A WONDERFUL CAMERA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21530, 30 December 1931, Page 8

A WONDERFUL CAMERA

INTERIOR OF BODY PHOTOGRAPHED DR STANTON HICKS’S OBSERVATIONS (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, December 29. During bis medical studies in Vienna Dr C. Stanton Hicks, a New Zealand doctor who is now professor of .physiology and pharmacology at the University of Adelaide, inspected a wonderful camera invented by two young Austrian scientists. This camera photographs the interior of the body. The apparatus is now in regular use and is of immense value in locating and diagnosing cancer of the stomach and internal ulcers. Professor Hicks, who is visiting relatives in the Dominion, explained prior to his departure for Dunedin that the patient swallows the apparatus and by means of an electric flash of 200,000 candle power no fewer than 16 stereoscopic photographs are taken, each photograph being no larger than the size of a piece of confetti. They are then enlarged to quarter-plate size, giving a sharp definition and an excellent picture of the interior of the stomach wall. It was at the Wenkebach Clinic, in Vienna, that Professor Hicks saw the invention in operation. The appartus consisted, lie 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. A small piece of metal wire was then exploded by means of an electrical discharge, giving a momentary flash. 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, Professor Hicks said, and was certain to become of great importance in the medical world. After spending two years and a-ha!f on the Continent Professor Hicks was chiefly impressed with the increasing number of men and women attending the universities in times of depression. This was clue, he said, to the complete lack of faith in commerce and currency. Unable to find openings for their sons in business, the fathers were putting them into professions, with the result that medicine was overcrowded in Europe and the prospects of a medical graduate finding a position were extremely small. The financial straits of the Viennese were pathetic, said Professor Hicks. Their poverty was unbelievable, and they viewed with astonishment the apparent affluence of British and colonial students. “When I told my fellow-students four years ago that I ivas going to Australia and would be back for clinical study in a few years they looked at me in amazement,” he 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.’ Four years elapsed and I paid a return visit. I knocked at the professor’s door, and when he opened it lie looked profoundly astonished. ‘ Ach,’ he gasped, ‘it is Vienna.’ ”