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CMAJ | APRIL 18, 2017 | VOLUME 189 | ISSUE 15 E573 I n 2012, Health Canada announced that thermography would no longer be considered a viable method of screening Canadian women for breast cancer.1 Images produced by thermographic methods were deemed less accurate than those produced by mammography and, therefore, were of little clinical value. Physicians and cancer control organizations have since rallied against thermography, suggesting that the use of the technique is not only ineffective but dangerous as well, giving women a false sense of security about their breast health. Claiming that the technique hurts far more than it helps, these organizations have issued cease and desist orders against medical clinics that offer breast thermography services and have urged women in Canada to consider more conventional methods of screening for breast cancer, such as mammography and breast self-examination. However, the technique was not always thought of as a risky screening practice. It was perceived as cutting-edge medical science from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. It was also a source of national pride, because this new method of medical visualization was pioneered by Montréal surgeon, Dr. Ray Newton Lawson. Histories of thermography tend to gloss over Lawson’s role in harnessing and repurposing infrared imaging for screening for breast cancer.2 In light of recent debates over the technology’s place in Canadian cancer control, it seems apt to explore the local history of this controversial imaging technique by focusing on the unique social, technological and industrial contexts that allowed breast thermography to emerge and flourish within the mid-20th century. Ray Newton Lawson (Figure 1)3 was born in 1912 in London, Ontario, to Helen Newton and Ray Lawson Sr., the President of Federal Aviation and 27th Lieutenant Governor of Ontario. Lawson attended the University of Western Ontario, graduating in 1937 with both a bachelor of arts degree and an undergraduate degree in medicine. When World War II broke out, Lawson became a physician in the Royal Canadian Air Force and was stationed at the newly developed base for the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan in Regina, Saskatchewan. After the war ended, he decided to pursue surgery as a medical specialty. In 1944, he accepted an Edward W. Archibald Residential Fellowship in Experimental Surgery at McGill University (Montréal). Upon graduation, he accepted a position in general surgery at Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital, where he would remain until 1972. Because surgery was one of the primary methods of cancer treatment during the mid-20th century, Lawson would frequently encounter patients with cancer in the operating room. His interest in breast cancer, specifically, seems to have been fully formed by the mid-1950s, when Lawson contributed a chapter on diseases of “The Breast” to the second edition of Fred HUMANITIES | MEDICINE AND SOCIETY

Hot bodies; Cold War: the forgotten history of breast thermography