Radiologist In a Top Hat

Wherein the artist documents the cause of his own demise

By Bryna O'Sullivan, A08

The word hospital comes from the latin "hospitalus," meaning hospitality, and for centuries, that was one of the rare things that a hospital could provide. The late 19th century was a different age, however. The gradual loosening of the control of the Catholic Church in Europe after the Protestant Reformation encouraged something students of medicine had desired for centuries-an active study of human anatomy and disease. For the first time, doctors had begun to assemble medical knowledge into treatises that permitted real diagnosis. Instead of treating the symptoms they saw in their patients one by one, they could treat these symptoms as a whole. Treatment accordingly took an equally gigantic leap forward.

Among the most important of these exciting advances in treatment was the use of the X-ray. Discovered by the German physicist Conrad Rontgen in November 1895, the earliest models of X-ray machines were put into use the following year. The clinician found that for the first time, instead of relying simply on his eyes to examine the exterior of a patient, he could examine the interior of the body as well.

The first attempts to use the X-ray (or radiation) to treat cancer are the basis for this 1907 painting (opposite page) by Georges Chicotot. Though not much is known about the painter, Chicotot made a name for himself by being equally gifted in the fine arts and medicine. He was initially a student at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, but the young man's interest in anatomy soon led him to study medicine. In 1899, he began his career at Broca Hospital in Paris, and became chief of radiology there in 1908. Painting would be his lifelong interest. Despite devoting more than 25 years to medicine, Chicotot would exhibit at the Salon- the top venue for French artists-yearly from 1877 to 1913. Best known among these works were his paintings of medical subjects. As he explains in a 1937 letter, he intended his paintings to serve as a "document for the future."

Constructed geometrically, the painting shown here uses the intersection of the patient as the horizontal, with that of the doctor as the vertical. It is the equipment and its incredible possibility that dominate the scene. Sentimentality is entirely lacking. Both the doctor and patient appear somewhat detached and non-participatory. It seems entirely possible that the patient, as has often been suggested, is actually asleep!

Mixing self-portrait with historical documentation, Chicotot presents himself regulating the procedure-the torch that maintains the flow of current in one hand, a watch to time the exposure in the other. Despite the logical need for a sanitary environment, he is still in top hat and street shoes, although he is wearing the traditional white coat.

Notice the setting, which is far less evocative of a sterile hospital room than of a Parisian apartment. The walls are papered, and a formal chimney stands at the center. The patient's clothes are folded over a chair, suggesting that she has undressed in the same room, not in a separate area as is the case in a modern doctor's office. Could she be having the treatment at home?

There is no protection against the radiation, for doctor or patient. It is not until the deaths of some pioneering physicians in the early 1920s that the dangers of radiation became evident. Georges Chicotot died of radiation poisoning in the 1930s. The letters of his wife to the director of the Assistance Publique-Hopitaux de Paris are testament to the struggle of a man to have his work commemorated, even as its effects are killing him.

Chicotot's painting records the first moments of radiation therapy, the period when excitement over the medical possibilities outweighed all understanding of the risks. It was the treatment of the wealthy and the gifted, carried out not in the hospitals, generally intended for treating the poor, but in private clinics, where the patient enjoyed all levels of comfort. The doctor was the master of his craft, capable of presenting himself as the wealthy and intelligent bourgeois that he was. (TM)

O'Sullivan, an undergraduate history major, recently returned from a year abroad as part of the Tufts-in-Paris program. While in France, she interned at Le Musee de l'Assistance Publique-Hopitaux de Paris, a museum devoted to the history of the Parisian hospital.