Early radiation treatments using X-rays and radium were widely practiced in the 1910s–1920s, often with limited safety knowledge

Early radiation treatments using X-rays and radium were widely practiced in the 1910s–1920s, often with limited safety knowledge. Archival medical photographs from that era document primitive positioning devices and prolonged exposure sessions

When Radiation Was an Experiment

In the early 1920s, cancer treatment was still closer to guesswork than precision.

Doctors had discovered that X-rays — invisible, powerful waves of energy — could damage tumors. But they did not yet fully understand dosage limits, long-term effects, or safe exposure levels.

Inside small hospital rooms, heavy mechanical devices hummed. Thick wires connected to bulky radiation tubes. Patients were positioned carefully, often using slings, straps, or rigid supports to keep them still during long sessions.

There were no CT scans.

No digital imaging.

No protective protocols refined by decades of research.

Everything depended on observation and handwritten notes.

Physicians measured distances manually. They estimated electrical output. Treatments could last for extended periods, because shorter, safer fractionated doses had not yet become standard practice.

Sometimes tumors shrank.

Sometimes patients suffered severe side effects now known to be radiation toxicity.

What we see in photographs from that era is not cruelty — it is experimentation at the edge of knowledge. A moment when medicine was balancing hope against uncertainty.

Those early efforts were imperfect and often risky. Yet they laid the foundation for modern radiation oncology — where beams are now computer-guided, precisely calibrated, and targeted within millimeters to spare healthy tissue.

Today, radiation therapy saves millions of lives worldwide each year.

But its origins trace back to rooms like that one — where science advanced not with certainty, but with courage