But these days, when he bustles through the hospital wards, listening to coughs and studying X-rays, his heart is immeasurably lighter.
But it is a doctor, studying X-rays of bullets' paths through bodies, who has the sharpest point to make about why so many people are getting shot.
Much of his later work was in studying X-rays, and he helped improve the double X-ray spectrometer.
He studied X-rays and cathode rays.
In his catheterization laboratory, he studied X-rays revealing a partly blocked artery in a 55-year-old man.
Nearby are wall-size light boxes for studying X-rays.
It predominantly studied X-rays, but also observed gamma-ray bursts.
The satellite, called Astron, is intended to study ultraviolet radiation and X-rays from celestial objects.
They studied graphs and X-rays, neural patterns and body chemistry.
As his doctors are studying X-rays of his heart, they discover a foreign object some two centimeters long in the right ventricle.