MOVIES AND MEDICINE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20990, 1 April 1930, Page 13

MOVIES AND MEDICINE.

THE CAMERA AT THE CLINIC. RECORDS FUNCTIONING OF ORGANS. NOVEL COURSES IN SURGERY. Dr Joseph Franklin Montague, of the Bellevue Hospital Medical College Clinic of New York, has perfected an internal operating motion picture camera. This lias been the result of 10 years of work. He is now using it in his study of disease and the teaching of young medicos. Dr Montague first began using the moving picture to demonstrate to liis students a few of the most intricate parts in certain operations, and exact characteristics of some of the rarer, diseases. So successful was the method, however, that he was called upon to give an entire course in surgery through the medium of the movies, and later his moving pictures of various operations for the diagnosis came into demand with both medical schools and private physicians, not only in the United States, but from Europe, and even far-off Australia and India.

“.Moving picture films form a' par. ticularly ideal medium for the, instruction of the medical student,” explained Dr Montague at the clinic of the Bellevue Hospital Medical School. “ This is not hard to realise when the clearness and simplicity of the motion picture portrayal of a clinical condition is contrasted with the totally inadequate view that a medical student can obtain when he attempts to observe an operation or study a■ case from a scat in the amphitheatre.

“ If you have ever, boon in the amphitheatre* of an operating room you will recall how the students and observing physicians arc seated row upon row in a scnii-circular manner on benches whose distance ranges from 20ft to 50ft from the field under observation. When you consider that the section to be observed is at best six to eight inches square, and that even this is encroached upon liy operating hands and instruments, yon can well imagine that the actual view possible is very poor indeed.”

A SIX BY NINE FOOT OPERATION. “ Contrast this, if you will, with the fact that an operation, when photographed and thrown upon the screen shows an area Oft by Oft instantly visible to everybody,'and so complete in its clearness and abundant in its detail that accurate observation cannot be avoided. “The dissection of an entire human body—a tedious process taking .months of careful work—is shown in faithful detail in motion pictures that can l.e run through in a little over an hour. Moreover, without the necessity of again going through the dissection, the process may be repeatedly shown until the student is entirely familiar with its detail. In this way, from the seat of a . comfortable chair, lie may learn what otherwise would require months of messy work on a malodorous corpse. Thus, through the agency of the motion pictures, the anatomy and physiology of the body in health, the characteristic appearance in cases of disease, and each, step in the plan of treatnlont may be presented to students.

“ The same facts hold good in practically every other Jitcdieal course besides surgery. Moving pictures are solving the teaching problems. In microscopic work, for instance, which plays so large a part in the training of the medical students, a movie camera can cateh everything that the student can see after hours of eye strain pouring over nis microscopic slides. The image, when vastly magnified and thrown upon a screen, is then far more visible and easily understood by the student. Stains and colours can be used to emphasise the points to be-made, and proper titling and even captions set into the pictures directing attention to various points will illustrate a fact far better than individual work between an instructor and a student swapping squints into an unsatisfactory microscope.” The instrument that Dr Montague uses in making movies inside the human body consists of a long, very thin, and very highly-polished tube, to one end of the tube a small movie camera can be fastened. Inside the other end of the tube is a battery of minute but very powerful lights, arranged according lb certain optical laws. The end. of the tube with the lights is introduced inside the patient's body, and when properly placed the lights are turned on. The movie camera is then focussed, started, and in a few seconds a celluloid record is made of how some particular organ is functioning. The entire operation is perfectly painless, and no more dangerous than when the doctor uses a stomach pump. After the moving picture film has been developed and projected on a screen the doctor is able to study it at his leisure and decide exactly what is wrong. If he is doubtful a specialist can be called in for consultation. A diagnosis is decided on, and perhaps treatment starts. A few weeks later another movie is made which will show what effect the. treatment is having. When the patient is finally cured a movie will prove the fact, and the complete set of three movies will bo of invaluable use to other doctors who may have a patient with a similar disease and who wish to see just what the symptoms are and how they respond to that particular type of treatment. So useful have the movies already proved themselves to be to the medical profession that not only has the American College of Surgeons endorsed their, use, but Dr Montague and a few other scientists of New York and Chicago who have been experimenting with their use o\er a, number of years, are continually receiving urgent calls from out-of-town physicians for films from their collections to help the small town doctors with their more unusual problems. Those, of course, arc at all times rushed with the gioatcst possible speed, and plans are now under way to form a central film exchange for doctors which will permit medical men in all parts of the ..world expeditiously to exchange films of rare cases, and is a step forward in the teaching of medical students.

The doctors, however, arc not alone in having adopted the lively films. The dentists also are taking up the camera as an aid to their work. While the X-ray camera lias for years been the right hand instrument of the dentists, in the last year the movie camera has also crept into popularity. Dr Jerome Herzog, of Xew York, for instance, who is one of the best known dentists engaged in straightening children’s teeth, has been sending all of his school children up to a well-known Broadway studio to have tiny reels from a movie film made of themselves before lie starts work..

While English scientists and physicians are watching Dr Montague's work with the closest attention and doing a certain amount of research work in the development of movies in medicine, most of their progress has been made with the X-ray. A new moving picture camera has been perfected that will take X-ray movies, and recently doctors in London witnessed a complete film of the workings of the inside of the human body as exposed by the X-ray and registered with a movie camera. The heart could lie seen pulsating in a trellis work frame formed by the ribs, while the movement of the joints of the arms and legs could he followed so closely that the doctors were able to diagnose functional disorders of the joints of the bones.

In London tiie work is also being carried on of taking regular pictures of the inside of the body. These experiments differ, however, from the method employed by Dr Montague and other American scientists. The British medical

men instead of actually inserting the lights and taking pictures inside the body, shine a strong beam of electric light into the body from the outside, which is brought to a focus at the desired point. A movie camera is then directed down a patient's throat, and in this way movies have been made of the vocal cords in the throat and the curious changes that take place during breathing. Some time ago a series of eight or ten films showing the Caesarian operation, trepanning, and the removal of tumours, etc., were taken in France.