Scenes from the Past

Abstract

Review Although this pioneering book was of its time, it was also ahead of its time in many of its approaches to pediatric radiology. Rotch, professor of pediatrics at Harvard University Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, selected the large number of pertinent plates provided by Dr Arial W. George to illustrate the use of medical images (they called them roentgenograms then) in the practice of pediatrics and child health care. Rotch emphasized a physician’s need to know the normal pattern to be able to recognize the abnormal. The textbook contained a generous selection of plates of normal hands and wrists that were intended to show the gradual maturation of bones during childhood. Rotch anticipated by decades the various methods for bone age determination now in use in pediatric radiologic practice. The book also included a chapter on living normal anatomy, which emphasized the generic parts of bone, including the roentgenographically unseen periosteum, and the patterns of normal bone growth. Newborns and metabolic disease (as then understood) received separate chapters