This page was created by Cali Craig.
Advancement of the Photograph in Medicine
In specific, one of the biggest photography advancements in science and medicine would be the X-ray. The X-ray was introduced to medicine as a diagnostic medium in the 1890s. It offered a new vision of the interior of the living human body. At the time of their introduction, X-rays were widely regarded as wondrous because they provided views of a previously unseen dimension of the body in its living state. It allows doctors, nurses, etc. to essentially examine the body before knowing if they need to go and have to touch or operate on the body. The X-ray specialties in proving a broken bone, diagnosing a fracture, or even a chest X-ray if a patient is experiencing a cough. As we have noted, the development of photography launched a new era of scientific image-making focusing on bodily exteriors, interiors, and specimens (Sturken and Cartwright 356).
Not only did the advancements in photography for medicine help prove a theory people may have about a person’s physical state, in an X-ray sense, but even more interesting these advancements were able to prove something mental. How could one prove that someone has a mental illness? They need proof. This is where the advancements came into play and can on a screen prove a complicated mental concept into a simple yes or no. Mental illnesses and things more complex than a broken bone are discovered and seen most through in examples of these advancements such as a CT or MRI scan.
One mental illness in specific that an CT scan can detect is Schizophrenia. Woolley and McGuire discuss in their article that other disorders can be associated with psychotic symptoms such as epilepsy, brain injury, slow-growing tumors, demyelinating diseases and encephalitis which is why they run the test. The treatment for these conditions may be fundamentally different from that for the major psychoses. Some radiological abnormalities reflect the presence of conditions that could account for psychosis, whereas others are more common in psychosis but are not themselves responsible for the disorder. When a scan is done to prove someone has Schizophrenia the area will be shaded very dark. In the photos below you can see a normal brail scan (left) compared to the more shaded region proving the disorder(right). (Woolley and McGuire)
The fact that these scans can prove whether someone has this mental illness or not becomes a huge positive. This is seen a lot in court cases around the world where people do things because of a mental illness or because they are “claiming” to have one. These scans come in to prove whether what they did was because they had no control over their brain or they were simply pure evil. One example of this occurred in 1998. On May 21st, the Thurston High School shooting took place. A boy named, Kip Kinkel, who was expelled at the time engaged in a school shooting at this Oregon high school. He went into the school that day with five weapons. He left two students dead as well as wounding a total of 25 others (Logman).
There were several events leading up to this horrible day to remember. First, the day before the incident, Kinkel was suspended for possession of a weapon. Kinkel was questioned if he knew anything a stolen weapon, which was not actually stolen, but he had bought from the owner’s son for $110. Without even attempting to hide the fact he told the authorities, “Look, I’m going to be honest with you guys; the gun’s in my locker.” He was arrested but it did not scare him. Also, leading up to the shooting, Kinkel heartlessly murdered his parents. He shot his father in the back of the head at the kitchen table and once his mother got home later in the night he met her in garage and also shot her in the back of the head, but twice, and then three times in the face and once in the heart. When police arrive both bodies were covered by sheets and all he could say to them was, “My head just doesn't work right. God damn these VOICES inside my head. ... I have to kill people. I don't know why. ... I have no other choice" (Logman).
With all this being said about Kinkel’s back history, it is within his trial and imprisonment where the advancements in photography comes into consideration and an overall help. When he got to the prison, he begged the officer to shoot him and he wished he had just killed himself after what he did to his parents but he simply could not bring his own self to do it. The officer only responded with pepper spraying to Kinkel’s words, but it was these exact words that led the officer to believe he may be mental. At his sentencing, the defense presented experts on mental health to show that he was legitimately mentally ill. It was Jeffery Hicks, the only psychologist who treated Kinkel, spoke on the matter claiming she treated him a total of nine times prior to the shooting for his major depression (Logman).
On September 24th, 1999, three days before jury selection was set to begin, that Kip Kinkel plead guilty to murder and attempt of murder, forgoing the possibility he can be considered insane. In November 1999, he was sentenced to a total of 111 years without possibility of parole. In June 2007, this boy, sought a new trial hoping to use the insanity defense. He ended up being tested in court and the results came back that Kinkel tested positive to having paranoid schizophrenia during the shooting shown on one of the advancements in photography, the CT scan.
