PHOTOGRAPHING HEARTBEAT

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 December 1934, Page 8

PHOTOGRAPHING HEARTBEAT

GRAMOPHONE FOR THE DEAF. LONDON, October 16. Apparatus by which it is possible to see and photograph a heart-beat is on view at the London Medical Exhibition, which opened at the Royal Horticultural Society’s new' hall at Westminster yesterday. The exhibition, which is open till Friday, was attended yesterday by doctors from all parts of the country. The instrument is called a portable electro-cardiograph. By means of a cathode ray oscillograph (an electric beam equipment), it works in such a quiet and “private”- way that no patient can possibly be frightened. “In the old days, if a person had a shock,” an official of the exhibition said yesterday “the record spring would immediately snap, and the process had to begin all over again. “Nowadays the doctor simply attaches contacts to the wrist and leg and turns on the current, and across a sheet of frosted glass he can see a zig-zag line made by the patient’s heart-beats. He can photograph it instead of having to memorise the sound of the heart-beat as he would have to do in using a stethoscope, and thus has an exact record.” Another exhibit was a gramophone, which played a dance tune, though, no matter how near one stood to the revolving disc, no sound could be heard. It was an invention stated to be new in this country. The music is conveyed electrically to small pads mounted on handles. When the pad is held even lightly against any part of the skull, a person otherwise stone deaf can hoar through the bones of the head, whether it be placed against the temple or the chin, or if preferred one can listen by holding the pad to one’s teeth. Dr. Hugo Lieber invented this apparatus. Its main object is the tuition of deaf children.

Tho apparatus can be driven electrically from any house-lighting plug. There is too. shock-proof X-ray plant which a doctor may easily operate in his consulting-room. It works off lhe electric light supply. One British firm had. among its exhibits, a small dish full of tiny white tablets. Each tablet contains Vitamin C equivalent to that in two teaspoonsful of orange juice. It is the first time that Vitamin C has been isolated in pure form. Ninety thousand live bees are robbed of their venom daily in a German factory to provide the main ingredient of a salve displayed at the exhibition. Bee venom was known to the ancients as a remedy for rheumatism and arthritis, and modern medical authorities have approved its use for such complaints. The old-fashioned method of application —allowing the bees to sting the patient—has, however, been discarded as being too drastic. Now scores of girls, well protected by masks and overalls, are employed in a German factory squeezing the venom from the bees. The venom is then combined in a fatty base, and supplied in that form to the public.