Egan, like Papanicolaou, cast himself more as an immaculate craftsman than a scientist—a photographer, really, who was taking photographs of cancer using X-rays, the most penetrating form of light. He tinkered with films, angles, positions, and exposures, until, as one observer put it, “trabeculae as thin as a spider’s web”752 in the breast could be seen in the images. But could cancer be caught in that “spider’s web” of shadows, trapped early enough to prevent its spread? Egan’s mammograms could now detect tumors as small as a few millimeters, about the size of a grain of barley. But would
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