Textbook of veterinary diagnostic

radiology 7. ed. Edition Nald E. Thrall

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/textbook-of-veterinary-diagnostic-radiology-7-ed-editi
on-nald-e-thrall/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Grainger & Allison’s Diagnostic Radiology. A Textbook

of Medical Imaging 7th Edition Andreas Adam

https://ebookmass.com/product/grainger-allisons-diagnostic-
radiology-a-textbook-of-medical-imaging-7th-edition-andreas-adam/

Dyce, Sack and Wensing’s Textbook of Veterinary Anatomy

E Book 5th Edition, (Ebook PDF)

https://ebookmass.com/product/dyce-sack-and-wensings-textbook-of-
veterinary-anatomy-e-book-5th-edition-ebook-pdf/

Textbook of Gastrointestinal Radiology 5th Edition

Richard M. Gore

https://ebookmass.com/product/textbook-of-gastrointestinal-
radiology-5th-edition-richard-m-gore/

Koneman’s Color Atlas and Textbook of Diagnostic

Microbiology (Color Atlas & Textbook of Diagnostic
Microbiology) 7th Edition, (Ebook PDF)

https://ebookmass.com/product/konemans-color-atlas-and-textbook-
of-diagnostic-microbiology-color-atlas-textbook-of-diagnostic-
microbiology-7th-edition-ebook-pdf/
Radiology-Nuclear Medicine Diagnostic Imaging Ali
Gholamrezanezhad

https://ebookmass.com/product/radiology-nuclear-medicine-
diagnostic-imaging-ali-gholamrezanezhad/

Diagnostic Imaging: Interventional Radiology 3rd

Edition Brandt C. Wible

https://ebookmass.com/product/diagnostic-imaging-interventional-
radiology-3rd-edition-brandt-c-wible/

Textbook of Radiology And Imaging, Vol 2 Bharat

Aggarwal

https://ebookmass.com/product/textbook-of-radiology-and-imaging-
vol-2-bharat-aggarwal/

Workbook for McCurnin’s Clinical Textbook for

Veterinary Technicians E Book 9th Edition, (Ebook PDF)

https://ebookmass.com/product/workbook-for-mccurnins-clinical-
textbook-for-veterinary-technicians-e-book-9th-edition-ebook-pdf/

Core Radiology: A Visual Approach to Diagnostic Imaging

https://ebookmass.com/product/core-radiology-a-visual-approach-
to-diagnostic-imaging/
VetBooks.ir
VetBooks.ir
VetBooks.ir

TEXTBOOK of

Veterinary
Diagnostic
Radiology
VetBooks.ir
VetBooks.ir

TEXTBOOK of

Veterinary
Diagnostic
Radiology Seventh Edition

DONALD E. THRALL, DVM, PHD

Emeritus Professor
College of Veterinary Medicine
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, North Carolina

Radiologist and Quality Control

IDEXX Telemedicine Consultants
Clackamas, Oregon
 3251 Riverport Lane
VetBooks.ir

St. Louis, Missouri 63043

TEXTBOOK OF VETERINARY DIAGNOSTIC RADIOLOGY,

SEVENTH EDITION ISBN: 978-0-323-48247-9
Copyright © 2018 by Elsevier, Inc. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further
information about the Publisher’s permissions policies and our arrangements with organizations such
as the Copyright Clearance Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency, can be found at our website:
www.elsevier.com/permissions.

This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the
Publisher (other than as may be noted herein).

Notices

Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience
broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical
treatment may become necessary.
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in
evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In
using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of
others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.
With respect to any drug or pharmaceutical products identified, readers are advised to check
the most current information provided (i) on procedures featured or (ii) by the manufacturer of
each product to be administered, to verify the recommended dose or formula, the method and
duration of administration, and contraindications. It is the responsibility of practitioners, relying on
their own experience and knowledge of their patients, to make diagnoses, to determine dosages
and the best treatment for each individual patient, and to take all appropriate safety precautions.
To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors,
assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products
liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products,
instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.

Previous editions copyrighted 2013, 2007, 2002, 1998, 1994, and 1986.

International Standard Book Number: 978-0-323-48247-9

Senior Content Strategist: Jennifer Flynn-Briggs

Senior Content Development Manager: Lucia Gunzel
Content Development Specialist: Lucia Gunzel
Publishing Services Manager: Julie Eddy
Senior Project Manager: Marquita Parker
Design Direction: Maggie Reid

Printed in the United States of America

Last digit is the print number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

 Contributors
VetBooks.ir

Kate Alexander, DMV, MS, DACVR Robert Cole, DVM, DACVR

Veterinary Radiologist Assistant Professor
Associate Professor, Diagnostic Imaging Department of Clinical Sciences
Department of Clinical Sciences Auburn University
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine Auburn, Alabama
University of Montreal
Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec, Canada Marc-André d’Anjou, DMV, DACVR
Radiologist
Graeme Allan, DVSc, MVSc, FACVSc, DACVR Service Vétérinaire d’Imagerie Médicale Animages inc.
Radiology and Ultrasound Specialist Longueuil, Quebec, Canada
Veterinary Imaging Associates
Newtown, New South Wales, Australia Sarah Davies, BVSc, MS, DACVR
Adjunct Professor Veterinary Radiologist
Faculty of Veterinary Science Veterinary Imaging Associates
University of Sydney Saint Leonards, New South Wales, Australia
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
William Tod Drost, DVM, DACVR
Fabrice Audigié, DVM, PhD Professor in Radiology
Professor in Equine Imaging and Locomotor Pathology Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences
CIRALE The Ohio State University
USC Biomécanique et Pathologie Locomotrice du Cheval Columbus, Ohio
Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire d’Alfort France
Sue J. Dyson, MA, VetMB, DEO, PhD, FRCVS
Robert J. Bahr, DVM, DACVR Head of Clinical Orthopaedics
Associate Professor Centre for Equine Studies
Veterinary Radiology Animal Health Trust
Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences Newmarket, Suffolk, United Kingdom
Center for Veterinary Health Sciences
Oklahoma State University Stephanie C. Essman, DVM, BS, MS, DACVR
Stillwater, Oklahoma Assistant Professor
Department of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery
Marianna Biggi, DVM, PhD, FHEA, DECVDI-LA, MRCVS Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital
Veterinary Radiologist College of Veterinary Medicine
Head of Vet-CT Equine University of Missouri
St. John’s Innovation Center Columbia, Missouri
Cambridge United Kingdom
Lisa J. Forrest, VMD, DACVR
Lisa G. Britt, DVM, MS, DACVR Professor
Clinical Assistant Professor in Radiology Department of Surgical Sciences
Department of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery School of Veterinary Medicine
College of Veterinary Medicine University of Wisconsin-Madison
University of Missouri Madison, Wisconsin
Columbia, Missouri
Paul M. Frank, DVM, DACVR
James C. Brown Jr., DVM, MS, DACVR Radiologist
Veterinary Radiologist Antech Imaging Services
IDEXX Telemedicine Consultants Hillsborough, North Carolina
Raleigh, North Carolina
Lorrie Gaschen, PhD, DVM, Dr. Med. Vet.
Valeria Busoni, DVM, PhD, DECVDI Professor
Associate Professor of Veterinary Diagnostic Imaging Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences
College of Veterinary Medicine Louisiana State University
University of Liège Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Belgium

v
 vi CONTRIBUTORS

George A. Henry, DVM, DACVR Stephanie Nykamp, DVM, DACVR

Clinical Associate Professor of Radiology Associate Professor
Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences Department of Clinical Studies
VetBooks.ir

College of Veterinary Medicine Ontario Veterinary College

University of Tennessee University of Guelph
Knoxville, Tennessee Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Jennifer Kinns, BSc, VetMB, MRCVS, DACVR, DECVDI Mark Owen, BVSc, DECVDI, FANZCVS
Assistant Professor; Residency Program Director Adjunct Associate Professor
Diagnostic Imaging/Radiology Veterinary Diagnostic Imaging
Departments of Small and Large Animal Clinical Sciences Institute of Veterinary, Animal & Biomedical Sciences
College of Veterinary Medicine Massey University, New Zealand
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan Anthony Pease, DVM, MS, DACVR
Section Chief
Martha Moon Larson, DVM, MS, DACVR Diagnostic Imaging Department of Small Animal Clinical
Professor of Radiology Sciences
Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine College of Veterinary Medicine
Virginia Tech Michigan State University
Blacksburg, Virginia East Lansing, Michigan

Jimmy C. Lattimer, DVM, BS, MS, DACVR Kathryn L. Phillips, DVM, DACVR
Associate Professor of Radiology Veterinarian
Department of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery Veterinary Surgery and Radiology
Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital University of California, Davis
College of Veterinary Medicine Davis, California
University of Missouri
Columbia, Missouri Rachel E. Pollard, DVM, PhD
Assistant Professor
Wilfried Mai, Dr. Med. Vet., MS, PhD, DECVDI, DACVR Department of Surgical and Radiological Sciences
Associate Professor of Radiology School of Veterinary Medicine
Department of Clinical Sciences and Advanced Medicine University of California, Davis
University of Pennsylvania Davis, California
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Elissa K. Randall, DVM, MS, DACVR
Angela J. Marolf, DVM, DACVR Associate Professor
Associate Professor Department of Environmental and Radiological Health
Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences
Sciences Colorado State University
College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences Fort Collins, Colorado
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado Elizabeth Riedesel, DVM, DACVR
Professor
Federica Morandi, DVM, MS, DECVDI, DACVR Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences
Professor and Director of Radiological Services College of Veterinary Medicine
Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences Iowa State University
College of Veterinary Medicine Ames, Iowa
The University of Tennessee
Knoxville, Tennessee Ian D. Robertson, BVSc, DACVR
Clinical Assistant Professor
Rachel Murray, MA, VetMB, MS, PhD, DACVS Department of Molecular Biomedical Sciences
Senior Orthopaedic Advisor College of Veterinary Medicine
Centre for Equine Studies North Carolina State University
Animal Health Trust Raleigh, North Carolina
Newmarket, Suffolk, United Kingdom
Celeste Guaraglia Roy, DVM, Diplomate AVDC
Nathan Nelson, DVM, MS Veterinary Dentist and Oral Surgeon
Clinical Associate Professor Telemedicine
Department of Molecular Biomedical Sciences IDEXX Telemedicine Consultants
North Carolina State University Clackamus, Oregon
Raleigh, North Carolina
Valerie F. Samii, DVM, DACVR
Adjunct Professor
Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences
College of Veterinary Medicine
The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio
 CONTRIBUTORS vii

