The individuals had already either been experimenting along similar lines to Wilhelm Röntgen with Crookes tubes and such, the physicists or scientists, or were actively associated with electrical work, the electricians, which made them particularly receptive to the technical appeal of the new science of x-rays.
After the early investigative work of Thomas Ranken Lyle, William Henry Bragg, Joseph Patrick Slattery, and others, almost all medical men were satisfied with soliciting the services of the external X-ray man when necessity arose for skiagraphs to be produced.
As the hospitals started to be equipped with x-ray apparatus and installations under the care of radiologists and radiographers, the medical men began to accept the eventuality of the new technology.
His equipment consisted of a 6-inch coil, a 6 cell bichromate battery configuration and Crookes Focus Tube, and on occasion necessitated that a 30-minute exposure be applied.
The bullet in the leg of the man Acheson, who was shot near Tilpa, and is now in the Sydney Hospital, was located by means of the Rontgen rays applied by Mr. Schmidlin.
- Sydney Morning Herald Another such demonstration of the expertise of Schmidlin and witnessed by prominent medical men of the day, was recorded in the 22 August 1896 issue of The Town and Country Journal.
A series of interesting experiments with the Rontgen rays were completed at Sydney Hospital on the afternoon of August 14 by Mr. Schmidlin, electrician of Elizabeth – street.
Under a 6 in Rumkorff induction coil and a Crookes focus tube previously exhausted, he photographed, or more properly speaking, shadowgraphed the bullet wound on the inside of the right thigh of Frederick Atcheson, the victim of the Tilpa shooting case.
The plate, wrapped in specially prepared silk and paper to protect it against the natural light, was placed immediately beneath the patient’s leg on the opposite side to the wound.
Then the wound itself was laid bare, and with the patient stretched at full length in bed, and perfectly at ease, the fluorescent rays were flashed intermittently, and a splendid shadowgraph picture was the result.
The patient, said the doctors present, is necessarily subject to the usual dangers arising from surgery, but as an operation, success was complete and emphatic.