MIRACULOUS CAMERA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 21068, 30 December 1931, Page 11

MIRACULOUS CAMERA.

PHOTOGRAPHS IN BODY. AN INVALUABLE INVENTION. MEDICAL STUDIES IN VIENNA. During his medical studies in Vienna Dr. C. Stanton Hicks, the New Zealand doctor who is now professor of physiology and pharmacology at the University of Adelaide, inspected the wonderful camera, invented by two young .Austrian scientists, that photographs the interior of the body. The apparatus is now in regular uso, and is of immense value in locating and diagnosing cancer of the stomach and internal ulcers. Professor Hicks, who is visiting tives in the Dominion, explained, prior to his departure for Dunetlin yesterday, that the patient swallows the apparatus, and by means of an electric flash of 200,000 candle power no less than 16 stereoscopic photographs are taken, each photograph being no larger than the size of a piece of confetti. They are then enlarged to quartcr-pkite size, giving a sharp definition and an excellent picture of the interior of the stomach wall. Surprising Efficiency. It was at the Wenkebach clinic in Vienna that Professor Hicks saw the invention in operation. The apparatus consisted, he said, of a flexible tube carrying eight pairs of pinhole cameras. When the apparatus was swallowed, an X-ray examination assured that the cameras were in the right position. The stomach was then inflated until the cameras were focussing accurately, when a small piece of metal wire was exploded by means of an electrical discharge, giving a momentary flash. The miniature films were exposed simultaneously and, when developed, supplied a complete view of the interior of the body. The efficiency of the apparatus was surprising, he said, and was certain to become of great importance in the medical world. After spending years on the Continent, Professor Hicks was chiefly impressed with the increasing numbers of men and women attending the universities in times of depression. This was due, ho said, to the complete lack of faith in commerce and currency. Unable to find openings for their sons in business fathers were putting them into the professions, with the result that medicine was overcrowded in Europe, and the prospects of a medical graduate finding a position were extremely small. " So acute has the problem become in Germany that literature is appearing under the title of 'Medicine in Danger,' " said Professor Hicks. "It means that the standards of the profession are going to be so' undermined by the struggles of impecunious physicians that medical ethics will be endangered. The profession in Europe is extremely concerned about the menace, for there would appear to be no other work that the increasing army of doctors can do." Poverty in Vienna. Side by side with this undesirable feature was the vigorous prosecution of medical research in Europe. It was almost paradoxical, when Europe was suffering from an all-pervading poverty, to find the clinics full to overcrowded with post-graduate students. The financial sjra'its of the Viennese were pathetic, said Professor Hicks. Their poverty was unbelievable and they viewed 'with astonishment the apparent affluence of the British and colonial students. " When I told my fellow-students that I was going to Australia and would be back for clinical study in about four years they looked at me in amazement," lie said. " One of my professors shook his head and replied incredulously, 'I think it more likely our next meeting will be in Heaven than in Vienna.' The four years elapsed and I paid a return visit. I knocked at the professor's door and when he opened it he looked profoundly astonished. 'Ach,' he gasped, 'it is Vienna !' "