From the Burns Archive: The Deadly Rays That Cured Cancer

The yellowing photographs on the walls of the Burns Archive depict the horrors and marvels of medicine at the turn of the 20th century: early demonstrations of breast surgery, one of the first dental drillings, a pile of feet amputated from Civil War soldiers, and the ballooning legs of a teenager with elephantiasis. The curator of this disquieting assemblage is Stanley Burns, a part-time ophthalmologist with oddball antique glasses who tends to his collection in the same midtown Manhattan brownstone in which he lives and sees patients.