The World Within :: essays research papers fc

The World Within     What laughingstock be done with medicine straightaway is truly astounding. In proficient a little over a century, we have gone from crude, anaesthetized functioning with non-sterilized instruments to the ability to delicately rebuild a hand or ring road a major artery with little risk to the patient and without withal leaving a large scar. These great heights to which we have ascended ar based upon a material body of breakthroughs in sanitation and sterilization, antibiotics, and any number of other small discoveries that make possible todays op termtional room but by far the intimately powerful and advanced advances have been made in the field of human vision.     For over xvi hundred years, the edicts and guidelines of the Catholic Church forbade the exploration of the human body. This sad carry of affairs effectively limited our knowledge of the body to studies per figure outed upon stolen cadavers and t he rather outside classical-era studies of Galen. Even when the ban upon anatomical study was lifted, by the end of the nineteenth century we had still progressed no further than an understanding of the basic number as observed by dissection. Then, in the last five years of the nineteenth century, two important discoveries ushered in a new era in medicine Roentgens discovery of roentgen rays in 1895 and Bequerels discovery of Uranium rays nuclear radiation in 1896. These forms of electromagnetic radiation, and their derivatives, form the basis of todays most prevalent and important imaging applied science X-rays, Computed Tomography (CT), and nuclear medicine.     At its most basic level, x-ray technology works by using a high-voltage circulating(prenominal) to generate a burst of x-rays (high-frequency electromagnetic radiation), which are then center and directed through the human body. Certain materials, such as fig out and cartilage, absorb more of the radiation than other tissues, which arrive ats a shadow in the x-ray beam that is recorded on a special cassette containing photographic film, situated on the other side of the patient. Upon discipline of the film, the image of the fancy up structure (and some other tissue) can be studied to appoint any apparent pathologies (Wolbarst 33). Today, this technology is wildly popular almost everyone has had at least one x-ray during his life. However, the two-dimensional nature of an x-ray does create some limitations in its usefulness but a further development of this technology has eliminated these.     Computerized Tomography, invented in 1963, is essentially a development of x-ray technology that allows a physician to observe highly detailed slices of the human body, and today is highly reliable, non-invasive, painless, quick, and available on an urgent, 24 hour-a-day basis at most hospitals (Kelly 50).