Émil Herman Grubbé (1 January 1875 — 26 March 1960) was possibly the first American to use x-rays as a treatment for cancer (versus detection) but this is disputed and no reliable contemporary source of this claim exists. He was born in Chicago, and received his medical training at a homeopathic institute: the Hahnemann Medical College of Chicago. It was there that Grubbe assembled the first x-ray machine in Chicago in 1896, and that same year, used it to treat a woman with recurrent carcinoma of the breast (disputed). He assembled the machine and began to use it in treatments less than a year after Wilhelm Röntgen announced his discovery of the x-ray. By 1960, Grubbe had instructed over 7000 other doctors in the medical use of x-rays. In the course of his lifetime, he underwent more than 90 operations for multiple cancers caused by his intense, ongoing exposure to radiation, a disease from which he died. Honors were bestowed upon Grubbe by numerous institutions, including the American Cancer Society. He was also a fellow of the American College of Physicians. Grubbe left money in his will to the Chicago Radiological Society to fund the Grubbe Memorial Award.
See also
- History of radiation therapy
References
Further reading
- Grubbe, Emil (1949). X-Ray Treatment: Its Origins, Birth, and Early History. St. Paul and Minneapolis, MN: Bruce Publishing Company.
- Hodges, Paul C. (1964). The Life and Times of Emil H. Grubbe. University of Chicago Press.
- Mukherjee, Siddhartha (16 November 2010). The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4391-0795-9. Retrieved 6 September 2011.
- "X-Ray Martyr". Time. 3 August 1959. Archived from the original on February 1, 2011.
