Where (if anywhere) were X-ray machines put on trains or trolleys to image "Everybody over 14 years old"?
score:40
It was in Glasgow in 1957, as part of the city's fight against tuberculosis. It's worth noting that the X-Ray machines weren't actually on the tram. It was simply used to advertise the campaign.
- [Image source Wellcome Collection CC BY]
Mobile X-Ray units were used in the UK (the Mass Miniature Radiography (MMR) programme), but in vans, rather than trams. Similar mobile units were actually brought back into use in London in 2005 to tackle a rise in TB cases in some areas of the city.
This page from the People's History of the NHS explains about the 1957 advertising campaign in Glasgow in a little more detail:
Despite reduced incidence of tuberculosis in England and Wales, Scotland, and in particular Glasgow, had been dogged by tuberculosis throughout the immediate postwar period. By the 1950s the Department of Health for Scotland was committed to reducing the incidence of the disease by creating an X-Ray campaign accompanied by a media 'blitz'. As part of Glasgow's X-Ray campaign against tuberculosis, 11 March to 12 April 1957, Glasgow Corporation produced this large advertis*m*nt to be displayed on the side of a tram car in the city.
Upvote:4
Though it was not on public transportation, busses were used in Denmark in the 1950's as mobile platforms for tuberculosis detection.
Link in danish about mobile tuberculosis units, including a small picture of a bus
Since 2014 similar mobile X-ray equipment has been used to detect tuberculosis among homeless.
Upvote:5
This was certainly very widespread, with variations, in many places or nations around the world. The purpose was to mass-scan the populace with healthy or harmless X-rays for signs of tuberculosis and other illnesses in the picture of the lung.
Poster promoting mass X-ray screening, England, 1945-1959 (Object number 1981-2088 Pt10)
One of these mobile devices is on this informational pamphlet:
Pamphlet detailing the Mass Miniature Radiographic Unit, manufactured by Siemens, dating from the mid-Twentieth Century. The pamphlet shows the floor plan and a variety of internal pictures of the Unit to show the suitable arrangement of the Unit. Presumably produced as part of the advertising output of Siemens for this unit, the pamphlet provides the viewer today with a visual map of how the Unit might have looked during their major deployment from the 1940s until the 1960s.
via: Radiography and Preventing TB on the NHS (with even more pics)
In the US it was just like that:
U.S. army hunts tuberculosis. Photograph accompanied a front-page story in General Electric X-ray Corporation’s newspaper, the Victor News, in July 1941 . General Electric reported that the army had just purchased 45 of its 4 x 5-inch photoroentgenography units for shipment to various induction centers throughout the country. The boned looking private on the right was proudly identified as an inducted General Electric employee.
Figures 12, 13. (12) TB respects no age. Poster (circa late 1940s) suggests that everyone-from children to grandparents-should have a chest radiograph. (Courtesy of the American Lung Association, New York, NY.) (13) Lining up for chest radiographs. Photograph shows the mobile radiography unit of the El Paso Tuberculosis Association in action in 1948. Notice the little girls lining up with everyone else. In the case of this particular photograph, it is not certain exactly who underwent radiography and who did not. (Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md. [Previously appeared in Haygood TM, Briggs JE. World War II military led the way in screening chest radiography. Milit Med 1992; 157, 113-116.)
Tamara Miner Haygood: "Radiologic History Exhibit" Chest Screening and Tuberculosis in the United States, 1994. (PDF)
In Germany there was a Röntgenreihenuntersuchungen 1939-1983 and some of these were mobile:
Ein Röntgenzug bei der Betreuung der Landbevölkerung in Hermstedt Thüringen (GDR) 1957 - Foto: Wikipedia
Inside one such mobile unit, West Germany –– Gütersloh: Röntgenreihenuntersuchung im Röntgenzug Sauerland, 1957 Foto: Gütersloh, Stadtarchiv | BB19837 Internet-Portal "Westfälische Geschichte" | https://www.westfaelische-geschichte.de/med2473
The procedure as such – the Röntgenreihenuntersuchung – although not mobile, was continued in the German army until 1999.
Even now such mobile units are in use:
Zweites Leben für Röntgenbus
Ein Röntgenbus wird in Thüringen für die Untersuchung von Flüchtlingen auf Tuberkulose eingesetzt. So können Krankenhäuser entlastet werden. Eine Arztpraxis wertet die Aufnahmen binnen 24 Stunden aus.
Das Röntgenmobil steht in Erfurt vor der Thüringer Staatskanzlei. Der Bus wird bei der Erstuntersuchung von Flüchtlingen auf Tuberkulose eingesetzt.
The reach of that procedure was at 85–90% of all inhabitants in 1982 when they detected 4,6 infected people per 10.000.
