Medical visual culture at the turn of the century: from chronophotography to early cinema

Abstract

Cinema allowed the possibility of capturing scientific phenomena that would otherwise be impossible solely with photography and drawing. Cinematographic techniques owe immensely to E. Muybridge and E-J. Marey. Marey began to record the movements of pathological bodies in 1888, through chronophotography, identifying biological functions as mechanical phenomena, directing films on the physiology of the body. In the beginning of 1897 physicians started to use cinematography as a tool for diagnosis, research and teaching. In 1897, John Macintyre directed films combining film and X-rays. One of the first scientists to produce a microcinematographic film was Julius Ries, who worked at the Marey Institute. Medical film was also shown at scientific meetings. It was the case of the surgeon Eugène-Louis Doyen, one of the first to direct films illustrating his surgical techniques. Some of these films were identified and restored at the Cinemateca Portuguesa, having been projected at scientific meetings, such as the International Congress of Medicine and Surgery of Lisbon (1906). In Portugal, the neurologist Egas Moniz also used cinema to measure the time between contraction movements produced by the neurological pathology, myoclonia. In this work we will examine the role of cinema as a recording and experimental method in medicine.