Hazards of ionising radiation: 100 years of observations on man

In November 1895, when Conrad Röntgen serendipitously discovered X-rays, epidemiology was effectively limited to the study of infectious disease. What little epidemiological work was done in other fields was done as part of clinical medicine or under the heading of geographical pathology. The risks from exposure to X-rays and subsequently from other types of ionising radiation were consequently discovered by qualitative association or animal experiment. They did not begin to be quantified in humans until half a century later, when epidemiology emerged as a scientific discipline capable of quantifying risks of non-infectious disease and the scientific world was alerted to the need for assessing the effects of the radiation to which large populations might be exposed by the use of nuclear energy in peace and war.