Building Science-based Medicine at Stanford: Henry Kaplan and the Medical Linear Accelerator, 1948–1975

The hospital is one of the places where people encounter highly advanced science and technology in their daily lives. In the hospital, patients are in contact with a number of scientific innovations and new machines and technologies, more so as computed axial tomography scanners (CAT) and magnetic resonance imaging scanners (MRI) have become indispensable tools for medical diagnosis.1 The instrumentalization of diagnosis and hospital treatment, however, has not been without mixed results. First, the introduction of machines on the bedside, it is often alleged, has distanced physicians from their patients. Patients have found that machine-dominated treatment is given a privileged position and have felt alienated from the doctors’ personal care. On the physicians’ side, their clinical experience has been superseded by information derived from medical instruments. Furthermore, technologies in the hospital have often been associated with the ever-increasing cost of medical care.

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