Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1917 — NEW WONDERS OF THE X-RAY [ARTICLE]

NEW WONDERS OF THE X-RAY

Ona of Its Most Remarkable Uses Io to Determine Age of Human Beings. Of all the wonders that the X-ray to responsible for none Is more remarkable than its ability to tell age in human beings. Recently in Cincinnati, a youth was arrested for striking and seriously Injuring a fellow workman. He stated when he was arrested that he was nineteen years of age. Learning the seriousness of the charge against him, the defendant and his father asserted that he was but seventeen years old, and demanded that the boy be at onco turned over to the juvenile as the law of this state prevents a* prisoner under eighteen years of age being tried in a criminal court. Thoroughly convinced that the youth was at least eighteen years old, the juvenile court physician decided to have X-ray photographs made of the epiphyseal bones of his hand, elbow and hip, and also photos of the same bones of a seventeen-year-old youth. Comparison, It was hoped, would then settle the matter, as it is a known fact In medical circles that when a boy reaches the age of eighteen years those bones become hardened. The photographs developed from the X-ray pictures of the bones of the boys showed that those of the seventeen-year-old boy had not hardened, but those of the defendant in the case had done so. The physician immediately fixed the age of the boy at eighteen or more.