Tobias Schwarz, MA, Dr. Med. Vet., DVR, DECVDI, Susanne M. Stieger-Vanegas, DVM, PhD
DACVR Associate Professor
Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies Diagnostic Imaging
VetBooks.ir

The University of Edinburgh Clinical Sciences

Easter Bush Veterinary Centre
Roslin, Scotland, United Kingdom
Gabriela S. Seiler, Dr. Med. Vet., DECVDI, DACVR
Associate Professor Radiology
Department of Molecular Biomedical Sciences
College of Veterinary Medicine
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, North Carolina
Kathy Ann Spaulding, DVM, DACVR
Clinical Professor Radiology
Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences
College of Veterinary Medicine
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas
College of Veterinary Medicine
Oregon State University
Corvallis, Oregon
Donald E. Thrall, DVM, PhD, MS, DAVCR
Emeritus Professor
College of Veterinary Medicine
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, North Carolina
Radiologist and Quality Control
IDEXX Telemedicine Consultants
Clackamas, Oregon
William R. Widmer, DVM, MS, DAVCR
Professor Emeritus, Radiology
Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences
School of Veterinary Medicine
Purdue University
West Lafayette, Indiana
VetBooks.ir
 Preface
VetBooks.ir
A
s with all previous editions, this book serves primarily
as an instructional aid for students of imaging, principally
the veterinary student. However, another goal is to
provide useful information for those pursuing advanced training
in imaging and those in private veterinary practice. Students
at all levels should be able to find material in the 7th edition
that helps in the interpretation of basic and challenging images.
Valuable features of prior editions such as the self-assessment
questions and the normal anatomic material has been retained
and widespread revision in content has been undertaken. The
normal anatomy material remains dispersed throughout the
text so that it can be consulted conveniently, and it is also
available on the Elsevier website.
The interface between the book and the world-wide web
is an important feature of this book. The web portal hosts
self-assessment exercises that can be completed online and
feedback obtained immediately. For some chapters, movies are
available online that will assist in the explanation of complex
subjects, such as computed tomography (CT) or magnetic
resonance (MR) imaging physics, or dynamic disease processes,
such as tracheal collapse and esophageal disorders.
As in the 2nd through 6th editions, all chapters have been
reviewed carefully, making for an extensive, substantive revision.
No chapter has escaped in-depth scrutiny, ensuring that the
latest and most accurate information is included. Chapters
covering the basic aspects of interpretation, applicable when
assessing radiographic images of the axial and appendicular
skeleton in small and large animals, and the thorax and abdomen
in small animals, should be of particular value to beginning
interpreters. Details of positioning, and specific anatomic features
of the body part in question are some of the topics covered
in these introductory chapters. These basic chapters offer a
framework upon which to base an understanding of more
detailed chapters dealing with specific anatomic areas.
Veterinary imaging is becoming increasingly complex and
in private practice there is continuing transition from analog
to digital imaging. As a result, chapters on the basic principles
of digital imaging and the MR imaging features of brain disease
in small animals have been expanded. Also, the breadth of the
CT and MR imaging features of diseases outside of the brain
has been broadened, and chapters covering the physical
principles of ultrasonography and CT and MR imaging updated
significantly. New chapters in the 7th edition cover dental
radiographic technique and interpretation, and radiographic
contrast media, important topics absent from prior editions.
Details regarding techniques that were once a mainstay of
veterinary imaging, such as the upper gastrointestinal examina-
tion and myelography, remain available on the Elsevier website
for reference when needed.
The basis of interpretation used in this textbook remains
centered upon description of radiographic abnormalities in
terms of Roentgen signs—changes in size, shape, location,
number, margination, and opacity. I believe that students who
have a firm understanding of Roentgen sign description will
be less inclined to make errors by jumping immediately to a
diagnosis rather than thoroughly considering radiographic
changes in an orderly and efficient manner.
Donald E. Thrall
ix
 Acknowledgments
VetBooks.ir

I
t is impossible for one person to prepare a meaningful,
comprehensive textbook of veterinary imaging, and I would
like to acknowledge the many talented authors who took
time from their busy schedules to prepare material for this
book. Several new authors have also contributed to this 7th
edition and many familiar names are again found as contributors.
The expertise of this team heightens the quality of the informa-
tion contained on these pages and I am honored by their
participation. Appreciation is also extended to all who have
used prior editions of this work and provided meaningful
feedback, thereby allowing this 7th edition to be what I believe
is the best yet. I also wish to acknowledge IDEXX Telemedicine
Consultants for permission to include several images in this
edition.
Donald E. Thrall

x
 CHAPTER 1
Radiation Protection and Physics
VetBooks.ir

SECTION I
of Diagnostic Radiology

Physics and Principles

Donald E. Thrall • William R. Widmer
e

Nucleus


e
of Interpretation
1 Radiation Protection and Physics of Diagnostic Radiology
Donald E. Thrall • William R. Widmer
2 Digital Radiographic Imaging
Ian D. Robertson • Donald E. Thrall
3 Canine and Feline Dental Radiographic Technique
Celeste Guaraglia Roy
4 Physics of Ultrasound Imaging
Wm Tod Drost
5 Principles of Computed Tomography and Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Marc-André d’Anjou
6 Radiographic, Computed Tomography, and Magnetic Resonance Contrast
Media
Mark Owen
N
7 Introduction to Radiographic Interpretation
Donald E. Thrall
H

1
1
 CHAPTER 1
Radiation Protection and Physics of
VetBooks.ir
Diagnostic Radiology
Donald E. Thrall • William R. Widmer
X
-rays were discovered on November 8, 1895, by Wilhelm
Conrad Roentgen, a German physicist.1 X-rays were
put to use quickly for medical purposes, and many
sophisticated applications were soon devised. For example,
angiography was described in 1896, only 1 year after the initial
discovery of x-rays. Roentgen’s finding revolutionized the
diagnosis and treatment of disease, and in recognition he was
awarded the first Nobel Prize for Physics in 1901. More than
120 years after their discovery, imaging using x-rays is one of
the most important and widely used diagnostic tests in people
and animals.
BASIC PROPERTIES OF X-RAYS
X-rays and gamma rays are part of the spectrum of electro-
magnetic radiation. The only distinction between x-rays and
gamma rays is their source; x-rays are produced by electron
interactions outside the nucleus, and gamma rays are released
from inside the nucleus of unstable atoms having excess energy.
There is a false impression that gamma rays are more energetic
than x-rays, but this is not universally true. The energy of a
gamma ray depends on the amount of energy released by the
unstable atom, and the energy of an x-ray depends on the
energy of the electron that interacts with the atom. Familiar
types of electromagnetic radiation other than x-rays and gamma
rays include radio waves, radar, microwaves, and visible light
(Table 1.1).
Electromagnetic radiation is a combination of electric and
magnetic fields that travel together, oscillating in orthogonal
planes in sine-wave fashion (Fig. 1.1). Sine waves are character-
ized by two related parameters—frequency and wavelength.
The velocity of electromagnetic radiation is constant, the speed
of light, and is the product of the frequency and wavelength:
Velocity (speed of light in m sec)
= frequency ( second ) × wavelength (m )
Because the speed of light is constant, frequency and
wavelength are inversely related; therefore, as frequency
increases, wavelength must decrease, and vice versa.
Properties of x-rays and gamma rays are given in Box 1.1.
Some properties of electromagnetic radiation cannot be
explained adequately by the theories of wave propagation
illustrated in Fig. 1.1. Therefore the photon concept was
developed to explain the apparent particulate behavior of x-rays
and gamma rays. A photon can be considered as a discrete
bundle of electromagnetic radiation as opposed to a wave. This
makes it easier to understand how x-rays create an image or
cause radiation damage. In this book, the terms x-ray and photon
are used interchangeably.
2
The energy of electromagnetic radiation is described accord-
ing to the formula:
speed of light
Energy = Planck’s constant ×
wavelength
Planck’s constant is a proportionality constant between the
energy of a photon and its wavelength, and the speed of light
is also a constant. Therefore the energy of electromagnetic
radiation is inversely proportional to wavelength. The biologic
effects of electromagnetic radiation are a function of the
energy.
The unit of energy for electromagnetic radiation is the
electron volt (eV). One electron volt is the energy gained by one
electron as it is accelerated through a potential difference
of 1V. On an absolute scale, this is a very small amount of
energy. However x-rays with energy of only 15 eV* can produce
ionization of atoms. Ionization occurs when an electron is
ejected from the atom, in this case by an x-ray. This creates
an ion pair consisting of the negatively charged electron and
the positively charged atom (Fig. 1.2). When x-rays strike a
person they can result in ionizations in DNA, leading to (1)
mutations, (2) abortion or fetal abnormalities, (3) suscepti-
bility to disease and shortened life span, (4) carcinogenesis,
and (5) cataracts.2 This is why it is so important to minimize
exposure of personnel working in a radiation environment.
Of course, radiation also causes ionizations in patients under-
going medical imaging procedures, but the risk of radiation
injury from isolated imaging procedures is offset by the diag-
nostic value of the procedure. Radiation workers, on the other
hand, are subject to potential low level exposure repeatedly
in the course of their work and the chance for damage is
increased. Also important is the fact that radiation damage
to DNA can be amplified biologically because DNA controls
cellular processes that extend into subsequent generations of
daughter cells. Additionally, although only 15eV of energy is
required for ionization of biologic molecules, the energy of x-rays
used for medical imaging is much higher, and each photon can
lead to multiple ionizations in tissue.
The relative risk of biologic injury from x-rays or gamma
rays is greater than from other types of electromagnetic radiation.
For example, the wavelength of visible light is 10,000 times
longer than the wavelength of x-rays, and the wavelength of
radio waves is even longer (see Table 1.1). Therefore, the energy
of light waves and radio waves is many orders of magnitude
lower than the energy of x-rays, meaning that light and radio
*The electron volt (eV) should not be confused with the concept of
kilovoltage peak (kVp) applied in an x-ray tube during an exposure;
kVp is discussed later in the Production of X-rays section.
 CHAPTER 1 • Radiation Protection and Physics of Diagnostic Radiology 3

