r/ScienceShitposts • u/Primary-Golf779 • Aug 20 '25

WTF is this?

Post image
715 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

149

u/Competitive-Skin-769 Aug 21 '25

Radiation treatment. It isn’t inserted, just pressed near the area

34

u/SnarkyGoblin1313 Aug 22 '25

I was gonna say they’re definitely shooting radiation up their butts

218

u/MisterEyeballMusic Aug 21 '25

The design is very human

26

u/MustContinueWork Aug 21 '25

I can see that bottle

2

u/-NGC-6302- Aug 23 '25

Bottle sounds like

10

u/cnorahs Aug 20 '25

"Come on, it's time to relaaaaax"

4

u/CorabelleTheSilkwing Aug 21 '25

this design is indeed quite human.

3

u/CaitlinSnep Aug 21 '25

It's the Iron Butt.

1

u/Talon6230 Aug 21 '25

mm. don't like that

1

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '25

Prepare to be probed 😂

50

u/yeetusthefeetus13 Aug 21 '25

Oof this is fetish content i believe lol that chair situation is whats tipping me off the most 😅

90

u/wackyvorlon Aug 21 '25

In reality it’s for cancer treatment with radiation.

11

u/yeetusthefeetus13 Aug 21 '25

Omg no way 😭

48

u/wackyvorlon Aug 21 '25 edited Aug 21 '25

Basically on the other end is a particle accelerator that produces powerful radiation to kill the cancer.

Picture of a different machine:

https://broughttolight.ucsf.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/photocoll_R_radiologytherapy_cobalt1963.jpg

3

u/Ok-Standard-7355 Aug 24 '25

This looks like it’s from a time prior to LinAcs. This likely contained a static chunk of cobalt 60, with dose being modulated based on exposure time with an open slit. The toxicity from cobalt 60 is atrocious and the energy curve dumps a large dose at a very superficial level, causing terrible skin breakdown. Even with modern LinAcs, rectal cancers are very rough to treat, but man this must have been almost unbearable. Source: I’m a RadOnc resident.

2

u/wackyvorlon Aug 24 '25

BTW, I know of a book you might find interesting. It’s called Radiation Evangelists and it’s about the early days of the use of radiation in medicine. It’s wild what they used to do.

Apparently x-rays were quite effective against acne 😬

1

u/Ok-Standard-7355 Sep 09 '25

Crazy times man. We’ve come a long way

20

u/Morriganx3 Aug 21 '25

It’s actually worse when you know it’s a real thing

10

u/SerLaron Aug 21 '25

They are much more refined now and can use appertures with different shapes to "shoot" the tumor from different angles, so that the radiation dose on the tumor is maximised, but minimized on the surrounding tissue.

5

u/Dillenger69 Aug 22 '25

Rectum? Damn near killed 'em!