Internet Archive, 2026-10-08 (Investigator, STEP I)

Site: https://archive.org (advancedsearch API and item metadata via curl; full-text (djvu.txt) files saved under research/pages/ia-*.txt) Queries: Tousey AND (creator:Tousey OR title:(medical electricity)); ("Sinclair Tousey" OR "Tousey, Sinclair") AND mediatype:texts; "Tousey" AND (Roentgen OR radiology OR x-ray) AND date:[1896 TO 1940]; title:(new york medical journal) AND date:1913; title:(medical record) AND date:1903 / archives roentgen ray 1912-1913; title:(international journal of orthodontia) AND date:1916. Result: positive.

Tousey's own works found (priority 1)

The concentration-cell passage the folder scan lacks (from the UCLA copy, printed p.287) [web: ia-1921-ucla.txt]

Tousey (quoting another author; the quotation marks are in the text) explains the tissue currents "principally as produced by concentration cells since no metals are present". He assumes "two electrolytes with different degrees of concentration are separated by a 'semipermeable' membrane", which "allows one kind of ions to pass through it, but not the other ions" (Ostwald, 1890). The injured place becomes "negative", and Tschagowetz's calculated electromotive force from carbonic-acid concentration is said to agree "quite closely with the observed". This is the membrane-potential basis of claim 7 (the body as an electrolyte). It is the modern Nernst/Bernstein idea, stated in its 1900s form.

The 1916 dental monograph (claim 4) [web: ia-1916-dental.txt]

• p.60: cardiac lesions secondary to dental infection "were endocarditis in twenty-three out of thirty-one of Hartzell, Henrici and Leonard's cases". These are others' counts (Minnesota group), which Tousey cites.
• The ulcer-to-cancer link is stated as "the ever-present danger that a chronic ulcer will develop into cancer".
• p.71-72 list "The author's other publications upon the x-ray in dentistry". They are new primary leads not in the folder:
• "Radiotherapy in Pyorrhea Alveolaris, and Dental Radiography", NY Institute of Stomatology, 1 March 1904; Interstate Dental Journal, July 1904, pp.495-502.
• "X-ray Examination of the Teeth", NY Institute of Dental Technique, 28 Feb 1905; Dental Brief (Philadelphia), May 1905, vol. X no. 5, pp.257-266.
• "X-ray and High Frequency Currents in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Dental Cases", National Dental Association, Buffalo, 1905; Dental Cosmos 1905; New Jersey State Dental Association, July 1905.
• "Recent Work with the X-ray and High Frequency Currents in the Diagnosis of Dental Cases and in the Treatment of Pyorrhea and Cancer", NY Odontological Society, 17 Oct 1905; Dental Cosmos, June 1906.
• "Application of the X-ray and High Frequency Currents in Dentistry", Dental Brief, Sept 1906.
• "Radiographs Illustrating the Topography of the Pneumatic Sinuses of the Face", NY Academy of Medicine, Section on Laryngology and Rhinology, 18 Dec 1907.
• "The X-ray and the Ultra-Violet Ray in Dentistry", Philadelphia Academy of Stomatology, 24 March 1908.
• "The X-ray and the Ultra-Violet Ray in Dental Diagnosis and Treatment", Northern Dental Society, 13 May 1909; New York Medical Journal, 19 March 1910.
• "X-ray Measurement of the Unerupted Teeth at the Age of Five or Six Years to Provide for Preliminary Regulation of the Dental Arch if Required": Dental Society of the State of New York, 8 May 1913; Eastern Association of Graduates of the Angle School of Orthodontia, 23 April 1914; Harvard Odontological Society, 15 Oct 1915. This is the dental-arch method of claim 4.
• "X-ray Prevention of Nasal Diseases ...", New York Medical Journal, 13 March 1915.
• The monograph itself was read before the Roentgen Ray Association of Greater New York (27 Jan 1916), the Bronx County Dental Society (28 Feb 1916), the New York State Dental Society (13 May 1916) and the Medical Association of Greater New York (15 May 1916).

Others' accounts (priority 2 and 4)

• American Journal of the Medical Sciences, July 1911, review of the 1910 edition (paper-doi-10_1097_00000441-191107000-00023; text saved as ia-ajms-1911-review.txt). The reviewer, a self-described neurologist, writes that the book is "rather too large". He says "many statements are made of cures of diseases by different forms of electrical application which are not borne out by facts, but which the author quotes in good faith from men who apparently should know". He questions the sciatica hydroelectric-bath cure claim and the scleroderma and erythromelalgia claims. He praises the new motor-point plates. This is a contemporary professional assessment bearing on claim 3. [web] https://archive.org/details/paper-doi-10_1097_00000441-191107000-00023
• New York Medical Journal, vol. 97, 29 March 1913, pp.648-649: Sinclair Tousey, "An Improved X Ray Generator" (newyorkmedicaljo9719unse; text saved as ia-nymj-v97-1913.txt, from line 109085). Tousey writes that his part "consisted really in directing the attention of the inventor, Mr. Cabot, to the need for such an unfluctuating direct current of a potential which could be regulated from 10,000 volts to 100,000 volts or more". He says Cabot and Shaw, wireless engineers, were "asked by Doctor Williams, of Boston" (very probably Francis H. Williams; [memory: medium]) to look into x-rays. They bought his book and took it on a Nova Scotia hunting trip, and found "three or four pages which suggested the present discovery". His physics argument is that coils, static machines and rectified transformers send "a series of impulses, the voltage of each of which varied a great deal", so the cathode particles travel at many velocities and give mixed wavelengths. Some of these are too hard for contrast and others so soft they are absorbed in the skin. This is the earliest dated statement of claim 6 found so far. It is still Tousey's own account (he has a stake in the credit). The new element is "Doctor Williams of Boston" as a third party who could corroborate it. [web] https://archive.org/details/newyorkmedicaljo9719unse
• International Journal of Orthodontia, vol. 2 no. 10, Oct 1916, pp.628-629: review of the 1916 dental monograph (ia-ijo-1916-10.txt). The reviewer writes "from one of such eminence as Dr. Tousey"; "Recent developments in pathology render the clinical reports ... more convincing than they could possibly have been a year or two ago". A professional journal of the period thus received the focal-infection thesis as current science. Bears on claim 4. [web] https://archive.org/details/sim_american-journal-of-orthodontics-and-dentofacial_1916-10_2_10
• US Naval Medical Bulletin, Oct 1917: matched the search, but the text has no "Tousey" hit (OCR); negative.

Not reached: Medical Record vol. 64 (1903, the 24 Oct 1903 interrupter paper; Google Books shows it at p.628) was not found on IA under the queries tried; Archives of the Roentgen Ray vol. 17 (1913) was not found. Downloads: none (the full texts are saved as page files only).