The late radiologist Harry Z. Mellins, M.D (1921-2009), arguing that radiologists are clinicians:
The radiologist is a clinician who has sacrificed one of the greatest glories of the practice of medicine, and its greatest responsibility—the daily contact with the ill and with their families—in order to concentrate the more on the other essence of our profession, the pathology of the living. This he sees through the medium of shadows, which has left him open to the charge of not quite being a real doctor.
But shadows, after all, are real. What are we to one another and what is the world to any of us, but an inverted image on the retina. Seeing is one with the mind. The camera does not see; it records. The radiologist perceives a shadow, sees a lesion, and imagines the man. The bedside physician sees the man, perceives the signs, and imagines the lesion. They practice from the outside in, and we from the inside out. Both are clinicians, for in truth, there is no other kind of doctor worthy of the name. The decisive test for all is finally and always at the bedside. This, then, is one concept of the radiologist—with a film on the view box, but the bedside on his mind.