Interaction of drugs and radiation — Promise or pitfall?

Abstract

It is a great honour for me to be invited to give this lecture in memory of Robert Knox, the modest man from Leith who stamped his mark indelibly on the development of radiology and radiotherapy, not just in Britain but in the world. Knox trained in medicine at Edinburgh and Guy's Hospital, qualifying in 1892. BY 1894 he had settled in Highgate in general practice, but early became fascinated with the possibilities of X-rays and rapidly became a pioneer of their use as a Harley Street consultant. By 1912 he was Director of the Electrical and Therapeutic Department of the Cancer Hospital in the Fulham Road; here his work on treatment of malignant disease by X-rays and radium earned him international acclaim. A Territ0rial Army officer during the Great War, he was a member of the War Office X-ray Advisory Committee. In 192t he wrote a letter to The Times Which was largely responsible for the formation of the X-ray and Radium Protection Committee, and it was through his vision and pertinacity as its SecretaryGeneral that the first International Congress of Radiology was held, which led to the formation of the International Commissions on Radiologlcal Units and Measurement and Radiation Protection. Having been a President of the Roentgen Society, with its merger into the British Institute of Radiology, he was again sought for office, editing the British Journal of Radiology for many years, and having become Senior Vice-President of the Institute at his untimely death in 1928 in his 61st year. His seminal textbook, Radiography, X-ray Therapeutics and Radiation Therapy later Radiography and Radiotherapeutics was published first in 1915 and ran to four editions. A few quotations are apposite to indicate the breadth of his vision.