Electric
field e
Wav
eleng
VetBooks.ir

th (
)

Magnetic
field

Prop
agatio
n
Fig. 1.1 All forms of electromagnetic radiation are characterized by
oscillating electric and magnetic fields that move in planes at right angles
to each other. Any form of electromagnetic radiation is described by the Photon
wavelength, λ, which is the distance between crests, and the frequency, f,
Nucleus
which is the number of crests per unit time. The frequency and wavelength

determine the specific characteristics of that form of radiation. The velocity
(c) of all forms of electromagnetic radiation is the same—the speed of
light. The product of wavelength and frequency equals the velocity; c = f
× λ. Therefore, because velocity is constant, as frequency increases the
wavelength must decrease, and vice versa.
e

Table • 1.1 Fig. 1.2 The principle of ionization. A photon ejects an electron from an
atom, causing ionization and forming an ion pair, consisting of a negatively
Wavelength of Common Types of Electromagnetic charged electron and a positively charged atom. After this ionization event,
the photon, depending on its energy, may be completely absorbed, or it
Radiation may interact with other atoms to produce more ionization. The ejected
electron can also interact with biologic molecules, such as DNA, and produce
TYPE OF ELECTROMAGNETIC damage. The relative size of the nucleus, electrons, and orbital shells in
RADIATION WAVELENGTH (CM) this figure is not to scale. The “+” symbol in the nucleus designates the
normal nuclear positivity created by the presence of positively charged
Radio waves 30,000 protons. In a neutral atom, this positive charge in the nucleus is balanced
Microwaves 10 by an equal negative charge of orbital electrons.
Visible light 0.0001
X-rays 0.00000001

Box • 1.1
Properties of X-Rays and Gamma Rays

Have no charge
Have no mass
Travel at the speed of light
Are invisible
Cannot be felt
Travel in a straight line
Cannot be deflected by magnetic fields
Penetrate all matter to some degree
Cause certain substances to fluoresce
Can expose photographic emulsions Fig. 1.3 Careless and unacceptable approach to radiography. The technolo-
Can ionize atoms gist’s hands are in the primary x-ray beam. Careless habits such as this are
perpetuated because of the stealthy properties of x-rays and lead to
unnecessary personnel exposure that could become biologically
significant.

waves do not produce tissue ionization or DNA damage. Other

forms of electromagnetic radiation, such as microwaves, can
lead to biologic damage such as tissue heating but do not lead
to molecular ionization.
RADIATION PROTECTION
A goal in diagnostic radiology is to obtain maximum diagnostic
information with minimal radiation exposure of the patient,
radiology personnel, and general public. This is achievable if
the guidelines for safe practice are followed and the technology
available to reduce exposure to personnel is used. However,
because x-rays cannot be seen or felt, the idiom “out of sight
out of mind” has never been more applicable, and it is easy
to disregard the potential danger associated with occupational
x-ray exposure (Fig. 1.3). As a result, many veterinarians and
technologists have developed a cavalier attitude regarding the
hazards associated with ionizing radiation and put themselves
at risk, from both medical and financial perspectives. General
principles of radiation protection that can form the basis of a
 4 SECTION I • Physics and Principles of Interpretation

Exposure  Exposure
Table • 1.2
Radiation Weighting Factor (Quality Factor) for
VetBooks.ir

Various Radiation Types

High efficiency absorber Low efficiency absorber
TYPE OF RADIATION WEIGHTING FACTOR
Higher absorbed dose Lower absorbed dose
X-rays 1
Gamma rays 1
Beta particle (electron) 1

Neutrons More absorption, fewer Less absorption, more

transmitted photons transmitted photons
<10 keV 5
10–100 keV 10 Fig. 1.4 Two materials are exposed to the same number of x-ray photons,
represented by the arrows. Thus the exposure dose, in roentgens, or in
100 keV–2 MeV 20 coulombs per kilogram, is the same for both materials. However, the efficiency
Alpha particles 20 of x-ray absorption for the two materials is different. The material on the
left is more efficient in absorbing x-rays than the material on the right.
Therefore the absorbed dose will be higher in the material on the left even
though the exposure dose is the same. One real-life example of this
phenomenon is a limb, where bone would be the high-efficiency absorber
and fat or muscle the low-efficiency absorber.

Table • 1.3
Radiation Units
QUANTITY CGS* UNIT VALUE SI† UNIT VALUE

Exposure dose roentgen One electrostatic unit of electricity in roentgen ‡

Absorbed dose
Equivalent biologic dose
2.58 × 10−4 C/kg
1 cubic centimeter of dry air at 0° C
and standard atmospheric pressure
rad 100 ergs/g of tissue gray (Gy) 1 Gy = 1 joule/kg
(1 Gy = 100 rads)
rem Dose in rads times weighting factor§ sievert (Sv) Dose in Gy times weighting factor
(1 rem = 10 mSv)

*CGS, centimeter-gram-second system of units.

†
International System of Units.
‡
Although the use of roentgen is allowable under the SI system, it is not itself an SI unit, and continued use is strongly discouraged by the National
Institute of Standards and Technology.
§
Weighting factor is a radiation type-specific quantity that compares the ionization density of various types of radiation; see Table 1.2.

