Treatments
Radiotherapy
Also Known As Radiation Therapy
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Radiotherapy treats disease, chiefly cancer, using ionizing radiation to damage the DNA of targeted cells. It followed directly from Wilhelm Rontgen's discovery of X-rays in November 1895. French physician Victor Despeignes made the first recorded attempt at therapeutic use in 1896, treating a patient's stomach cancer with inconclusive results, and Austrian physician Leopold Freund achieved the first widely documented success treating a skin condition around 1897; within a few years scientific journals were reporting successful treatment of skin malignancies with X-rays, though early practitioners understood little about safe dosage and many suffered radiation injuries themselves. This atlas describes the history of the treatment and is not medical advice.
Facts
Disputed
Origin YearDated here to Victor Despeignes's first recorded therapeutic use of X-rays against a tumor in 1896, a year after Rontgen's discovery; some accounts instead date the treatment's origin to Rontgen's 1895 discovery of X-rays itself, since Despeignes's own attempt was inconclusive and the first clearly documented therapeutic success came about a year later still. Cross-Tradition Connections
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