Medicine: Body Counter

If atomic disaster strikes, whether from bombing or an industrial reactor accident, how can physicians tell how much radiation a victim has received? Last week the Walter Reed Army Medical Center at Bethesda. Md. unveiled one of the nation’s two “whole-body counting facilities.” The patient, on a hammock sling, is slid into the machine like a French loaf into an oven, and dials immediately register how much radioactive material (emitting gamma rays,) he has absorbed.