About Alan L. Hart
Alan L. Hart was an American physician, radiologist, tuberculosis researcher, writer, and novelist. Hart pioneered the use of X-ray photography in tuberculosis detection; he worked in sanitariums and X-ray clinics in New Mexico, Illinois, Washington, and Idaho. For the last 16 years of his life, he headed mass X-ray programs that screened for tuberculosis in Connecticut. X-rays were not regularly used to screen for tuberculosis prior to Hart's innovation, and are still used today, which has led researchers to believe that he has saved countless lives. Circa 1917, Hart became one of the first trans men in the United States to undergo a hysterectomy. TB usually attacked victims' lungs first; Hart was among the first physicians to document how it then spread, via the circulatory system, causing lesions on the kidneys, spine, and brain, eventually resulting in death. X-rays, or Roentgen rays as they were more commonly known until World War Two, had been discovered only in 1895, when Hart was five years old.
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