Screening for breast cancer: the UK scene

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Abstract
Sir James McKenzie Davidson was born in 1856, 39 years before Röntgen discovered X rays. A graduate of the University of Aberdeen, his initial training was in surgery (and what better for a future radiologist!) and ophthalmology. It was following a visit to Wurzberg that he decided to devote his energies to the new specialty of radiology and was appointed to Charing Cross and the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospitals. There he was instrumental in pioneering many new developments, including the use of stereoscopy for localizing foreign bodies, a method of great benefit to the wounded of World War I. McKenzie Davidson continued to pioneer new developments up to his untimely death at the age of 63 years (Obituary, 1919; Burrows, 1986). Thirty of his colleagues, including Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, set up a memorial fund, which was used to help purchase 32 Welbeck Street as a home for the Röntgen Society or, as it became in 1924, your British Institute of Radiology. Furthermore, his widow and family endowed this Memorial Lecture so that his name could be kept alive in radiological circles. And so it should be, for McKenzie Davidson was not only a pioneer and innovator but, from all accounts, a warm and generous man, bringing distinction to the field in which he was truly a founding father. It is a great honour to be invited to deliver this lecture in his memory.