52 #40: A Medical Review
To rescue his niece, John Henry Iron (Steel) and the Teen Titans break into Lexcorp and battle their way through Lex’s goons and the remaining members of Infinity Inc. until Steel confront Lex Luthor in his office:
Lex Luthor to Steel: You have four broken ribs and a ruptured appendix. Your small intestine is leaking fecal matter into your blood stream. Trust me–I have x-ray vision.
Let’s take a closer look at the injuries Lex claims that John Henry Irons has suffered:
broken ribs: Most likely suffered when he was being crushed by Everyman. Broken ribs are painful and will take several weeks to heal, but they are not usually dangerous. Rib fractures can be more serious if several ribs are broken in multiple places resulting in a flail chest, or if the broken ribs are pushed far out of place and are sharp enough to lacerate the lungs, but thankfully both of these injuries are very rare.
ruptured appendix: Most likely injured by the hammer through the abdomen. The appendix may not serve much of a function, but a ruptured one can lead to serious problems such as peritonitis. This will require surgical repair.
small intestine: An injured small intestine may leak intestinal contents into the abdomen, but not into the blood stream. The circulatory system has evolved in such a way that foreign matter doesn’t “leak” into it, even in a trauma situation. An injury leaking intestinal contents into the abdomen is serious and a surgical emergency. The intestinal contents have digestive enzymes that cause inflammation of the peritoneum, and bacteria which infect it. Surgery drainage and repair along with high-dose antibiotics are needed, and the sooner the better.
A nit-pick, but digested food in the intestine is “chyme” and doesn’t become “fecal matter” until well into the large intestine.
Lex is a shrewd businessman and a good scientist, but he’s not a doctor. His descriptions are off in places, and I suspect this is because he’s being his normal condescending self and trying to look like he knows more than he does — he ends up using the wrong terms and describing unlikely injuries. In fact, if you glance at the scene in question, he’s not even looking at Steel when he “diagnoses” him.
I wonder about how good x-ray vision really is. I know it’s been established that x-ray vision better than a regular medical x-ray, but those are some pretty specific injuries Lex is describing. I would need to order a CT scan with oral contrast to diagnose those. But then again, how much is the x-ray vision, and how much is Lex just gloating/bluffing?
February 8th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Is it just me, or does, “Trust me – I have x-ray vision” sound like a really bad pickup line?
February 8th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Well before such senses as “x-ray vision” and “telescopic vision” and “super hearing” were explicitly retconned as mainfestations of some kind of Kryptonian psionic ability, wasn’t it clear that these had to be a sort of clairvoyance rather than literal functions of eyesight and hearing?
There are so many logistic issues with considering these attributes as straight sensory perception — i.e., Superman’s super hearing lets him hear the sound of a trigger being pulled on the other side of Metropolis…but he also hears *every other sound* in Metropolis amplified to an equal degree…and somehow in this cacophony he can still find the precise location of that gun and get there faster than the speeding bullet can reach its target. Kryptonian clairvoyance is easier for me to swallow (for story purposes) than a more materialistic explanation.
By the same token, we can assume “x-ray vision” is just a quaint phrase and has nothing to do with the limitations of real x-rays or other medical scans. It’s more like “medical ESP” — and who wouldn’t want that?
February 9th, 2007 at 1:55 am
Superman’s superhuman abilities have never been explicitly retconned to being psionic in nature.
John Byrne or whoever would imply whatever up the wazoo as he or she wished, but the readers always had the option to believe that Superman emitted death rays from his eyes, and was not a pyrokinetic.
The explicit example that was counterintuitive to a public idea is the X-ray vision. Superman did not emit X-rays from his eyes Post-Crisis. He used his telescopic vision to peer between molecules that he was peering between using microscopic vision. He combined his two ’scopic vision powers in order to see through objects. Frankly I think is as awesome as it is ironic. Heat vision was born when X-ray vision was used to melt steel (i.e. guns) in early Superman comics, and microscopic vision as a specrtoanayltical instrument, a device to determine chemical make-up, was simply a better description at what point for what Superman would do to anaylize chemicals, which was “using X-ray vision” which makes no sense if you think about it.
Bah. too many big words.
February 9th, 2007 at 7:58 am
I agree with RAB. X-Ray vision as presented shows us that Superman (et al. sees some thing s as transparent, in cross-section. Totally a form of ESP. The question is really why this could be stopped by lead. Psychosomatic?
February 9th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Considering that Steel isn’t doubled over and screaming in pain due to a ruptured appendix, I can only assume that Lex is messing with his head. Oh, that wacky Lex.
February 11th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
I think the ‘official’ explanation of x-ray vision is that Superman ‘focuses’ his sight past solid objects, like we might focus past a dusty window or fog.
The other perennial explanation is, of course, that’s he’s psychic.
February 12th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
The most obvious explanation for “X-Ray vision” is that Superman can see x-rays, along with every other part of the electromagnetic spectrum. He can see radio waves, ultraviolet, infrared, microwave, and all the rest. By focusing on different parts of the spectrum, he can see solid objects, heat signatures, density of objects, or whatever else he wants. Lead blocks enough of the spectrum that he can’t see through it, at least not enough to be of any use.
I got no explanation for heat vision, since eyes are receptors, not emitters. I can go with the pyrokinetic notion; he can make things burn by looking at them, and the line-of-sight limitation makes it look like death rays from his eyeballs.
July 13th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
^_^ I know it’s somewhat sidetracking, but the explanation which I wound up with for my Mutants and Masterminds character was that his accident left him somewhat attuned to the fundamental nature of the universe. As a result, he saw “through” things, saw in total darkness, saw invisible objects, saw through illusions. The first catch is that seeing through things generally required concentrating on what he needed to see through (in game requiring search checks and being less than effective over distances) and the second catch being that the world looked like a very dull and dismal place due to only seeing the reality of things.
Now as to why his penetrating vision is blocked by glass (one has to pick a material, and I remembered how older X-ray machines were often foiled by crystal), goodness only knows. Mystical stuff, that glass.
March 18th, 2008 at 11:47 am
I always assumed heat vision was just concentrated sunlight pouring out of his eyes through Kryptonian physiology.
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