- Email: [email protected]
The Backstory to the Earliest-known Extant Motion Picture of Anesthesia
Journal of Anesthesia History 1 (2015) 36–37
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Anesthesia History journal homepage: http://www.anesthesiahistoryjournal.org
Editorial
The Backstory to the Earliest-known Extant Motion Picture of Anesthesia In this edition of Journal of Anesthesia History, Dr. Adolfo Venturini, Director of the Museum for the Asociación de Anestesia Analgesia y Reanimación de Buenos Aires, presents a video of the earliest known extant motion picture of anesthesia (Supplementary Video). 1 The clip consists of an introduction, a few still pictures, and the film with underlying narration in English, followed by credits. The 1899 film is of a surgical procedure consisting of approximately 15 scenes edited together, the longest segment being approximately 41 seconds. The narration states that the original film was found in 1971 as the Hospital de Clínicas de Buenos Aires was being demolished. The film is a mirror image (ie, the film has left-to-right inversion). The surgeon, Dr. Alejandro Posadas, and his assistants are not wearing head protection, masks, or surgical gloves. The anesthetist, Rodolfo S. Roccatagliata, a medical student, is seen at the patient's head, holding a mask, and intermittently dripping a solution, reportedly chloroform, onto the mask. The film shows a right thoracotomy with the purported procedure being removal of a lung hydatid cyst. It seems like a straightforward surgical procedure under spontaneous ventilation. Having worked with film since my teenage years, I find this film an outstanding achievement of engineering ingenuity. First of all, capturing live action on film was not developed until the late 19th century with Thomas Edison and William Dickson in the United States patenting their Kinetograph device in 18912 and the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, in France patenting their Elgé camera in 1895. 3 Up to that time, photographers had used rigid glass plates as a base to support the light-sensitive emulsion. Film required a flexible base that could be rolled up in a light-tight box. The first base used was cellulose nitrate, a compound commonly referred to as guncotton. It was extremely flammable and could spontaneously ignite. Later bases were cellulose acetate, known as “safety” film, and polyester. 4 The emulsions were not well developed yet and required a great amount of light to retain an image. The mechanics of how to expose the emulsion were formidable. First, the unexposed film was placed behind the lens in the “gate.” Then, a shutter opened to expose the emulsion to the light coming from the subject. Then, the shutter closed, and the film was advanced to the next frame where the shutter would again be opened exposing the emulsion, be closed, and the film advanced. The film had to remain stationary during the exposure not to smear the image, requiring the film to be advanced in a series of jerks, while the shutter was closed. The Lumière brothers' patent described perforations in the film edge that facilitated positioning the film precisely in the gate. The Lumières claim to have invented the first truly moving picture. Format standards for 35-mm film were developed by 1900 and those for
16-mm film by 1923. 5 Modern film standards specify the perforations based on the film width and the purpose of the film. 6 The frame-to-frame registration in our video is amazingly good, as the Elgé camera used the Lumière method, and an additional possibility for that will be discussed later. To have a quality film, the time that the shutter is open on each frame must be very uniform, so that the amount of exposure of the emulsion on each frame is constant. Early film cameras were hand operated, and the rate of cranking was not constant, leaving some frames either overexposed or underexposed. This variability in the film is quite apparent. Motordriven cameras with constant shutter speeds did not appear until the early 20th century. Exposing the emulsion is the first step. The second step is developing the strip of film, so that the image becomes stable in the presence of light. Early emulsions were based on silver deposition processes and developing resulted in a negative image; exposure to light precipitated the silver, resulting in darkness on the base. Viewing the image, one would see the reverse of the actual scene. Therefore, films had to be printed on a second emulsion and base to make the image positive to be able to be projected on a screen. In addition, I find this film fascinating from a technical standpoint. In addition to the good registration, the resolution or sharpness of the images is acceptable, both from the standpoint of lens development and the amount of time required for the exposure of each frame; there was some blurring due to motion of the subjects. Also interesting is that the video has many scenes. As the amount of film a camera could hold was very limited to approximately 40 seconds, Mr. Py had to reload film in his camera, each time requiring a dark room to prevent unwanted exposure of the emulsion. Or perhaps he had more than one camera, not having to pause to reload. Or the operation took a long time, and he was in no hurry. How this film was restored and converted to digital must be an interesting story all on its own. It is housed at the Cinematheque Argentina in Buenos Aires.7 In general, conversion of film to digital is not a trivial process. This film was made before standards for film formatting and projection were widely adopted. How did our friends in Argentina find a projector to shine light through the images? How were the images captured? How many hours were expended on this magnificent work of history to bring it to us? There are two main ways to digitize film. The first, what I have used for the Wood Library–Museum of Anesthesiology, is to project the image on a pure white screen and to capture the light image with a video camera, such as a digital camcorder and then create a DVD, save the film to a universal digital video format, or both. However, this method has its difficulties. The cellulose acetate base tends to shrink with time, and the perforations
