[1] X-rays were not regularly used to screen for tuberculosis prior to Hart's innovation, and are still used as a gold standard today, which has led researchers to believe that he has saved countless lives.

"[7] During his school years, Hart was allowed to write essays under his chosen name "Robert Allen Bamford Jr." with little resistance from his classmates or teachers.

"[10] Nonetheless, Hart knew that if he presented himself as Robert, any prospective employer checking his credentials would discover the female name or find no records for him at all.

TB usually attacked victims' lungs first; Hart was among the first physicians to document how it then spread, via the circulatory system, causing lesions on the kidneys, spine, and brain, eventually resulting in death.

Scientists had discovered in the nineteenth century that tuberculosis was not hereditary, but an airborne bacillus spread rapidly among persons in close proximity by coughing and sneezing.

Between 1933 and 1945 Hart traveled extensively through rural Idaho, covering thousands of miles while lecturing, conducting mass TB screenings, training new staff, and treating the effects of the epidemic.

An experienced and accessible writer, Hart wrote widely for medical journals and popular publications, describing TB for technical and general audiences and giving advice on its prevention, detection, and cure.

In 1943, Hart, now recognized as pre-eminent in the field of tubercular roentgenology, compiled his extensive evidence on TB and other X-ray-detectable cases into a definitive compendium, These Mysterious Rays: A Nontechnical Discussion of the Uses of X-rays and Radium, Chiefly in Medicine (published by Harper & Brothers), still a standard text today.

[16] The 1906–1907 case of Karl M. Baer had set a new precedent for sex reassignment surgery by enlisting simultaneous support from psychiatric, legal, and surgical quarters.

The article's opening sentence referred to him by his birth name and with she/her pronouns, describing him as having graduated from Stanford "as a fluffy coed ... [who] affected boyish mannerisms".

He then took itinerant work, until in 1921, on a written recommendation from noted doctor Harriet J. Lawrence (decorated by President Wilson for developing a flu vaccine), he secured a post as staff physician at Albuquerque Sanatorium.

In 1925 Hart moved to the Trudeau School of Tuberculosis in New York, where he also carried out postgraduate work; he spent 1926–1928 as a clinician at the Rockford TB sanatorium in Illinois.

During the war Hart was also a medical adviser at the Army Recruiting and Induction headquarters in Seattle, while Edna worked for the King County Welfare Department in the same city.

[12] During the last six years of his life Hart gave numerous lectures, and dedicated all his free time to fundraising for medical research and to support patients with advanced TB who could not afford treatment.

in a speech to graduating medical students, "Each of us must take into account the raw material which heredity dealt us at birth and the opportunities we have had along the way, and then work out for ourselves a sensible evaluation of our personalities and accomplishments".

Farquhar, who is short, thin, and bespectacled, resembles Hart physically, and considers himself "the possessor of a defective body" from which he wishes to escape, a possible expression of gender dysphoria.

The interest on his estate is donated annually to the Alan L. and Edna Ruddick Hart Fund, which makes grants for research into leukaemia and its cure.

[1][37] As activist Margaret Deidre O'Hartigan noted in the book The Phallus Palace, Katz expressed the belief that transsexualism was "quack medicine" at the time.

[38] Right to Privacy's executive director, Barry Pack, claimed in 1995: "We continue to believe that Lucille Hart made a choice to represent herself as a man based on the oppression of society at large [.

[38] Both Cook and Lauderdale believed that Hart was a lesbian and frequently gave soundbites to newspapers about it as well as formal presentations at colleges and history museums in Oregon and Washington.

[38] In the following issue, Stryker said that her social constructionist views of identity gave her "reservations about using the word 'transsexual' to refer to people before the mid 20th century who identify in a profound, ongoing manner with a gender that they were not assigned at birth".

In the popular 1985 pamphlet, Information for the Female-to-Male Crossdresser and Transsexual, author and activist Lou Sullivan listed Alan Hart as a historical figure representing transgender men.

[43] In October 1994, Candice Hellen Brown, a male-to-female transsexual residing in Portland, wrote a letter to the editor of Just Out magazine defending Hart's manhood and criticizing the Right to Privacy dinner.

In her letter, she wrote:The Right to Privacy Political Action Committee in Oregon has a big fundraiser every year that is called the Lucille Hart Dinner.

[38] The Lesbian Avengers agreed and, upon seeing a presentation by Brown, Koteles, and a female-to-male transsexual named Ken Morris, were persuaded to believe that Alan Hart was a transgender man.

[38] After attempting to negotiate with the Right to Privacy commission,[45] The Lesbian Avengers and the Ad Hoc Committee of Transsexuals decided to protest the Lucille Hart Dinner and other events.

and passed out over 400 yellow flyers to attendees that said HIS NAME WAS ALAN and explained that they wanted the Right to Privacy dinner to acknowledge that he was a "transsexual hero".

[38] In 2003, the writer Joy Parks described the battle, especially within Portland, Oregon LGBT communities over Hart's identity as "extremely ugly" and one in which "neither side appeared particularly victorious".

[38] In 2004, writer Jillian Todd Weiss published an article in the Journal of Bisexuality that claimed Hart's attempted lesbian reclamation was a "gay rewriting of history" and that it showed a "blatant lack of regard for transgendered identities".

[3][2][48][49] The Oregon Encyclopedia acknowledges that there was conflict over his identity, but refers to him as "one of the first female-to-male transgender persons to undergo a hysterectomy in the United States and live the remainder of his life as a man".