The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 10, 1901, Page 3

THE SUNDAY CALL. \ ABETIT TLETSCITMAN, ae whe re of a witch eischman Her curiosit two nd_a key ited field of s. It is just ed doo: or it & " ex w of the ns w T riy i1l ted and » f scope, W is a magic the true X ray he heard that lec- the study of rapidly il she was as bher own face. 1 cats and bats, lizards, ces were all In turn placed ce of the light and its ntil 1t was possible to gauge amount of exposure to make photographs through animal tissue the s of encountered. ograph of a frog which is given is one of the most wonderful which has ever been way e and was the first which showed that the X ray could be so used as to produce {lluminations of the different in- ternal organs as well as of the bony sys- was first discovered er control, and only the ri well ur tem. When it was not A he shadows of the bones could be ob- lained. On further experimentation it wes formd that by changing the voltage which produced the light the quality of the s would be ¢ and some of them w 1d show th h es i all, some hea r and others most trans- ach as the lungs. 1ging the intensity of all th different n be brou gh th graphed in front of a sen- subject every fine dis nction de has an ithportant not discard them show phot the and about The lurgs ts, showing ed with air when the wzs made. The heart shows as spot, and the wh view 1s not w one would > in looking gh ‘the human body with a fluoro- s of hirds are difficult to show raph for the reason that, being they are light and hotograph of the vy shows the hot, small as they are, well {llus- in securing the out- leton. now: while it culty sk Heretofore ty. the wizar iess has been monopolized k emen with sunken eyes th fr beneath bushy, grizzled bre spoke strange allegorical gpeeches from mouths that were hidden somewhere the midst of flowing beards of snowy n Francisco's gorceress in black magic nor in mys- all clear, cold sclence, and st of it. Any one éan go closet in a dark room and tell he is performing wonders; age fifty feet away elf with mirrors, and do the same thing. But to let the spectator perform the trick himself and feel that he is the magician— kn act, by the demorstrations of es, is a very different magic indeed, and is the sort that is of worth. Would you like to what kind of a heart your best girl has? To look at her real, true heart and see it beat?—a little faster perhaps when you are looking at it. There, dim in the mist about it, yet plain enough to make you feel that you might place your finger upon it if you aared to meddle withythe secret of life which is throbbing before you. It is a v funny fact, but you are ever so much better acquainted with a person when once you have seen straight through wem. It beats a heart to heart talk all hollow for establishing really confidential feelings. A man, or a woman elther, can never seem so stern or forbidding to you when you have once learned by ocular demonstration that he or she is only a sort of a human fog after all. The word X-ray has been heard so fre- quently that most people think they know all about it, but even the experts who pro- duce and use it frankly admit tha. al. though they can do that much, yet they have not the faintest conception of what does not dea teries. It that a d you tt or he and screens and wires get on a hir rround w it, his own se g S N(f Wiy [ HE LOOKS BY X RaAY WILDDUCK SHOWINT SHOT P!‘:LE‘T& the light Itself really 5. Miss Flelschman rays he sces a yellow-green phosphores- in {llustrating this sald: “When a person cence, such as that which lights the glow dooks at a Crookes tube producing its worm to its mate; but that Is not the SAN FRANCISCOS TWENTIETH CENTURY RADIOGRAPH OF A SOLE X-ray, it is merely another light whicn is engendered in the process, and has not the property of peunetrating opaque organic bodies. To test this hold your hand in front of you, and you will see that ng light comes through it; that is, apparent- ly none. In truth. though, the marvelous X-rays are passing through your hand, and not only through it, but through your eyes as well, and, strangest of all, they ‘go right on through your eyes and out of the back of your head, to be lost in space. “Now, the retina of the eye is only sen- sitive to those rays which stop on it, and so cause the sensation of sight. If they pass through the eye.and on beyond it is as water going through a sleve—there is nothing to show for it. But now see the difference. “Hold between your eye and the hand in front of the light this fluoroscope, which is cardboard coated with a solution of uranium; now you see the light through the blackened cardboard and the hand both. That is because the rays, which be- fore passed on through your ey cepted, have been so changed, thicke: by pa when or slowed down, as it were, through the uranium that y feach the retina they are arrested by it and produce an image. It is just as though the water which had previously passed through the sieve had been frozem into hall, and being changed could be checked in its fall by the mesh of the sleve and so made evident fo the scnses. Now, to show you the amount of en- ergy it requires to create this light, I will connect myself with the current which is producing it.”” Of course, this is not scientific, and it is no part of the X-ray proper to see a human being surcharged with the pent-up forces of lightning until the hair bris- tles and snaps and the darkness is lighted uy rose-colored flames which blow and hiss from hair, eyebrows, .nger tips and every extremity. They are not burning fires, but cold, like those of the boreal auroru, and when she takes a black wand in her hand and points it all of the rose- colored fires leave the other parts of her body and blow from its tip straight to- ward you, and a cold chill like that which precedes the coming of a ghost drives through the thickest of woolen garments, even as it would through lace, and shivers your flesh In streaks as she points it at different parts. Taking some bits of cotton.in her hand she threw them at us and each as soon as it left her flew through the several feet of distance which separated her from us. gave a stinging touch and rebounded VENVINE DIAMOND IN RINT-TRROWS NO SHADOW FROM. ® RAY BY FLEISCTHMAN to her again as though its mission were accomplished Taking 2 in her hand the fires were imme transferred to glowed and ets as no hum Then reconnecting the machin light. and holding said: before her “Look through me, please.” There before us then was but the misty form of the woman, = skeleton sHadowed thr » darker form of the away at the march of Besides this and a few corset steels and nothing to be seen but - business. stacks of radio- other réom were oldiers home er bullets in for permanent even more inter- were the . eople who ured as the vic pistol shots e than one haé a mystery attach- that none but the principals wiil w. ans are coming more and more use the X-ray to aid them in their arch for foreign es and when It comes to be generally wn how much painful probing may be avoided by so doing, nearly every subcutaneous opera- eded by examination with lights up the interior of hey look like campaign trans- hod parencie * Another class of radiographs of which many are taken are those that show ab- solutely nothing injured or mispiacea. One such case was of a child whose mother was sure it had swallowed a quar- ter. The X photograph showed no quarter and mother and child went away contented. Other people are sure that they have a.break, a dt tion, or that the doctor has forgotten and Jeft some of his Instru- ments in them. A clear radiograph of their bodies showing all In good shape puts them at ease dlately and en- ables them to understand the mysterious apparent realism of hypochondria. The ‘many successes of Elizabeth Fleischman have brought her (o the atten- tion of the surgeon general of the United States army and she has made many examinations of soldiers for the military hospitals. That, of course, shows that she is a sclentist and not a witch, but if she isn't a witch she can at least do what witches couldn’t and she can show things that make fairv tales seem com~ monplace by comparison.