Radiation-induced thyroid cancer: The Chicago experience

Abstract

IN 1901 KARL WILHELM ROENTGEN, a physics professor at Wurzburg, Germany, received the first Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of x-rays in experiments, which began 6 years earlier in 1895. The invisible cathode rays generated were found to cause a fluorescence on a barium platinocyanide screen and, surprisingly, to outline the bones of his wife’s hand on this photographic film (Fig 1). By 1896, radiographs were being taken for clinical purposes and their diagnostic possibilities were quickly exploited. Bone films, chest x-rays, and even barium studies of the gastrointestinal tract were quickly tried. Roentgen found that prolonged exposure to x-rays produced burns and ulcerations of the skin, hair loss, and dermatitis. These effects were turned into therapy to burn off moles and to treat acne, hemangiomas, skin tuberculosis, and many other benign skin lesions. At about the same time (1891), Maria Sklodowska left Warsaw to study at the Sorbonne. She married fellow scientist Pierre Curie. Her work on uranium led to the discovery of polonium and radium, a substance 900 times more radioactive than uranium. Uranium, polonium, and radium released rays like x-rays that penetrated matter. Madame Curie and a colleague accidentally burned themselves when carrying vials of radium in their pockets. In 1901, Pierre Curie did so purposely by strapping some radium to his arm. By 1904, it was demonstrated that radium rays destroyed