Mihran Kassabian

Mihran Krikor Kassabian (August 25, 1870 – July 14, 1910) was an Armenian-American physician, one of the early investigators into the medical uses of X-rays, and a faculty member at the Medico-Chirurgical College of Philadelphia. He became director of the Roentgen Ray Laboratory at Philadelphia General Hospital and vice president of both the American Roentgen Ray Society (ARRS) and the American Electro-Therapeutic Association.
Born in Kayseri, Kassabian studied in London and Philadelphia before serving in the United States Army Hospital Corps during the Spanish–American War. After the war, he finished medical school at the Medico-Chirurgical College and became an instructor there. He invented a positioning device that displayed the ribs as round rather than flat on X-ray images. Kassabian had a special interest in the use of X-ray findings in court proceedings. He represented the American Medical Association at international conventions, and in 1907 he wrote an influential textbook on electrotherapeutics and radiology.
Kassabian’s first published paper discussed the side effects of radiation, and he experienced these problems firsthand. Because he worked with X-rays every day in an era before lead shielding had been widely adopted, he sustained radiation burns to his hands, had two fingers amputated, and developed skin cancer within a few years of becoming a physician. The cancer spread across his body, leading to his death at age 39.