Q What was the advertised purpose, and if there was an underlying purpose different than that, what might it have been?
As always with Germany, it has to be brought up that until 1945 there were around 150 doctors involved in this screening in a less than desirable "underlying" aim for it.
Radiological sterilisation and castration. (src) 2% of all 360000 undergoing this procedure were 'treated' with x-rays.
More post
- 📝 How was Germany involved in the Russian Civil War after the Paris Peace Conference?
- 📝 Why didn't the Chinese repeating crossbow dominate?
- 📝 How often did ships stop at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the early 1800s?
- 📝 Why were the Irish exempt from conscription during WWI?
- 📝 Accuracy of the Show "I Go On Singing"
- 📝 Was 2019 the first state of the union to have sung happy birthday?
- 📝 Why did water stored on premodern ships "go brackish" or "go bad" while at sea?
- 📝 What was the real name of the painter who made the Christ Pantocrator of Sant Climent de Taüll Church?
- 📝 What is this Victorian era British uniform?
- 📝 How did Tetricus, the last Gallic Emperor, obtain his agnomen?
- 📝 Has there been a recorded account of a cabin boy inspiring mutiny on board a ship?
- 📝 Was a bomb or shell ever dropped directly down the funnel of a warship?
- 📝 What is the oldest archaeological source which mentions a name of a specific place?
- 📝 What methods did the Stasi use to build their surveillance apparatus?
- 📝 Ancient origins of women's day?
- 📝 The history of toys: Who invented the first porcelain dolls?
- 📝 When did Lincoln claim that "Vicksburg is the key" to winning the civil war?
- 📝 How true to the originals are Che Guevara's published diaries?
- 📝 What government functions, if any, did the archchancellor of the HRE actually exercise?
- 📝 Why do Wikipedia's and Guinness World Records's measurements of the Achaemenid Empire's percentage of world population differ?
- 📝 How tall was Brutus?
- 📝 How did Edward Misselden become a deputy-governor of a merchant company at 15?
- 📝 What is the meaning behind this Panama joke published in a 1914 newspaper?
- 📝 Why didn't the Moroccans try to explore and conquer the New World?
- 📝 How did the First French Empire and allies differ from the other European monarchies at that time?
- 📝 Are there no written records of Sanskrit before Rigveda?
- 📝 How many pens were used by MacArthur to end the final chapter of World War II and where are they now?
- 📝 Was it ever possible to join the US military instead of going to prison for a crime?
- 📝 What is that gold plaque Scottish soldiers wore around their necks?
- 📝 Athenian Democracy - How were the citizens motivated to be so politically active?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Where (if anywhere) were X-ray machines put on trains or trolleys to image "Everybody over 14 years old"?
- 📝 Were there ever wars/battles where infantry were given multiple rifles to speed up rate of fire?
- 📝 When and where were the first coins made showing the currency or a face value?
- 📝 Where were ancient Romans supposed to dispose of their waste and garbage?
- 📝 Were there any wars in ancient Greece where religion played a major part?
- 📝 How were servants to the Kaiser of Imperial Germany treated and where may I find more information on them?
- 📝 Where were the western legions when the Roman empire fell?
- 📝 How many pens were used by MacArthur to end the final chapter of World War II and where are they now?
- 📝 Where were visa documents invented?
- 📝 Has there been an occasion where ranged weapons were available but not used?
- 📝 Was there a US state where video games were banned by accident?
- 📝 Why were Austria-Hungary's Slavic minorities put into multinational states?
- 📝 Was there ever a war mission where the personnel were instructed to surrender when the mission complete?
- 📝 Has there ever been a situation where the "motherland" treated its colonies well anywhere in the world?
- 📝 What trains were used on the Dakar-Niger Railway in the late 1950s and early 1960s?
- 📝 Where and how were the catapults/trebuchets operators trained?
- 📝 Where were the Mormons going?
- 📝 Where and when were air guns used in a major battle?
- 📝 Where is it recorded that Spartan common meals were followed by a recounting of noble deeds?
- 📝 Where were the best ancient wine regions in Israel, called Kerutim & Hatoulim in the Mishna, located on a map?
- 📝 Where and why were capital letters first used in English headlines?
- 📝 Where were Racka sheep brought to Europe from and when?
- 📝 Where is an image of the oracle bone that describes the nova?
- 📝 Was there ever a situation where members of two warring militaries were on leave in the same neutral location?
- 📝 When & where were three masted ships invented?
- 📝 Were there cases where an ethnic newspaper had the highest circulation in a country?
- 📝 Where were Hindus and Sattagydia in the late Achaemenid Empire?
- 📝 Were there trains to anonymous concentration camps?
- 📝 Where were there fractal structures in ancient Rome?
- 📝 Were there many "co-headed" commands where the senior member was younger than the junior?