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.janh.2015.04.001 2352-4529/© 2015 Anesthesia History Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Editorial
in the film no longer fit the teeth of the sprockets used to pull the film through the gate. This leads to torn sprocket holes and skipped frames. In addition, the base becomes brittle, and breaks in the film are common. Many of the older color films have lost the blue dye, and the film has a red hue, making complete color balance not possible. The second is a much more technical and expensive technique where the film is not projected but pulled continuously through a scanner, similar to a fax machine, and software is used to establish registration, exposure, and color balance. Such equipment can be obtained in the $175,000 range and requires a very skilled operator. I suspect the latter method was used in the digitization of this film. Finally, what does one do with the digital copy of a film? Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services have the profit motive to make their digital archives available to the public. Historians, by and large in the nonprofit arena, do not have such a luxury and therefore are limited in offerings. The Wood Library–Museum of Anesthesiology has made many of its offerings available for streaming on the Web, particularly the interviews of some of the pioneers of anesthesia in the John W. Pender Collection of the Living History of Anesthesiology.8 The Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology also has a home on YouTube.9
37
In conclusion, this work is a magnificent effort in preserving the history of anesthesia, and Dr. Venturini and his colleagues are to be congratulated. Supplementary data to this article can be found online at http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.janh.2015.04.001. Franklin Scamman, MD Professor Emeritus, Anesthesia University of Iowa Iowa City Iowa 52242 E-mail address: [email protected]
References 1. Venturini AH. The earliest-known extant motion picture of anesthesia in the world was filmed in Buenos Aires. J Anesth Hist. 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.janh.2015.02.006. 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_film_technology. 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_and_Louis_Lumiere. 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_base. 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_formats. 6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_perforations. 7. Personal email 21 February 2015 from Adolfo Venturini. 8. http://woodlibrarymuseum.org/library/media. 9. http://woodlibrarymuseum.org/media/.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Anesthesia History journal homepage: http://www.anesthesiahistoryjournal.org
Editorial
The Backstory to the Earliest-known Extant Motion Picture of Anesthesia In this edition of Journal of Anesthesia History, Dr. Adolfo Venturini, Director of the Museum for the Asociación de Anestesia Analgesia y Reanimación de Buenos Aires, presents a video of the earliest known extant motion picture of anesthesia (Supplementary Video). 1 The clip consists of an introduction, a few still pictures, and the film with underlying narration in English, followed by credits. The 1899 film is of a surgical procedure consisting of approximately 15 scenes edited together, the longest segment being approximately 41 seconds. The narration states that the original film was found in 1971 as the Hospital de Clínicas de Buenos Aires was being demolished. The film is a mirror image (ie, the film has left-to-right inversion). The surgeon, Dr. Alejandro Posadas, and his assistants are not wearing head protection, masks, or surgical gloves. The anesthetist, Rodolfo S. Roccatagliata, a medical student, is seen at the patient's head, holding a mask, and intermittently dripping a solution, reportedly chloroform, onto the mask. The film shows a right thoracotomy with the purported procedure being removal of a lung hydatid cyst. It seems like a straightforward surgical procedure under spontaneous ventilation. Having worked with film since my teenage years, I find this film an outstanding achievement of engineering ingenuity. First of all, capturing live action on film was not developed until the late 19th century with Thomas Edison and William Dickson in the United States patenting their Kinetograph device in 18912 and the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, in France patenting their Elgé camera in 1895. 3 Up to that time, photographers had used rigid glass plates as a base to support the light-sensitive emulsion. Film required a flexible base that could be rolled up in a light-tight box. The first base used was cellulose nitrate, a compound commonly referred to as guncotton. It was extremely flammable and could spontaneously ignite. Later bases were cellulose acetate, known as “safety” film, and polyester. 4 The emulsions were not well developed yet and required a great amount of light to retain an image. The mechanics of how to expose the emulsion were formidable. First, the unexposed film was placed behind the lens in the “gate.” Then, a shutter opened to expose the emulsion to the light coming from the subject. Then, the shutter closed, and the film was advanced to the next frame where the shutter would again be opened exposing the emulsion, be closed, and the film advanced. The film had to remain stationary during the exposure not to smear the image, requiring the film to be advanced in a series of jerks, while the shutter was closed. The Lumière brothers' patent described perforations in the film edge that facilitated positioning the film precisely in the gate. The Lumières claim to have invented the first truly moving picture. Format standards for 35-mm film were developed by 1900 and those for
