摘要：X-rays have a particular sort of currency at the sanatorium in Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain. "Ah, you carry it in a case. Like a certificate, as it were—a sort of membership card," says a fellow in-patient to our protagonist, Hans Castorp. And then, approvingly, "Very good. Let me see it" [1]. The tubercular residents of this mountaintop clinic commonly keep small copies of their X-rays in a pocket, ready for display and perusal. These "intimate photographs" are more precious than conventional portraits; Hans begs his beloved Clavdia for her own tiny X-ray print to hold as a memento during her absence from the sanatorium. While he pines for her, he looks into the little glass square and takes comfort and pleasure in the sight of her thoracic cavity. Patients at the clinic know each other as much by lesions and fevers as by names and faces.
