The Rays: A History of Radiology in the United States and Canada

century Gouda Guild of Surgeons of the pentagram as a motif on their possessions (e.g., on a seal, furniture and glassware) which can still be seen in the Het Catharina-Gasthuis municipal museum, Gouda. Though now generally forgotten as a symbol, Schouten demonstrates that the pentagram was fairly well known in the seventeenth-century world of learning. He traces the pentagram as a Pythagorean emblem of health, and its later use as a talisman to ward off misfortune (evidenced by its appearance on cradles and bedsteads). In more recent times the pentagram has become fairly widely used in arms and such ephemera as inn signs. More germane to his theme is Schouten's information on the pentagram as a medical symbol, indicating that in the Renaissance the Pythagorean symbol of health reappeared, sometimes depicted in association with the urinal and the serpent-wreathed staff. This is a stimulating book with a valuable collection of forty-one illustrations. Schouten, however, is handicapped by the lack of literary information, and one is left wondering whether interpretations of the use of the pentagram on certain objects requires more caution. (There also seems to be some confusion between hexagrams and pentagrams.) A reading of the book might bias one to believe that all pentagrams on medical objects reflect a medical or pharmaceutical usage, but on one seventeenth-century English bell-metal mortar known to the reviewer, the pentagram is undoubtedly a merchant's mark. The origins of radiology, unlike those of many branches of medicine are not lost in the mists of antiquity but copiously recorded in a wide range of journals. The authors have searched these diligently, and accomplished, within the limits imposed, the declared aim of producing 'a readable as well as authoritative ... history of radiology in North America'. The actual writers worked with the advice of a committee appointed by the American College of Radiology. Their final ffing with-the title and such chapter headings as 'With Death in Their Fingertips' should not put off the serious reader. The amazingly rapid developments in the early years of radiology are described in considerable detail, and later advances in outline. The geographical limitation does not prevent brief descriptions of European discoveries whenever these triggered off American work. Failure to mention the rotating anode, however, is a notable omission. The writers deal with radiation technology and its diagnostic and therapeutic applications, explaining medical terms whenever understanding of these is essential to the …