safe workplace are discussed later. Any specific recommendations Exposure

regarding radiation safety or protection made in this chapter
are subject to overrule by local, state, and/or federal regulations.
Radiation Units
Two related concepts must be understood before radiation units
are considered. First, radiation exposure and radiation absorption
are not the same. Some tissues absorb radiation more effectively
than others, meaning that exposure to the same amount of
radiation can result in different absorbed doses in these tissues.
Second, the biologic effect of the same absorbed dose can also
be different, being a function of both radiation type and energy.
A numeric weighting factor or quality factor has been derived to
estimate the difference in biologic effectiveness of various types
of radiation (Table 1.2).
Radiation exposure, radiation absorption, and dose equivalent
each have their own unit of measure that was defined originally
in the centimeter-gram-second (CGS) system of measures. In
1977, the International System of Units (SI units) was developed
in keeping with the trend toward universal adoption of
the metric system3 (Table 1.3). In general, the system of SI
units has not been universally adopted in the United States,4,5
and CGS radiation units are still used, which can be a source
of confusion.
Radiation exposure is based on the amount of ionization in
air that the radiation produces and is quantified by the amount
of electrical charge resulting from the ionization of air produced
by the radiation flux. Radiation exposure is expressed in the
SI system as coulombs* per kilogram of air (C/kg) (see Table
1.3). This SI unit of exposure is cumbersome; thus the previous
term of exposure, the roentgen, is still used. One roentgen
equals a charge of 2.58 C/kg in air.
Absorbed Dose
The efficiency of x-ray absorption in different materials can
vary widely. As an example, lead is a much more efficient
absorber than water. Therefore the radiation dose in tissues
with different absorption efficiencies will be different when
exposed to the same amount of radiation (Fig. 1.4). The SI
unit for absorbed dose is the gray (Gy). One gray is the amount
*A coulomb is the unit of electric charge in the International System
of Units. It is the charge transferred by a constant current of 1 ampere
in 1 second.
 CHAPTER 1 • Radiation Protection and Physics of Diagnostic Radiology
Ionizations along path of x-ray
VetBooks.ir
Ionizations along path of  particle
Fig. 1.5 Representation of the ionization density along the paths of an
x-ray and an alpha particle. The ionization density along the path of the
alpha particle is much higher because of its large mass and 2+ charge. This
will lead to greater biologic damage on a Gy-per-Gy basis, and a correction
factor will be needed to compare the biologic damage resulting from equal
absorbed doses of x-rays versus alpha particles.
of radiation leading to absorption of 1 joule*/kg of tissue. Before
SI units were accepted, the unit of absorbed dose was the rad,
which is equal to 100 ergs†/g of tissue (see Table 1.3). The
term rad is obsolete, but it is so engrained in the radiology
lexicon that it has not been replaced universally by the Gy,
its SI counterpart. One Gy is equal to 100 rad.
In soft tissue such as muscle, exposure to 1 roentgen amounts
to an absorbed dose of approximately 0.9 centigray (cGy) or
0.9 rad. In comparison, bone is a more efficient absorber of
x-rays than soft tissue, and exposure to bone of 1 roentgen
results in a bone-absorbed dose of more than 0.9 cGy. This
difference in absorption between bone and soft tissue may be
as great as a factor of 4 or 5 with low-energy radiation. Dif-
ferential x-ray absorption between various tissues is the basis
of radiographic image formation, and without this difference
making a meaningful radiograph would not be possible. As
discussed later, the magnitude of the difference between
exposure and absorbed dose is the greatest for low energy
photons and decreases as photon energy increases.
Dose Equivalent
As noted earlier, the same absorbed dose, in Gy, from different
types of radiation may not produce the same biologic effect.
For example, damage from particulate radiation, such as an
alpha particle‡ is greater on a Gy-for-Gy basis than damage
from the same dose of x-rays (see Table 1.2). This is related
to differences in ionization density for different types of radiation.
A large heavily charged particle, such as an alpha particle,
creates many ionizations that are close together compared to
a small lightly charged particle, such as an electron, or an x-ray
that has no charge or mass where the ionizations are much
more widely spaced (Fig. 1.5). The closer the ionizations are
to each other, i.e. greater ionization density, the more biologic
damage results from a given dose. Therefore deposition of
1 Gy from an alpha particle does more biologic damage than
deposition of 1 Gy from an x-ray. The difference in biologic
damage from the same absorbed dose of various radiation types
is estimated by the weighting factor, as described above (see
Table 1.2).
*The joule is the unit of energy in the International System of Units.
It is the energy exerted by the force of one newton acting to move
an object through a distance of one meter.
†
The erg is the unit of energy in the centimeter-gram-second (CGS)
system of units. It is the energy exerted by the force of one dyne acting
to move an object through a distance of one centimeter.
‡
An alpha particle is a helium nucleus, containing two protons and
two neutrons, without orbital electrons. An alpha particle has an
electrical charge of 2+ and a mass more than 7000 times larger than
that of an electron.
5
In the SI system, the unit of dose equivalency is the sievert
(Sv); the Sv is derived from the product of the absorbed dose
in Gy and the weighting factor. Before SI units were accepted,
the unit of dose equivalency was the radiation equivalent in
man, or rem (see Table 1.3). The rem was derived from the
product of the absorbed dose in rads and the weighting factor,
because 1 Gy = 100 rads, 1 Sv = 100 rem.
Radiation Safety
Principles of radiation safety are based on establishment of
guidelines to prevent undesirable and unnecessary exposure
of radiation workers and the general public to ionizing radiation.
The premise of radiation protection is that some low level of
radiation exposure to radiation workers is permissible and will
not lead to significant abnormalities or disease. Adverse effects
can be classified as either deterministic or stochastic. Deterministic
effects have a threshold. In other words, below some dose
there is no effect, but above the threshold dose the severity
of the effect is dose related. Radiation-induced cataracts are
an example of a deterministic effect. Conversely, stochastic
(random) effects have no dose threshold, and the severity of
the effect is independent of dose. Radiation-induced cancer is
an example of a stochastic effect.6
Maximum permissible dose (MPD) is the maximal amount
of absorbed radiation that can be delivered to an individual as
a whole-body dose or a dose to a specific organ and still be
considered safe. The term safe in this context means that there
is no conclusive evidence that individuals receiving the MPD
will suffer harmful immediate or long-term effects to the body
as a whole or to any individual structure or organ as a result
of the exposure. Although the effect of very low doses of
radiation is not known with certainty, it is safe to assume that
any amount of radiation will have some effect on the subject,
and taking steps to minimize one’s dose below the MPD is
important. An analogy could be made to smoking a cigarette
once a month. There is no evidence that physical damage
results from this frequency of smoking, but with increasing
frequency the probability of physical damage escalates by virtue
of a cumulative effect. Unfortunately, an absolute threshold
below which damage will not occur or above which damage
will definitely result has not been established for either cigarette
smoking or radiation exposure.
There are multiple levels of bureaucracy regarding the
establishment of guidelines for radiation exposure, aimed at
avoiding deterministic and stochastic effects. Understanding
the mission of all involved organizations can be confusing.
Furthermore, different exposure limits are defined for radiation
workers versus the general public. These exposure limits vary
according to risk versus benefit. For example, the small risk
to a member of the general public from being subjected to a
radiographic study is outweighed by the benefit of a diagnosis.
Likewise, the slightly higher exposure limits allowed for radiation
workers are considered acceptable with respect to the missions
of the occupation.
The International Commission on Radiological Protection
(ICRP) is the primary international body focusing on protection
against ionizing radiation. The ICRP is an independent,
international, non-governmental organization. The ICRP provides
recommendations and guidance on protection against the risks
associated with ionizing radiation. Their recommendations are
published approximately four times each year as the journal
Annals of the ICRP. The whole-body limit for radiation workers
set by the ICRP for avoiding stochastic effects is 20 millisievert
(mSv) per year, averaged over 5 years, with the provision that
dose in any one year should not exceed 50 mSv.7
In the United States, the National Council on Radiation
Protection (NCRP) was chartered by Congress in 1964. Some
of the objectives of the NCRP are to develop recommendations
about radiation protection and to cooperate with the ICRP.
 6 SECTION I • Physics and Principles of Interpretation
The whole-body limit set for radiation workers by the NCRP
for avoiding stochastic effects is 50 mSv per year with a lifetime
accumulation not to exceed 10 mSv × age in years.8 The NCRP
VetBooks.ir
also recommends that no occupational exposure occur until
the age of 18 years. Interestingly, neither the ICRP nor the
NCRP has any jurisdiction to enforce its recommendations.
In the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(NRC) is the agency officially responsible for defining federal
exposure standards. The NRC has adopted the annual radiation
dose to adult radiation workers as recommended by the NCRP,
a maximum of 50 mSv (5 rem) per year.9 However, the NRC
has not established an upper limit for cumulative exposure.
Previously, the NRC recommended that cumulative exposure
be less than 5 rem (50 mSv)/year x (n −18), where n is the
age of the individual. This recommendation has been overruled
in favor of the as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA)
principle, which is discussed later.
The allowable limit for radiation workers who become
pregnant is lower than for nonpregnant radiation workers.
Contrary to popular belief, some occupational radiation exposure
of pregnant workers is allowed, but this should be minimized.
Guidelines state that the monthly exposure limit for the embryo
or fetus should not exceed 0.5 mSv (0.05 rem). It is the
responsibility of the pregnant radiation worker to notify the
supervisor of the pregnancy so that any change in work habits
needed to stay within the recommended dose limit can be
implemented. Declarations of pregnancy must be made to the
supervisor in writing.
For the general public, radiation exposure, excluding that
related to medical use such as diagnostic imaging and radiation
therapy, should not exceed 1 mSv (0.1 rem) per year.
The difference in opinion between the NRC and the NCRP
regarding the limits for cumulative exposure can be confusing.
Although the NRC is the agency officially responsible for
identifying federal exposure standards, it has eliminated recom-
mendations regarding cumulative exposure limits, probably
because of the uncertainty of such predictions. The NCRP,
however, has elected to establish an estimate for acceptable
cumulative exposure that is more conservative than recom-
mended previously by the NRC (the NRC recommendation
was 50 mSv/year versus the NCRP recommendation of 10 mSv/
year). Rather than focusing on a specific number for cumulative
or annual exposure, the goal should be to minimize any
exposure. This is the basis of the ALARA approach, discussed
later.
In addition to occupational exposure of radiation workers,
the entire population is exposed continually to very low levels
of radiation, both natural and man-made. A revised breakdown
of relative exposure of the U.S. public to radiation by various
sources was published by the NCRP in 2015 (Fig. 1.6).10 Revised
estimates were needed because in 2006 Americans were exposed
to more than seven times as much ionizing radiation from
medical procedures as was the case in the early 1980s, mainly
due to increases in CT imaging. The number of CT studies
performed in human patients doubled between 1997 and 2006.11
In 2006 medical exposure constituted nearly half of the total
radiation exposure of the U.S. population from all sources. The
next largest contributor to population exposure was background
radiation, mainly from radon gas. The relative level of back-
ground radiation varies on the basis of geographic location.
For example, exposure to cosmic radiation increases at higher
elevations, and household radon exposure is greater in the
eastern United States. In general, these types of radiation
exposures are not considered harmful, providing the use of
medical imaging is monitored.
Practical Considerations
Technologists assuming the role of radiation workers in vet-
erinary practices must be aware of the risks of radiation. They
Fig. 1.6 An estimate of sources of exposure dose from ionizing radiation
in the United States. (From Ionizing Radiation Exposure of the Population
of the United States. Bethesda, MD: National Council on Radiation Protection
and Measurements; 2009. NCRP report 160 with permission.)
should be trained in patient positioning for radiography, machine
operation, and image processing so that repeat studies are
minimized. Technologists should be instructed on the proper
use and care of radiation protection equipment such as protec-
tive aprons and gloves, and in the concepts of the ALARA
principle.12 As noted earlier, rather than focusing on any par-
ticular dose limit, ALARA, as defined by the NRC, means
making every reasonable effort to maintain exposures to ionizing
radiation as far below the dose limits as practical, consistent
with the purpose for which the licensed activity is undertaken.
The major variables used in adhering to ALARA are distance,
time, and shielding.
Distance
The distance between the technologist and the x-ray tube
should be as great as possible because distance is one of the
most effective ways of reducing dose. Doubling the distance
reduces exposure by a factor of 4, not by a factor of 2 as one
might expect. Holding cassettes by hand for equine radiography
should be discouraged because this can place the employee in
the primary beam. Hand-holding of portable x-ray machines
for radiography of the equine distal limb is safe, as long as the
machine is adequately shielded.13 Hand-holding of companion
animals for radiography is permissible, but having parts of
the body near the primary x-ray beam should be avoided and
no part of the body should ever be in the primary beam,
regardless of whether protective aprons and gloves are used.
With the use of chemical restraint and tape and sandbags for
positioning, it may be possible for the technologist to exit the
room during the exposure. Some state veterinary practice acts
stipulate that the technologist cannot be in the room during the
exposure.
Time
Time is directly related to the number of views or remake
views needed. Time can be minimized by using sedation or
anesthesia for uncooperative patients, or for complicated
examinations such as spine or skull studies. Time can also be
minimized by making sure that technologists are familiar with
equipment operation. Rotation of the technical staff through
the radiology service will also dilute any exposure over a larger
pool, leading to reduction in individual exposure levels.
Shielding
State building codes require structural shielding to protect
personnel and the general public, such as clients in the waiting
 CHAPTER 1 • Radiation Protection and Physics of Diagnostic Radiology
or examination rooms, from unnecessary radiation exposure.
The specific details regarding requisite structural shielding can
be obtained from the state radiation protection office.
VetBooks.ir
The most effective personal shielding for radiation workers
is lead-impregnated aprons, gloves, thyroid shields, and eyeglasses.
Protective aprons and gloves designed for use in the x-ray
room are usually 0.5 mm Pb equivalent. These devices serve
their intended purpose only if used for every examination.
Wanton disregard for routine use of lead aprons and gloves
leads to unnecessary personnel overexposure. When rushing
to acquire images, especially of an unruly patient, staff may
be tempted to forgo the use of protective aprons and gloves
to position the patient and to intentionally place their hands,
either shielded or unshielded, in the primary x-ray beam. This
is, of course, unacceptable and exemplifies the ultimate in poor
radiation safety practice (Fig. 1.7, A; see Fig. 1.3). More com-
monly, when lead gloves are not used, the technologist attempts
to keep the unshielded hands outside of the primary beam,
thinking that the collimator eliminates radiation exposure in
this area. This is not true. There is always enough scattered
radiation outside the primary beam to capture an image of
parts of the patient or technologist in that area, and this also
leads to unnecessary personnel exposure (Fig. 1.7, B). Addition-
ally, the hand will frequently end up in the periphery of the
primary beam, leading to even higher exposure. In fact, in Fig.
1.7, B the tip of a finger (white arrowhead) is in the edge of
the primary beam, but the fingertip is not visible because of
overexposure.
Another common mistake is the belief that because lead
aprons and gloves are very heavy they can be used to shield
body parts within the primary beam (Fig. 1.7, A). This is also
not true. Lead aprons and gloves are designed solely for protect-
ing against scattered radiation and must never be placed in
the primary beam because they do not attenuate high energy
x-rays. It is commonplace for technologists to hold a body part
in the primary beam without gloves and then cover the hand
with a lead glove or apron. This is not adequate protection,
and the hand will receive unnecessary and excessive radiation
(Fig. 1.7, C). The effects of scattered photons from the floor
of the x-ray room are also usually ignored, but these are an
important source of scattered radiation (Fig. 1.7, D). Lastly,
radiation protection gloves with a slit in the palm are available.
Extending the fingers through the slit facilitates positioning
but reduces the amount of overlying protective lead material
and leads to excessive extremity dose whether the hand receives
primary or secondary radiation.
Improper care of lead aprons and gloves results in cracking
or separation of the protective layering that reduces their
effectiveness. Aprons and gloves should be placed on racks
when not in use. This decreases the risk of creasing and folding
that lead to cracking or separation of the protective lead layering.
Use of a glove rack also facilitates the evaporation of perspiration
that reduces odor. Aprons and gloves should be inspected visually
on an annual basis, and any portion that appears physically
damaged should be evaluated radiographically for evidence of
a crack.
Radiation Supervisor
Identifying a member of the technical staff as a radiation
supervisor will optimize the quality of images produced and
minimize the chances of radiation overexposure. The radiation
supervisor can assume the responsibilities defined later and be
in charge of establishing safe working conditions that comply
with all pertinent federal, state, and local regulations. Having
a dedicated radiation protection supervisor provides the
technologist with ownership in the process, which will increase
quality. The continuity of supervision will contribute to a steady
stream of high-quality images and low personnel exposure
readings.
7
The following are some reasonable responsibilities of a
radiation supervisor:
• Establish and supervise the implementation of written
operating procedures for all employees involved with
radiography.
• Periodically review procedures to ensure conformity with
local regulations.
• Instruct all personnel in proper radiation protection
practices.
• Oversee conduction of required radiation surveys and
keep records of such surveys and tests, including
summaries of corrective measures recommended or
instituted.
• Routinely observe and periodically test interlock switches
and warning signals.
• Ensure that warning signs and signals are properly
located.
• Ensure that all equipment is maintained in top-notch
working order. Perform annual evaluation of radiation
protection equipment.
• Determine the cause of each known or suspected case of
excessive abnormal exposure and take steps to prevent
its recurrence.
• Train staff in proper radiographic positioning and
restraint procedures.
Personnel Monitoring
Personnel monitoring is used to check the adequacy of the
radiation safety program, disclose improper radiation protection
practices, and detect potentially serious radiation exposure
situations. A radiation dosimetry badge, also called a film badge,
is the most commonly used personnel monitoring device. A
radiation badge consists of a plastic holder, measuring approxi-
mately 2 to 3 cm on a side, which has a clip allowing it to be
secured to clothing. Originally, radiation badges contained a
small piece of film wrapped in paper that became exposed
when struck by ionizing radiation, and the radiation dose
was extrapolated from the degree of film blackening. Modern
radiation badges contain either radiation-sensitive aluminum
oxide or lithium fluoride crystals. These modern dosimeters
trap electrons energized by oncoming radiation, and the number
of trapped electrons can be quantified and related to the amount
of exposure. These badges provide more accurate dosimetry
than the original film badge. Radiation badges should be analyzed
at least quarterly, but a monthly analysis is preferable so that
any exposure problems are detected sooner after occurrence.
Badges for declared pregnant workers should be analyzed
monthly.
Personnel monitoring should be performed in controlled
areas for each occupationally exposed individual who has a
reasonable possibility of receiving a dose exceeding 10% of
the applicable MPD. A qualified expert should be consulted
on establishment and evaluation of the personnel monitoring
system. The radiation badge must be worn only in the workplace
and never when the person is exposed to ionizing radiation as
part of his or her own medical or dental examinations. The
badge is intended to monitor occupational radiation exposure
and medical exposure is not considered in annual occupational
dose limits. The radiation badge must not be worn outside of
the workplace as this can lead to erroneous readings from
temperature exposure if left inside a closed car in warm weather.
The radiation badge should be worn on the upper or lower
torso. When a protective apron is worn, the radiation badge
should be on the outside of the apron for monitoring the
radiation environment, but a second radiation badge may also
be worn inside the apron when an estimate of body exposure
is desired. Radiation badges should not be shared between
employees and the film badge of another person should never
be tampered with.
 8 SECTION I • Physics and Principles of Interpretation
VetBooks.ir

