Using the example of the use and thematization of the hands of the Viennese radiologist Guido Holzknecht, the text aims to show that the appropriate use of the hands, but also their failure, became a central component of the professional self-conception of the first generation of radio-logists. The text outlines three of these partially detached, partially overlapping compressions of collective radiological self-conceptions that developed around the use of hands: Firstly, the figure of the radiological manual worker; secondly, the figure of the X-ray manager; and, thirdly, the figure of the sick radiologist, whose infirmity was expressed above all in the so-called “X-ray hands”.