Elizabeth Fleischman
Elizabeth Fleischman-Aschheim (née Fleischman; March 5, 1867 – August 3, 1905) was an American radiographer who is considered a pioneer of X-ray technology.
Elizabeth Fleischman was born in El Dorado County, California (possibly in Placerville), on March 5, 1867, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Austria.
[1] By 1876 the family had moved to San Francisco where Elizabeth's father, worked first as a baker and later became a merchant who sold various sundries and cigars.
[4][5] Upon the death of her mother, Fleischman moved in with her sister Estelle, who was married to English physician and surgeon Michael Joseph Henry Woolf.
[3] In 1896, Fleischman read of Wilhelm Röntgen's breakthrough with x-rays in Vienna, Austria: "A new photographic discovery" which sparked her interest in radiography.
[7][8] In August 1896, she attended a public lecture by and presentation on X-ray apparatus by Albert Van der Naillen in San Francisco.
[12] In 1898, American newspapers reported the results of her work bombarding commercially traded foods with x-rays in order to detect the presence or absence of "adulteration" by impurities.
[14] On August 20, 1899, she took one of her most famous radiographs, an image showing a Mauser 7 mm bullet lodged in the brain of John Gretzer Jr., in the region of the left occipital lobe.
"[19]At the time Fleischman worked as a radiographer, not only were x-ray tubes unshielded, it was common for operators to place their own hands in front of their fluoroscope to check exposures.
She commented on the merits of double-plate glass screens, and metals such as lead, aluminium, iron and copper to "resist" x-rays.
[21] The 4 March 1905 edition of the journal Electrical World and Engineer published the details regarding the amputation of Fleishman's right arm and her withdrawal from the field of radiography and stated:[23]"The leading medical and scientific men of the Coast are full of sympathy and regrets that Mrs. Aschheim has been forced to give up her eminent work as a radiographer in the midst of a brilliant career.
She acquired the reputation [as] the most expert woman radiographer of the world, but she sacrificed her arm [to radiation poisoning] in the pursuit of that fame.
The previous year, Clarence Dally, an American glassblower and assistant to Thomas Edison in his work on X-rays, died under similar circumstances to Fleischman.