Sandbag
A B

Incomplete photon
attenuation by glove

Lead glove

Apron
Hand

Cassette
Scattered
photons will
strike hand

Floor
D

C
Fig. 1.7 Examples of poor radiation safety practice. A, Hands were placed in the primary beam to position
this small patient. Although gloves were used, they are not adequate for shielding against the primary x-ray
beam and the hands will receive an unacceptable dose. B, Dorsoventral skull radiograph of a dog. A sandbag is
being used to secure the neck. The technologist is not wearing lead gloves and has grasped the ears of the dog,
which are outside of the primary beam, to keep the head in the proper position. The dog’s right ear can be
seen (black arrow). On the left side, the technologist’s fingers can also be seen (white arrow), because of exposure
from radiation outside of the primary beam. A tip of a finger is also in the primary beam (white arrowhead). A
portion of the technologist’s hand can also be seen on the dog’s right side, peripheral to the dog’s ear but not
to the extent that it is identifiable as a hand. The most rostral portion of the dog’s nose is also visible outside
of the primary beam. C, A lateral radiograph of a canine skull was being made. The technologist held the ears
in the primary beam with an unprotected hand and then covered their hand with a lead apron, thinking the
apron would attenuate the x-rays. It did not. The bones in the technologist’s hand are clearly visible (black
arrows) because of x-rays penetrating the apron. D, A small patient is being restrained by an unprotected hand
but a lead glove is placed on top of the hand, similar to the situation illustrated in part C of this figure. As
already stated, this is ineffective because many of the oncoming high energy photons will penetrate the glove
and strike the hand. Also, photons penetrating the cassette and table will strike the floor and be scattered back,
also striking the hand. Radiation backscatter is also a reason that the technologist should not sit on the edge
of the x-ray table while restraining a patient for radiography. In that instance the scattered photons are going
to strike a body part or parts that are more revered than a hand.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 From a cartoon by Thomas Nast in “Harper’s Weekly”
NAST’S CARTOON, “‘THE PIRATES’ UNDER FALSE COLORS—CAN THEY
CAPTURE THE ‘SHIP OF STATE’?”
At the left Sumner is reading a book; Andrew Johnson is behind the capstan; August
Belmont in the gangway with a knife in his mouth; Fenton in the background; Whitelaw Reid
on a keg of powder playing a violin tagged, “This is not an organ”; David Davis is behind
Archbishop Hughes with the cross; Manton Marble is hiding behind his newspaper “The
World”; Senator Tipton is bawling near Greeley; Carl Schurz is waving his hat to friends on
the Ship of State and Theodore Tilton is embracing him; Governor Hoffman holds a parasol;
Horatio Seymour kneels to Jeff Davis lying on the Confederate flag, behind him a group of
Confederates with Wade Hampton standing near Greeley; John Kelly holds the Tammany
knife, and above his head are faces of Tweed, and Mayor Oakey Hall with eye-glasses.

