seeing inside the body

the image to change photographic and medical histories - the first x-ray of Dr. Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen’s wife Anna Berthe’s hand. 

I just finished reading Roentgen’s first paper on x-rays:  “On a New Kind of Rays (Preliminary Communication)” written in December of 1895.  It was strange reading his explanation of using the term x-ray in his 2nd footnote:

For the sake of brevity I should like to use the term “rays,” and to distinguish them from others I shall use the name “x-rays.”

And the term x-ray was born!  Little did Roentgen know what an impact this little footnote would have on medicine.  His paper describes his experiments and does not explain what these new rays mean for science.  Medicine was not even part of the discussion yet; it would be years before medicine appropriated this new form of technology into its practice. 

He explains the different materials and their respective reactions to the glowing apparatus.  His language describes the images of the x-rays, the experience of their first discovery.  I wonder what it would have felt like to see inside someone’s body for the first time ever without breaking the skin.  His wife’s hand has become the icon of making the invisible visible.  We can see her, inside her - her body is open to our searching eyes. 

Did Roentgen choose his wife for a particular reason?  Could he have been aware of the future political implications of opening up the woman’s body to the physician’s peering eyes?  Was he aware that the public had then seen his wife in a most intimate way?