STETHOGRAMS BY WIRE

Evening Star, Issue 19062, 3 October 1925, Page 12

STETHOGRAMS BY WIRE

LONG RANGE DIAGNOSIS OF HEART If your heart is misbehaving (states the ‘ Literary Digest ’) and your local doctor thinks it well to get the opinion of a specialist, this may be done, thanks to modern electrical methods, in about seven minutes, though the _ heart specialist is in his cilice at a thousand miles away. Merely a case of utilising the electric stethoscope and the cathode ray oscillograph adjusted to the telephone wire. The stethoscope makes the heartbeat audible, while the oscillograph gives graphic presentation of its action, in the form or a “ stothogram ” that may bo transmitted by the new method of sending pictures by wire. So the specialist out there listens to your heart, checks his auditory findings by visual study of the diagram, and telephones his diagnosis while you wait. All this, naturally, on the assumption that your local physician is equipped with the necessary apparatus for putting heart-sounds and heart-picture on the wire. And wo may assume that ho soon will be so equipped, for the official stamp of approval was put upon the method, and a demonstration of its possibilities publicly made, at the recent meeting of that august body, the American Medical Association, when, according to the Press accounts, 1,500 physicians attended what the New York ' Times ’ describes as a long-distance clinic on the Steel Pier. The ‘Times’ correspondent continues: — “ Two photographs of heart-beats which had been sent to Chicago by the new teiophoto process for diagnosis were shown on a screen while the gathering listened to a Chicago physician’s diagnosis coming over 1,000 miles of telephone wires, and amplified so that the voice could be heard throughout the entire hall. It was announced as the first event of its kind in history, and as bearing great possibilities for development in the quick diagnosis of cases when the diagnostic specialist is many miles away from the patient. “ One of the photographs represented the heart-beat of a patient who was examined with a stethoscope. By moans of new apparatus developed by Dr H. B. Williams, of Columbia University, and the Bell Telephone Laboratories, a ‘stothogram’ or chart of his heart-beat was produced. This was mailed to the American Telephone and Telegraph Office in New York City, whence it was communicated to Chicago by the new method of sending pictures by wire. “Dr James R. Greer, of Chicago, made the diagnosis this afternoon. After the stethogram had, been thrown on the screen, Dr Samuel W. Lambert, the New York heart specialist, called up Dr Greer from a telephone in the hall. Although separated by 1,000 miles, the two physicians and the patient and the physicians attending the clinic were virtually brought together by the longdistance clinic. “ The stethogram was discussed at length by Drs Lambert and Greer. Dr Greer gave bis diagnosis as irregularity of every other beat, with a bad prognosis, unless the irregularity was caused by the use of digitalis.”