I got into the thick of the session in time to see the close, not
without an angry collision with that one of the newly arrived actors
whose coming had changed the course of events, and with whom I
had lifelong relations of affectionate intimacy. Recently, when I was
sailing in Mediterranean waters with Joseph Pulitzer, who, then a
mere youth, was yet the secretary of the convention, he recalled the
scene: the unexpected and not over-attractive appearance of B.
Gratz Brown, the Governor of Missouri; his not very pleasing yet
ingenious speech in favor of the nomination of Greeley; the stoical,
almost lethargic indifference of Schurz. “Carl Schurz,” said Pulitzer,
“was the most industrious and the least energetic man I have ever
known and worked with. A word from him at that crisis would have
completely routed Blair and squelched Brown. It was simply not in
him to speak it.”

From a photograph by Sarony, taken in 1872

THOMAS NAST

The result was that Greeley was nominated amid a whirl of

enthusiasm, his workers, with Whitelaw Reid at their head, having
maintained an admirable and effective organization, and being
thoroughly prepared to take advantage of the opportune moment. It
was the logic of the event that B. Gratz Brown should be placed on
the ticket with him.
The Quadrilateral was “nowhere.” It was done for. The impossible
had come to pass. There arose thereafter a friendly issue of veracity
between Schurz and me, which illustrates our state of mind. My
version is that we left the convention hall together, with an immaterial
train of after incidents; his that we did not meet after the
adjournment. He was quite sure of this because he had ineffectually
sought me. “Schurz was right,” said Joseph Pulitzer, upon the
occasion of our yachting cruise just mentioned, “because he and I
went directly from the hall with Judge Stallo to his home on Walnut
Hills, where we dined and passed the afternoon.”
The Quadrilateral had been knocked into a cocked hat. Whitelaw
Reid was the sole survivor. He was the only one of us who clearly
understood the situation and thoroughly knew what he was about.
He came to me and said: “I have won, and you people have lost. I
shall expect that you stand by the agreement and meet me as my
guests at dinner to-night. But, if you do not personally look after this,
the others will not be there.” I was as badly hurt as any; but a bond is
a bond, and I did as he desired, succeeding partly by coaxing and
partly by insisting, though it was uphill work.
Frostier conviviality I have never sat down to than Reid’s dinner.
Horace White looked more than ever like an iceberg; Sam Bowles
was diplomatic, but ineffusive; Schurz was as a death’s head at the
board; Halstead and I, through sheer bravado, tried to enliven the
feast. But they would none of us, nor it, and we separated early and
sadly, reformers hoist by their own petard.
THE SAME TUNES BY ANOTHER FIDDLE WILL SOUND AS SWEET.
IT IS TOO BAD TO HAVE THE NEW YORK WORLD PLAY SECOND
FIDDLE TO ITS OWN FAVORITE TUNES.
From a cartoon by Thomas Nast in “Harper’s Weekly”
NAST’S CARTOON OF WHITELAW REID OF “THE TRIBUNE”
AND MANTON MARBLE OF “THE WORLD” PLAYING IN
CONCERT

