Because he had studied cataracts induced by radiation exposure in radiologists and cyclotron workers, David G. Cogan of the Howe Laboratory in Boston was recruited by the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission to go to Japan in 1950 and investigate eye injuries in survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japanese ophthalmologists had already reported the immediate effects of blast and fire injury but the special effects of ionizing radiation were just starting to be understood. Cogan originally thought that ionizing irradiation of the body intense enough to produce eye effects would be incompatible with survival, but later admitted that he had not considered the potential for partial shielding of the body that occurred in crowds. The head, however, was frequently exposed and Cogan did find victims with the after-effects of radiation exposure. Since the development of cataract from ionizing radiation was delayed, often for years, clear radiation-related cataracts were not evident until sometime after the exposure. David Cogan’s work at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission helped to set safety standards for workers in atomic energy facilities, a crying need in the following decades that saw the building of atomic energy power plants and nuclear medicine laboratories

Submitted by Steven A. Newman from the Cogan Ophthalmic History Society.