The great Galway x rays case 1904 – the first radiological negligence case in Ireland

One hundred and thirty years ago, on the 8th November 1895, Wilheim Konrad Röntgen isolated “X Rays” by accident. After a month spent validating his discovery he published the preliminary findings as a communication in the Proceedings of the Würtzburg Physics-Medicine Society in late December 1895. Röntgen deliberately did not patent his discovery and as a consequence X-Ray technology and its potential clinical application was soon recognised and rapidly adopted into worldwide medical practice. By 1899 there was a functioning clinical X-Ray service conducted by and in the Department of Natural Philosophy (Physics) on the ground floor of the Queen’s College, Galway quadrangle. By as early as April 1896, five months after their discovery, skin burns associated with the use of x-rays were being reported and by 1899 an increasing number of legal suits in France and the United States for negligence from the use of x-rays resulting in harm were being reported. In 1904 the parents of a young boy, whose right knee was x-rayed on seven occasions in the Queen’s College in late 1902 and early 1903 for a lost needle segment and who then developed a significant burn injury of his knee, sued the College and the boy’s medical carers for negligence. Based on the daily, anonymous court reporting of the “Great Galway X Rays Case” contained within the Galway Express (and General Advertiser for the Counties of Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Limerick and Clare) newspaper of the 4th to 11th February 1904 and a special summary Supplement in the Saturday 13th February 1904 edition, the conduct, characters and outcome, legal and financial, of Ireland’s first radiological negligence case are discussed. Noteworthy where the trial was concerned was the extensive (and expensive) use of expert medical opinion evidence.