V
 THE reception by the country of the nomination of Horace Greeley
was as inexplicable to the politicians as the nomination itself had
been unexpected by the Quadrilateral. The people rose to it. The
sentimental, the fantastic, and the paradoxical in human nature had
to do with this. At the South an ebullition of pleased surprise grew
into positive enthusiasm. Peace was the need, if not the longing, of
the Southern heart, and Greeley’s had been the first hand stretched
out to the South from the enemy’s camp,—very bravely, too, for he
had signed the bail-bond of Jefferson Davis,—and quick upon the
news flashed the response from generous men eager for the chance
to pay something on a recognized debt of gratitude.
Except for this spontaneous uprising, which continued unabated
in July, the Democratic party could not have been induced at its
convention at Baltimore to ratify the proceedings at Cincinnati and
formally to make Greeley its candidate. The leaders dared not resist
it. Some of them halted, a few held out, but by midsummer the great
body of them came to the front to head the procession.
Horace Greeley was a queer old man, a very medley of
contradictions, shrewd and simple, credulous and penetrating, a
master penman of the school of Swift and Cobbett, even in his odd,
picturesque personality whimsically attractive and, as Seward
learned to his cost, a man to be reckoned with where he chose to put
his powers forth.
What he would have done with the Presidency had he reached it
is not easy to say or to surmise. He was altogether unsuited for
official life, for which, nevertheless, he had a longing. But he was not
so readily deceived in men or misled in measures as he seemed,
and as most people thought him.
His convictions were emotional, his philosophy experimental; but
there was a certain method in their application to public affairs. He
gave bountifully of his affection and his confidence to the few who
enjoyed his familiar friendship; he was accessible and sympathetic,
though not indiscriminating, to those who appealed to his
impressionable sensibilities and sought his help. He had been a
good party man and was temperamentally a partizan.
 To him place was not a badge of bondage; it was a decoration,
preferment, promotion, popular recognition. He had always yearned
for office as the legitimate destination of public life and the honorable
reward of party service. During the greater part of his career, the
conditions of journalism had been rather squalid and servile. He was
really great as a journalist. He was truly and highly fit for nothing
else, but, seeing less deserving and less capable men about him
advanced from one post of distinction to another, he wondered why
his turn proved so tardy in coming, and when it would come. It did
come with a rush. What more natural than that he should believe it
real instead of the empty pageant of a vision?
After the first shock and surprise of the Cincinnati nomination, it
had taken me only a day and a night to pull myself together and to
plunge into the swim to help fetch the water-logged factions ashore.
This was clearly indispensable to forcing the Democratic
organization to come to the rescue of what would prove otherwise
but a derelict upon a stormy sea. Schurz was deeply disgruntled.
Before he could be appeased, a bridge found in what was called the
Fifth Avenue Hotel Conference had to be constructed in order to
carry him across the stream which flowed between his disappointed
hopes and aims and what appeared to him an illogical and repulsive
alternative. Like another Achilles, he had taken to his tent and
sulked. He was harder to deal with than any of the Democratic file-
leaders; but he finally yielded, and did splendid work in the
campaign.
Carl Schurz was a stubborn spirit, not readily adjustable. He was
a nobly gifted man, but from first to last an alien in an alien land. He
once said to me, “If I should live a thousand years, they would still
call me a Dutchman.” No man of his time spoke so well or wrote to
better purpose. He was equally skilful in debate, an overmatch for
Conkling and Morton, whom, especially in the French Arms matter,
he completely dominated and outshone. As sincere and unselfish, as
patriotic and as courageous, as any of his contemporaries, he could
never attain the full measure of the popular heart and confidence,
albeit reaching its understanding directly and surely. Within himself a
man of sentiment, he was not the cause of sentiment in others. He
knew this and felt it.
During the campaign the Nast cartoons in “Harper’s Weekly,”
which while unsparing to the last degree to Greeley and Sumner,
and treating Schurz with a kind of considerate, qualifying humor,
nevertheless greatly offended him. I do not think Greeley minded
them much, if at all. They were very effective, notably the “Pirate
Ship,” which represented Greeley rising above the taffrail of a vessel
carrying the Stars-and-Stripes and waving his handkerchief at the
man-of-war Ship of State in the distance, while the political leaders
of the Confederacy, dressed in true corsair costume, crouched
below, ready to spring. Nothing did more to sectionalize Northern
opinion and fire the Northern heart, or to lash the fury of the rank and
file of those who were urged to vote as they had shot, and who had
hoisted above them “the bloody shirt” for a banner.
In the first half of the canvass the impetus was with Greeley; the
second half, beginning in eclipse, seemed about to end in something
very like collapse. The old man seized his flag and set out upon his
own account for a tour of the country. And right well he bore himself.
If speech-making ever does any good toward the shaping of results,
Greeley’s speeches surely should have elected him. They were
marvels of impromptu oratory, mostly homely and touching appeals
to the better sense and the magnanimity of a people not ripe or
ready for generous impressions, convincing in their simplicity and
integrity, unanswerable from any point of view of sagacious
statesmanship or true patriotism, if the North had been in any mood
to listen, to reason, and to respond.
I met him at Cincinnati and acted as his escort to Louisville and
thence to Indianapolis, where others were waiting to take him in
charge. He was in a state of querulous excitement. Before the vast
and noisy audiences which we faced he stood apparently pleased
and composed, delivering his words as he might have dictated them
to a stenographer. As soon as we were alone he would break out
into a kind of lamentation, punctuated by occasional bursts of
objurgation. He especially distrusted the Quadrilateral, making an
exception in my case as well he might, because, however his
nomination had jarred my judgment, I had a real affection for him,
dating back to the years immediately preceding the war, when I was
wont to encounter him in the reporters’ galleries at Washington,
which he preferred to using his floor privilege as an ex-member of
Congress.
It was mid-October. We had heard from Maine. Indiana and Ohio
had voted, and Greeley was for the first time realizing the hopeless
nature of the contest. The South, in irons and under military rule and
martial law sure for Grant, there had never been any real chance.
Now it was obvious that there was to be no compensating ground-
swell at the North. That he should pour forth his chagrin to one
whom he knew so well and even regarded as one of his “boys” was
inevitable. Much of what he said was founded on a basis of fact,
some of it was mere suspicion and surmise, all of it came back to the
main point that defeat stared us in the face.
I was glad and yet loath to part with him. If ever a man needed a
strong friendly hand and heart to lean upon he did during those dark
days—the end in darkest night nearer than any one could divine. He
showed stronger mettle than had been allowed him; bore a manlier
part than was commonly ascribed to his slovenly, slipshod
habiliments and his aspect in which benignancy and vacillation
seemed to struggle for the ascendancy. Abroad, the elements
conspired against him. At home his wife lay ill, as it proved, unto
death. The good gray head he still carried like a hero, but the worn
and tender heart was beginning to break.
Happily the end came quickly. Overwhelming defeat was followed
by overwhelming affliction. He never quitted his dear one’s bedside
until the last pulse-beat, and then he sank beneath the load of grief.
“‘The Tribune’ is gone and I am gone,” he said, and spoke no more.
The death of Greeley fell upon the country with a sudden shock.
It aroused a wide-spread sense of pity and sorrow and awe. All
hearts were hushed. In an instant the bitterness of the campaign was
forgotten, though the huzzas of the victors still rent the air. President
Grant, his late antagonist, with his cabinet, and the leading members
of the two Houses of Congress, attended his funeral. As he lay in his
coffin, he was no longer the arch-rebel leading a combine of
buccaneers and insurgents, which the Republican orators and
newspapers had depicted him, but the brave old apostle of freedom,
who had done more than all others to make the issues upon which a
militant and triumphant party had risen to power. The multitude
remembered only the old white hat and the sweet, old baby face
beneath it, heart of gold, and hand wielding the wizard pen; the
incarnation of probity and kindness, of steadfast devotion to his duty,
as he saw it, and to the needs of the whole human family. It was,
indeed, a tragedy; and yet, as his body was lowered into its grave,
there rose above it, invisible, unnoted, a flower of matchless beauty
—the flower of peace and love between the parts of the Union to
which his life had been a sacrifice.
The crank convention had builded wiser than it knew. That the
Democratic party could ever have been brought to the support of
Horace Greeley for President of the United States reads even now
like a page out of a nonsense-book. That his warmest support
should have come from the South seems an incredible, and was a
priceless, fact. His martyrdom shortened the distance across the
bloody chasm; his coffin very nearly filled it. The candidacy of
Charles Francis Adams or of Lyman Trumbull would have meant a
mathematical formula, with no solution of the problem, and as certain
defeat at the end of it. Greeley’s candidacy threw a flood of light and
warmth into the arena of deadly strife; it made a more equal and
reasonable division of parties possible; it put the Southern half of the
country in a position to plead its own case by showing the Northern
half that it was not wholly recalcitrant, and it made way for real
issues of pith and moment relating to the time instead of pigments of
bellicose passion and scraps of ante bellum controversy.
In a word, Greeley did more by his death to complete the work of
Lincoln than he could have done by a triumph at the polls and the
term in the White House he so much desired. Though only sixty
years of age, his race was run. Of him it may be truly written that he
lived a life full of inspiration to his countrymen, and died not in vain,
“our later Franklin” fittingly inscribed upon his tomb.
 [1] Dissatisfaction with the administration of General Grant led
a number of distinguished Republicans to unite in a call for what
they named a Liberal Republican Convention to assemble in
Cincinnati the first of May, 1872. Charles Sumner, Lyman
Trumbull, and Carl Schurz were foremost among these
Republicans. Mr. Schurz was chosen permanent chairman of the
convention and delivered a striking key-note speech. Stanley
Matthews, afterward a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United
States, served as temporary chairman.
The free-trade and civil-service reform elements were largely
represented under the leadership of David A. Wells, George
Hoadley, and Horace White. Charles Francis Adams was the
choice of these for the Presidential nomination. The opposition to
Mr. Adams was divided at the outset between Justice David Davis
of the Supreme Court, ex-Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, and
Governor B. Gratz Brown of Missouri, with a strong undercurrent
for Horace Greeley. The arrival upon the scene at the opportune
moment of Governor Brown, accompanied by General Francis P.
Blair, turned the tide from both Adams and Davis, and, Brown
withdrawing and throwing his strength to Greeley, secured on the
sixth ballot the nomination of the famous editor of the New York
“Tribune,” Brown himself taking second place on the ticket.
In the platform that was adopted the free-trade issue, in
deference to Mr. Greeley’s Protectionist antecedents and
sentiments, was “relegated to the congressional districts.”
The result at Cincinnati was received with mingled ridicule and
applause. Many Liberal Republicans refused to accept Mr.
Greeley and fell back within the lines of the regular Republican
party. A sub-convention, called the Fifth Avenue Conference, was
required to hold others of them, including Carl Schurz. Finally, the
Democratic National Convention, which met at Baltimore in July,
ratified the Greeley and Brown ticket.
During the midsummer there were high hopes of its election;
but as the canvass advanced, its prospects steadily declined.
Early in October Mr. Greeley made a tour from New England
westward as far as Indiana and Ohio, delivering a series of
speeches in persuasive eloquence regarded as unexampled in
the political annals of the country. But nothing sufficed to stay
overwhelming defeat, the portion fate seemed to have allotted Mr.
Greeley on several occasions, in 1861 as a candidate for the
Senate, in 1869 as a candidate for Controller of New York, and in
1870 as a representative in Congress, to which he had been sent
in 1848–9.
During his absence from home his wife had fallen ill. He
returned to find her condition desperate. She died and was buried
amid the closing scenes of the disastrous campaign. Mr. Greeley
had for years suffered from insomnia. His vigil by the bedside of
his dying wife had quite exhausted him. Inflammation of the brain
ensued; he remained sleepless, delirium set in, and he died
November 29, 1872. General Grant and his Cabinet, with most of
the officials of Congress and the Government, attended his
funeral, the tragic circumstances of his death wholly obliterating
partizan feeling and arousing general sympathy among all
classes of the people.
 COMMENTS ON COLONEL
WATTERSON’S PAPER
THE foregoing was written in the south of France to help while away a
winter vacation. I was not willing to give it to the public without the “visé” of
my surviving colleagues, Whitelaw Reid and Horace White, to each of
whom I sent a copy. At first I thought of recasting my matter to meet their
objections. But, on second thought, it seems best to “let the hide go with
the tallow,” as it were, their comments not only illuminating my narrative,
but throwing on it the side lights of their differing points of view. No one
holds in higher respect than I the noble aims and great sacrifices made by
the Liberal Republicans.
HENRY WATTERSON.

