago, when x-rays were discovered. At that time only God could see a person in the mother's womb; now ultrasound baby pictures, like the one of Bettyann Kevles's grandson on the dedication page of Naked to the Bone, can be mailed out six months before the child is born. Kevles provides an excellent history of the technology of medical imaging--x-rays, CT, NMR, PET, ultrasound, and mammography--but builds on it to examine the wider ramifications of bodily transparency. Anyone going through the high-tech diagnostic gauntlet of the turn of the millennium will want to read this book.