The Broadcasted Operating Room Early Medical Television as a Telemedicine Device in the United States, 1939–1960

Abstract

This article examines the role of medical television in surgical procedures in the United States from 1939 to 1960. It reads medical television within the history of telemedicine and its infrastructure in an attempt to understand how it shaped and was shaped by the changing location and knowledge context of surgical practice in the 20th century. With the history of telemedicine having seen increased research in recent years, this reading of telemedical devices and infrastructures as forms of mediatized knowledge transfer becomes increasingly important. Telemedical broadcasts here are therefore discussed in their turn from broadcasting systems to media systems as part of a changing surgical education and practice and a fragmented knowledge landscape in modern hospitals.

KEYWORDS:

• Telemedicine
• telesurgery
• United States
• 1939–1960
• television
• operating room

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Bashshur et al., “Telemedicine and the COVID-19 Pandemic, Lessons for the Future.”

2 Greene, “When Television was a Medical Device.”

3 Greene, “Knowledge in Medias Res,” 50.

4 Bashshur and Shannon, History of Telemedicine, 132; Greene, “When Television was a Medical Device.”

5 Murray, “The New Surgical Amphitheater,” 772–797.

6 Vladzymyrskyy, Jordanova and Lievens, A Century of Telemedicine, 151.

7 Bashshur et al., “The Taxonomy of Telemedicine,” 484.

8 Bashshur, Reardon and Shannon “Telemedicine,” 614.

9 Lovett and Bashshur, “Telemedicine in the US,” 4.

10 Schlich, “Surgery, Science and Modernity,” 237.

11 Ibid.

12 For a more detailed history of the changes, see Murray, “The New Surgical Amphitheater,” 776–778.

13 Adams and Schlich, “Design for Control,” 315.

14 Schlich, “Surgery, Science and Modernity,” 237.

15 Kernahan, “Surgery Becomes A Speciality,” 95–115.

16 Schlich, “Introduction,” 15.

17 Palfreyman and Rabier, “Visualizing Surgery,” 290.

18 Einthoven, “Le cardiogramme,” 132–164.

19 Bashshur and Shannon, History of Telemedicine, 175.

20 Greene, ‘When Television was a Medical Device.’

21 ‘Fips’, “The Radio Doctor—Maybe,” 1406.

22 Gernsback, “The Radio Teledactyl,” 978.

23 Bashshur and Shannon, History of Telemedicine, 144.

24 Curtis, “Between Observation and Spectatorship,” 89.

25 Seeman, “Family Doctor Calls—on Television,” 462.

26 Other projects included one in Nebraska in 1959 and another in Massachusetts in the 1960s.

27 Bashshur and Shannon, History of Telemedicine, 146.

28 Vladzymyrskyy, Jordanova and Lievens, A Century of Telemedicine, 152.

29 Popular Science, “Television Lets Students Watch Operation,” 94.

30 Vladzymyrskyy, Jordanova and Lievens, A Century of Telemedicine, 146.

31 Ibid, 148.

32 Popular Science, “Televising Surgery,” 100.

33 Vladzymyrskyy, Jordanova and Lievens, A Century of Telemedicine, 148 f.

34 Popular Science, “Televising Surgery,” 100; Barnouw, The Golden Web, 244; Radio Age, “Medical TV—Just What The Doctor Ordered,” 15.

35 Popular Science, “Televising Surgery,” 100.

36 Hospitals, “Better Instruments for Modern Surgery”—J. Sklar Advertisement, 22.

37 Radio Age, “Medical TV—Just What The Doctor Ordered,” 13.

38 See Murray, “The New Surgical Amphitheater,” 772–797.

39 Back, “Television Teaches the Doctor,” 605.

40 Ibid.

41 Maisch, “Electrical Industry Fears Socialization,” 30.

42 Smith, Kline and French Laboratories, “The First Demonstration of Natural Color Television,” 2.

43 Life, “Surgery in Color Television,” 75; Popular Science, “Prescribe TV for your M.D.,” 296, Schweiker, “Television Exhibit,” 28749.

44 Murray, “Color TV Transformed the Way Americans Saw the World.” For the perception of color television trials at the time see: Goldmark and Edson, Maverick Inventor, 100.

45 Vladzymyrskyy, Jordanova and Lievens, A Century of Telemedicine, 152.

46 Laitifi and Latifi, “Telemedicine and Telepresence for Surgery and Trauma,” 477.

47 Back, “Television Teaches the Doctor,” 652; Greene, “When Television was a Medical Device.”

48 Lovett and Bashshur, “Telemedicine in the USA,” 5.

49 See Gourley, “Long-Distance Operators,” 66.

50 Zetka, Surgeons and the Scope, 1.

51 Frampton and Kneebone, “John Whickham’s New Surgery,” 552.

52 Zetka, Surgeons and the Scope, 12.

53 Prentice, Bodies in Formation, 2.

54 Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic, 33.

55 Ibid., XXI.

56 For more details, see Bashshur and Shannon, History of Telemedicine, 89.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid.

59 Curtis, “Between Observation and Spectatorship,” 90.

60 Ibid.

61 Murray, “The New Surgical Amphitheater,” 778.

62 Life, “Last Word in Operating Rooms,” 93.

63 Alken et al., “Integrating Technical and Nontechnical Skills in Hands-On Surgical Training,” 1.

64 DeBakey, “Telemedicine Has Now Come Of Age.”

65 Greene, The Doctor Who Wasn’t There, 6.

66 Alken et al., “Integrating Technical and Nontechnical Skills in Hands-On Surgical Training,” 4.

67 Danet, “Approches du Geste Chirurgical dans le Cinéma Documentaire,” 191–209.

68 Doarn et al., “Roundtable Discussion—Telesurgery and Robotics,” 370.

69 Murray, “The New Surgical Amphitheater,” 776.

70 Field, Telemedicine, 2.

71 Alken et al., “Integrating Technical and Nontechnical Skills in Hands-On Surgical Training,” 1; Doarn, “Telemedicine in Tomorrow’s Operating Room,” 121.

72 Ibid, 121.

73 For another spatial aspect of telemedicine, the divide between urban and rural spaces, see Lovett and Bashshur, “Telemedicine in the United States,” 4.

74 Harris and Taylor, Digital Matters, 82.

75 Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, 243.

76 For the role of images in medical practice see e.g. Ostherr, Medical Visions, 14 and 61; Reiser, Technological Medicine, 14.

77 Bashshur et al., “Telemedicine and the COVID-19 Pandemic, Lessons for the Future.”

78 Weiner, “No Classrooms, no Clinics: Medical Education during a Pandemic.”

79 Chao, Frost and Newman, “Interactive Virtual Surgical Education During COVID-19 and Beyond,” e9.

80 Ibid.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laura Niebling

Laura Niebling, Lehrstuhl für Medienwissenschaft, Universität Regensburg, Universitätsstraße 31, 93350 Regensburg, Germany. Tel: [phone]; Fax: [phone]