[Learning to read; roentgen photos and the Nederlandsch Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde]

Reading articles from the earliest years of roentgenology, shortly after 1896, we find that reading a roentgenogram was an explicit mixture of technique, anatomy, clinical data, patient, pathology and shadow. Reading roentgenograms was not just deciphering the shadows in terms of an underlying, stable 'natural world', it was an active construction and representation of 'normal and pathological'. The articles on the 'new photography' in the Nederlandsch Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde are not just a passive representation of this process: they also enable the contemporary to follow the construction in all its aspects and to use it in his own work with rays and photographs.