Tuesday, January 11, 2011

A Thursday afternoon (medical) matinee

From the Auckland Star, 5 March 1915. The site of this rather different film showing, the Lyric Theatre, was once on Upper Symonds Street, built in 1911. It later became the New Lyric from 1926, then the State from 1935. It was demolished in the 1990s, apparently for road widening.

About forty doctors and the same number of nurses attended a special exhibition of medical films held at the Lyric Theatre yesterday afternoon at the invitation of Hayward's Picture Enterprises, Ltd. A number of films were shown, the most interesting being one taken and circulated by the officials of Sydney Hospital, showing an operation for the cleaning of tuberculosis material from the pleural cavity adjoining the lungs. The surgeons hands were not shown, but the patient was depicted at the various stages of the operation and full explanations of the procedure were thrown on the screen at intervals. 

The principal interest of the operation which is a well-known one, was in the fact that the anaesthetic was adminstered by intra trachal inhalation, i.e. pumped into the lungs under pressure. This method of administration makes the lungs considerable more active during the period of insensibility.

Apparatus for administering anaesthetics by this method has recently been imported intro New Zealand, but has been very little used in Auckland. Several other films were also shown including one dealing with the drug "salvarsan" and others with the X rays. These latter were taken from a stock of special films owned by Hayward's Enterprises. '

The exhibition was held under the auspices of the British Medical Association, and the doctors present expressed their thanks to the management of the theatre.

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