16-mm film by 1923. 5 Modern film standards specify the perforations based on the film width and the purpose of the film. 6 The frame-to-frame registration in our video is amazingly good, as the Elgé camera used the Lumière method, and an additional possibility for that will be discussed later. To have a quality film, the time that the shutter is open on each frame must be very uniform, so that the amount of exposure of the emulsion on each frame is constant. Early film cameras were hand operated, and the rate of cranking was not constant, leaving some frames either overexposed or underexposed. This variability in the film is quite apparent. Motordriven cameras with constant shutter speeds did not appear until the early 20th century. Exposing the emulsion is the first step. The second step is developing the strip of film, so that the image becomes stable in the presence of light. Early emulsions were based on silver deposition processes and developing resulted in a negative image; exposure to light precipitated the silver, resulting in darkness on the base. Viewing the image, one would see the reverse of the actual scene. Therefore, films had to be printed on a second emulsion and base to make the image positive to be able to be projected on a screen. In addition, I find this film fascinating from a technical standpoint. In addition to the good registration, the resolution or sharpness of the images is acceptable, both from the standpoint of lens development and the amount of time required for the exposure of each frame; there was some blurring due to motion of the subjects. Also interesting is that the video has many scenes. As the amount of film a camera could hold was very limited to approximately 40 seconds, Mr. Py had to reload film in his camera, each time requiring a dark room to prevent unwanted exposure of the emulsion. Or perhaps he had more than one camera, not having to pause to reload. Or the operation took a long time, and he was in no hurry. How this film was restored and converted to digital must be an interesting story all on its own. It is housed at the Cinematheque Argentina in Buenos Aires.7 In general, conversion of film to digital is not a trivial process. This film was made before standards for film formatting and projection were widely adopted. How did our friends in Argentina find a projector to shine light through the images? How were the images captured? How many hours were expended on this magnificent work of history to bring it to us? There are two main ways to digitize film. The first, what I have used for the Wood Library–Museum of Anesthesiology, is to project the image on a pure white screen and to capture the light image with a video camera, such as a digital camcorder and then create a DVD, save the film to a universal digital video format, or both. However, this method has its difficulties. The cellulose acetate base tends to shrink with time, and the perforations
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.janh.2015.04.001 2352-4529/© 2015 Anesthesia History Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Editorial
in the film no longer fit the teeth of the sprockets used to pull the film through the gate. This leads to torn sprocket holes and skipped frames. In addition, the base becomes brittle, and breaks in the film are common. Many of the older color films have lost the blue dye, and the film has a red hue, making complete color balance not possible. The second is a much more technical and expensive technique where the film is not projected but pulled continuously through a scanner, similar to a fax machine, and software is used to establish registration, exposure, and color balance. Such equipment can be obtained in the $175,000 range and requires a very skilled operator. I suspect the latter method was used in the digitization of this film. Finally, what does one do with the digital copy of a film? Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services have the profit motive to make their digital archives available to the public. Historians, by and large in the nonprofit arena, do not have such a luxury and therefore are limited in offerings. The Wood Library–Museum of Anesthesiology has made many of its offerings available for streaming on the Web, particularly the interviews of some of the pioneers of anesthesia in the John W. Pender Collection of the Living History of Anesthesiology.8 The Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology also has a home on YouTube.9
37
In conclusion, this work is a magnificent effort in preserving the history of anesthesia, and Dr. Venturini and his colleagues are to be congratulated. Supplementary data to this article can be found online at http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.janh.2015.04.001. Franklin Scamman, MD Professor Emeritus, Anesthesia University of Iowa Iowa City Iowa 52242 E-mail address: [email protected]
References 1. Venturini AH. The earliest-known extant motion picture of anesthesia in the world was filmed in Buenos Aires. J Anesth Hist. 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.janh.2015.02.006. 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_film_technology. 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_and_Louis_Lumiere. 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_base. 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_formats. 6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_perforations. 7. Personal email 21 February 2015 from Adolfo Venturini. 8. http://woodlibrarymuseum.org/library/media. 9. http://woodlibrarymuseum.org/media/.