by
Joanna Padovano, Reporter | November 19, 2012
From the November 2012 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
RSNA helps the war effort
After the Great Depression wound down, the world watched as World War II began to unfold during the early 1940s. The theme surrounding the 1942 annual meeting was that of war; one page of the event’s program even encouraged attendees to collect scrap that could be used for the manufacturing of guns, ships and tanks.
In response to a request from the U.S. Office of Defense Transportation, the 1943 RSNA meeting was cancelled in order to save the country’s gasoline supply for the war. The organization was again asked to cancel the 1944 meeting, but they instead opted to collaborate with the American Roentgen Ray Society on hosting a joint meeting, at which the title of the annual oration—delivered by Lawrence Reynolds—was “History of the Use of the Roentgen Ray in Warfare.”
The 1945 annual meeting was, in part, a celebratory event, as that was the year the Second World War had finally come to an end. The following year’s meeting reflected major advancements in radiological technology and the growing distinction between diagnosis and therapy in radiology. In 1948, the society developed a separate physics program and physics-based “refresher courses” for the annual meetings. Towards the end of the decade, the annual meeting had become so large that it had clearly outgrown some of its previous venues, which during the 1940s were located in cities such as Cleveland, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston.
Post-war boom
At the beginning of the 1950s, paper presentations began to be grouped into large blocks of scientific sessions at the annual meeting. Due to the growing amount of presentations, each one was limited to a 20-minute timeframe with an additional 15 minutes worth of discussion time. By the middle of the decade, RSNA membership had grown to more than 2,500 and each meeting was becoming increasingly crowded. At this time the Chicago’s Palmer House hotel was becoming the preferred location to host the meeting. Other venues during the decade were located in Cincinnati and Los Angeles.
Donald S. Childs—who in addition to his other duties had been serving as the annual meeting planner— passed away in 1960. During the Annual Oration at the 1961 meeting, Lawrence L. Robbins, a past president of the society, honored Childs’ contribution to the society.
RSNA had nearly 4,200 members in 1963 and had become the largest scientific radiological organization in the world. That year’s meeting was held on the weekend before Thanksgiving, as opposed to the weekend after the holiday, which had become the norm.
