[1896: How nascent radiotherapy gathered Roentgen, Pasteur and the Lumière brothers]. / 1896 : comment la radiothérapie naissante a pu réunir Roentgen, Pasteur et les frères Lumière.

On the 4th July, 1896, in his medical office of Les Échelles (Savoie, France), Victor Despeignes performed the very first radiotherapy against cancer, documented by indisputable proofs. However, the intellectual and practical approach that leads to this first radiotherapy may appear unexpected to date. Indeed, it is likely that the treatment that Despeignes applied to his neighbour, who did not suffer from stomach cancer, was born with the indirect support of the Lumière brothers, on the basis of a biological theory (the parasitory theory of cancer) that is irrelevant today, with an experimental protocol based on experiments performed on tuberculosis et in a bifractionated model linked by the constraints of a district medical doctor.

Johann Wilhelm Hittorf and the material culture of nineteenth-century gas discharge research.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, gas discharge research was transformed from a playful and fragmented field into a new branch of physical science and technology. From the 1850s onwards, several technical innovations-powerful high-voltage supplies, the enhancement of glass-blowing skills, or the introduction of mercury air-pumps- allowed for a major extension of experimental practices and expansion of the phenomenological field. Gas discharge tubes served as containers in which resources from various disciplinary contexts could be brought together; along with the experimental apparatus built around them the tubes developed into increasingly complex interfaces mediating between the human senses and the micro-world. The focus of the following paper will be on the physicist and chemist Johann Wilhelm Hittorf (1824-1914), his educational background and his attempts to understand gaseous conduction as a process of interaction between electrical energy and matter. Hittorf started a long-term project in gas discharge research in the early 1860s. In his research he tried to combine a morphological exploration of gas discharge phenomena-aiming at the experimental production of a coherent phenomenological manifold--with the definition and precise measurements of physical properties.

[Röntgen's strange order--a contribution to the history of the discovery of Röntgen rays]. / Röntgens merkwürdige Bestellung--ein Beitrag zur Entdeckungsgeschichte der Röntgenstrahlen.

Due to the fact that Röntgen never reported the details of the discovery of his "new rays", he left the door open for speculative interpretations. As a contribution to a serious analysis of the history of Röntgen's discovery, this paper presents a previously unnoticed letter relating to an order of a number of very thin crystalline absorbers. The addressee is unfortunately unknown. The letter is dated November 15, 1895. Therefore, this letter must be considered to be the first well documented remark made by Röntgen after seeing the earliest indications of the new rays only one week earlier. The order seems to emphasize the role of a particular type of cathode ray tube developed by Philipp Lenard, Nobel Prize winner of 1905, and manufactured by the glassblower Louis Müller-Unkel in the discovery of the new radiation. It partly contradicts an analysis based on Röntgen's order book from Würzburg made by the author et al. some years ago. Completed by the document presented here, Röntgen's order correspondence allows some insight into Röntgen's intentions during this productive period. The autograph was found at Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Sammlung Darmstaedter, by the author.