DISEASE DRAMA FILM

Taranaki Daily News, 11 March 1933, Page 5

DISEASE DRAMA FILM

CELLS OF LIVING TISSUE, INTERESTING PICTURES. London, Feb. 25. The latest cinema stars are cells of living tissue, which have been exhibited in a cancer film shown before the Duke of York and the Prime Minister, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald at No. 10 Downing Street. The cultivation of the tissues—one of the modern marvels of scientific medicine—has enabled doctors to trace the developments of the cells causing cancer, and watch the effects of radium and other substances. Hitherto, the growth of cells has been so slow that human eyesight has been unable to appreciate the changes. Dr. Canti, working under the auspices of the Empire Cancer Research Campaign, has adapted a film to record photographs of cells growing under the microscope in an incubator. By taking the pictures at intervals several weeks of continuous photography have been condensed into half an hour, the movements of the cells being speeded up, sometimes a thousandfold. •Hie film shows normal tissue from the bone-forming membrane of an embryo chick, with the cells continually’ changing and multiplying, and with scavenging cells eating the unhealthy and imperfect. Later, the film illustrates cancer developed in rats, with cancer-cells extending their delicate tentacles, and seizing and destroying the older and weaker cells. The film held the spectators as intensely as a vivid drama.