The golden age: a shifting spectrum. British Institute of Radiology presidential address 1985.

Abstract

In Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, Mr Bonney proposed a title for his new business: “The United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking & Punctual Delivery Company”. “Why, the very name”, said Mr Bonney, “will get the shares up to a premium in ten days”. In choosing, I hope, an appropriate title for this address in Aberdeen, I have come to understand Mr Bonney a little better and sympathise with Groucho Marx a little more: “No Groucho is not my real name, I'm just breaking it in for a friend”. We celebrate this year the 90th anniversary of Roentgen's discovery. In 1894, one year before the discovery of X rays, Roentgen, in an address as President of Wurtzberg University, prophetically quoted his predecessor, P. A. Kirscher, who, born in 1602, said “Nature often reveals the most astounding phemomena by the simplest means, but these phenomena can only be recognised by persons who have sharp judgement and the investigative spirit and who have learned to obtain information from experience, the teacher...