I—BY WHITELAW REID

Dorchester House,
Park Lane, W., London, England,
May 3, 1911.
My dear Watterson:
I have read the manuscript with the greatest interest. On a few
little matters I shouldn’t have put things quite the same way; but that
of course is to be expected from the different points of view from
which we necessarily regard the subject. On the whole, it seems to
me extremely fair and accurate.
I shall append a few notes, which I have made on different points
suggested by the manuscript, not with the idea that you will find any
occasion to incorporate any of my suggestions in your account, but
only by way of refreshing your memory, as your manuscript has
refreshed mine, about interesting incidents of a period which now
seems so remote as to belong exclusively to our romantic youth.
On page 27 it would seem to be implied that Ben Wade was
somewhat influenced in his support of the impeachment policy by the
fact that if impeachment succeeded, he was the inevitable
successor. I saw a great deal of Wade in those days. He certainly
knew what the consequence to himself of a successful impeachment
would be, but I never saw any reason to suppose that if somebody
else had been acting Vice-President, Wade’s attitude would not have
been the same. Probably he would have been even more outspoken.
Page 31. What you say of the attitude of three of the
Quadrilateral toward myself is not news to me. I knew, however, the
reasons for it (which would probably have influenced me if I had
been in their places), and I bore no grudges. In fact, at the time I had
a pretty strong conviction that they were the people who were going
to be badly disappointed in the end; so that, while you all thought
you were taking me into camp, I was comforting myself with the
belief that I was taking the Quadrilateral into camp, and should find
them very useful articles to begin housekeeping with.
Page 35. Did McCullagh come from Chicago? I thought we
always counted him as belonging to Cincinnati until he went to St.
Louis. When I first went to Cincinnati, he was a reporter on the
“Gazette,” from which he went to the “Commercial.”
Page 40. The “bravery” of Greeley’s outstretched hand may have
been fully recognized, but I doubt if its self-sacrifice ever was. First
and last it must have cost him (poor man that he was) nearly a
million dollars. Shortly after the first volume of his history, “The
American Conflict,” was published, I remember congratulating him
on the pecuniary success. His reply was: “Oh, I haven’t made as
much as the newspapers say. Still, I’ve made a hundred thousand
dollars that I know of, for I have spent every cent of it. The past at
least is secure.” With that figure as a basis, you can calculate how
much he would probably have made from the enormously
augmented sale of the first volume when the second came out, as
well as from the copyrights on the second. The circulation of “The
Tribune” was also affected for a time in the same disastrous way.
Page 41. With my intimate knowledge of Greeley at that period I
should hardly have said he had a passion for office. What I did think
was that he had a passion for recognition, and was very sore at
being treated not as an equal and comrade, but as a convenience to
the machine, by Seward and Thurlow Weed. It was less office he
sought than an opportunity to teach those gentlemen their places
and his. Certainly he never had a lifelong passion for office like
Lincoln.
Page 41. We had no better politics during the campaign than in
the management of the Fifth Avenue Conference. I remember that
William Henry Hurlbert and some others who were doing their best
then to defeat us did not wake up to the real significance of our
attitude toward this conference until the morning it met. Then
Hurlbert described the course of “The Tribune” as that of a court
gallant, tiptoeing forward to bow the favorites to their places.
I always thought we had the country with us until after the North
Carolina election, and believed we carried that. I am afraid it was our
old friend Ned Webster who deliberately rushed down to steal it
away from us, and that his very strong measures had pretty high
sanction. Or was it in the Hayes-Tilden election that he came to the
front? The truth is the North Carolina election was the turning-point.
If the result had been left as we believed it to be for the first two or
three days, I don’t think we should have had the October reaction, or
that Nast’s cartoons could have had anything like the effect they did
exert.
By the way, some of those cartoons could hardly have been
tolerated at any other time in America, and would hardly have been
tolerated in any other country at any time, such as the one depicting
Greeley—Greeley of all living men!—as clasping hands with the
ghost of Wilkes Booth across the grave of murdered Abraham
Lincoln. I once told “Brooklyn” Joe Harper he ought to be ashamed
of that, and begin every day of his life with a prayer for forgiveness
for it. His reply was that we all of us had done something at some
time in our lives that we ought to be ashamed of. He understood
perfectly that I never resented in the least Nast’s caricatures of
myself. In fact, I thought some of them extraordinarily clever, such as
the one depicting me playing a hand-organ in front of the old
Manhattan Club, with Greeley as the monkey holding out a hat for
pennies, while on the end of the organ was the familiar quotation
from “The Tribune” of those days, “This is not an organ.”
Page 42. You are perfectly right in praising Greeley’s hopeless
campaign in the West. In fact, if I were writing, I should pitch the note
a little higher. I remember Joseph H. Choate saying to a group, of
which I was a member, one Saturday night at the Century Club
during that campaign, “What extraordinarily good speeches Greeley
is making out West!” To give that its full value, please remember that
Choate was a partner of Evarts, who had nominated Seward, and
that to that whole combination Greeley was anathema.
Page 42. My recollection is that Mrs. Greeley died in the interval
after his return from the West, but before the election. I always
attributed his sudden collapse after the election as much to his loss
of sleep, while watching for a week at her bedside, as to
disappointment over the result, and this opinion was somewhat
confirmed by Dr. Choate (a brother of Joseph), to whose private
sanatorium he was taken. I asked Choate what the real disease was,
and he said, “If you want it in popular phrase, it is really an
inflammation of the outer membrane of the brain, due to loss of sleep
or extraordinary excitement.” Then I asked what his prognosis was,
and he replied, “He will either be well in a week or dead.” This is of
course not a description of insanity at all; and I always felt a cruel
injustice was done his memory in describing him as going crazy over
defeat—as cruel as it would be to say such a thing of a fever patient
because he was in a temporary delirium.
I was never convinced that the “last words” you quote were ever
uttered by him, “‘The Tribune’ is gone, and I am gone.” Dana was
surrounded in those days by people who for one reason or another
had grudges equal to his own against “The Tribune”—Amos
Cummings, who had left us in a pet because of some rebuke from
John Russell Young; Dr. Wood, whom Amos got away from us; and,
above all, a man in the proof-room, who resented my criticisms of his
proofreading and deserted us, taking with him the manuscript of one
or two of Greeley’s unbalanced articles, which his brother-in-law,
John Cleveland, had discovered and brought to me, and which I
suppressed because they were obviously unbalanced. They reveled
in these things; and it happened at that time to be all grist to Dana’s
mill.

II—BY HORACE WHITE

I HAVE read “The Humor and Tragedy of the Greeley Campaign.”
What I think of it depends upon the point of view from which I look at
it. The only tragic thing in it is the death of Greeley. All the rest is
comedy.
Regarded as such it has high merits. I can think of nothing
political that is more mirth-provoking, unless it is Dickens’s
description of Mr. Veneering’s campaign for a seat in Parliament with
the help of Boots and Brewer riding about London in cabs and
“bringing him in.”
The first three pages are serious. On the fourth page the fun
begins, and continues till the death of Greeley. At the bottom of page
33 there are two sentences beginning with the words, “We were
wholly serious,” which excuse the participants, including yourself, for
being at Cincinnati at all. Then the humor starts afresh and becomes
side-splitting at the place where McClure enters and tosses Schurz
and Halstead and yourself to the ceiling successively.
Now the question arises, What will the readers of your paper,
who get from it their first and only knowledge of the campaign of
1872—and these will probably be ninety per cent. of its readers—
think of that campaign? They will think it was a very droll affair and
quite unaccountable. They will know nothing about disfranchisement
or Santo Domingo or nepotism or whisky frauds, or civil-service
rapine or the real causes of the uprising of 1871–72.
The McClure episode, by the way, is even more unaccountable. I
don’t understand it myself. It reads as though Colonel McClure was
surveying the scene from Olympus as a disinterested spectator, with
great scorn for the participants in the convention. In fact he was
chairman of the Pennsylvania delegation, supporting Greeley or
Davis or somebody. He was as deep in the mud as anybody else
was in the mire.
Chapter V on Greeley is prime, but it is hardly true to say or imply
that his martyrdom shortened the distance across the bloody chasm
or that his coffin nearly filled it. Reconstruction, Ku Klux, and carpet-
baggery lasted through Grant’s second term, except in so far as it
was put down (in Texas and Arkansas) despite the Republican party.
The South did not get any real relief until Hayes came in, and then
only as the result of a bargain made before the vote of the Electoral
Commission was taken.
To sum up: I think that you have dwelt too much on the humorous
side of the Cincinnati Convention, and that you have omitted the only
features that gave it a raison d’être, or have given such slight
attention to them that the reader will not catch their significance.
 IS THE NEGRO HAVING A FAIR
CHANCE?
BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

I F I were asked the simple, direct question, “Does the negro in

America have a fair chance?” it would be easy to answer simply,
“No,” and then refer to instances with which every one is familiar to
justify this reply. Such a statement would, however, be misleading to
any one who was not intimately acquainted with the actual situation.
For that reason I have chosen to make my answer not less candid
and direct, I hope, but a little more circumstantial.

THE NEGRO TREATED BETTER IN AMERICA

THAN ELSEWHERE
ALTHOUGH I have never visited either Africa or the West Indies to
see for myself the condition of the people in these countries, I have
had opportunities from time to time, outside of the knowledge I have
gained from books, to get some insight into actual conditions there.
But I do not intend to assert or even suggest that the condition of the
American negro is satisfactory, nor that he has in all things a fair
chance. Nevertheless, from all that I can learn I believe I am safe in
saying that nowhere are there ten millions of black people who have
greater opportunities or are making greater progress than the
negroes in America.
 I know that few native Africans will agree with me in this
statement. For example, we had at Tuskegee a student from the
Gold Coast who came to America to study in our Bible Training
School and incidentally to learn something of our methods of study
and work. He did not approve at all of our course of study. There was
not enough theology, and too much work to suit him. As far as he
was concerned, he could not see any value in learning to work, and
he thought it was a pretty poor sort of country in which the people
had to devote so much time to labor. “In my country,” he said,
“everything grows of itself. We do not have to work. We can devote
all our time to the larger life.”

LITTLE IMMIGRATION OF NEGROES

IN the last ten years the official records show that 37,000 negroes
have left other countries to take residence in the United States. I can
find no evidence to show that any considerable number of black
people have given up residence in America.
The striking fact is, that negroes from other countries are
constantly coming into the United States, and few are going out. This
seems in part to answer the question as to whether the negro is
having a fair chance in America as compared with any other country
in which negroes live in any large numbers.
By far the largest number of negro immigrants come from the
West Indies. Even Haiti, a free negro republic, furnishes a
considerable number of immigrants every year. In all my experience
and observation, however, I cannot recall a single instance in which
a negro has left the United States to become a citizen of the Haitian
Republic. On the other hand, not a few leaders of thought and action
among the negroes in the United States are those who have given
up citizenship in the little Black Republic in order to live under the
Stars and Stripes. The majority of the colored people who come from
the West Indies do so because of the economic opportunities which
the United States offers them. Another large group, however, comes
to get education. Here at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama we
usually have not far from one hundred students from South America
and the various West Indian Islands. In the matter of opportunity to
secure the old-fashioned, abstract book education several of the
West Indian Islands give negroes a better chance than is afforded
them in most of our Southern States, but for industrial and technical
education they are compelled to come to the United States.
In the matter of political and civil rights, including protection of life
and property and even-handed justice in the courts, negroes in the
West Indies have the advantage of negroes in the United States. In
the island of Jamaica, for example, there are about 15,000 white
people and 600,000 black people, but of the “race problem,” in
regard to which there is much agitation in this country, one hears
almost nothing there. Jamaica has neither mobs, race riots,
lynchings, nor burnings, such as disgrace our civilization. In that
country there is likewise no bitterness between white man and black
man. One reason for this is that the laws are conceived and
executed with exact and absolute justice, without regard to race or
color.

UNEQUAL LAWS THE CAUSE OF RACIAL

TROUBLE IN AMERICA
REDUCED to its lowest terms, the fact is that a large part of our
racial troubles in the United States grow out of some attempt to pass
and execute a law that will make and keep one man superior to
another, whether he is intrinsically superior or not. No greater harm
can be done to any group of people than to let them feel that a
statutory enactment can keep them superior to anybody else. No
greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that
because he belongs to this or that race, or because of his color, he
will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.
In what I have said I do not mean to suggest that in the West
Indian Islands there is any more social intermingling between whites
and blacks than there is in the United States. The trouble in most
parts of the United States is that mere civil and legal privileges are
confused with social intermingling. The fact that two men ride in the