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From Pills to Penicillin
By Herb Baily

DON’T EVER MAKE the mistake of longing for the good old days—at least not in medicine. If you were born 50 years ago, the chances are you’re alive today because you were born naturally strong and lucky. It isn’t likely that the medicine of that period did much to save you for medicine was just learning to be scientific, which is another way of saying effective.

If medical progress hadn’t advanced your life expectancy, last year you’d have been slated to die at the age of 49! In 1902 there were few diseases that could be cured; today there are few diseases that cannot be cured if treated in time.

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This article is all over the place, but the last sentence is pretty prescient considering that the discovery of DNA was still 20 years away:
“Will other unknown rays, in combination with a life-chart like Morgan’s, enable man to analyze and rearrange the genes of mankind and build a new race of supermen?

Given what I’ve learned by watching the documentary series Heroes, I think it’s clear they succeeded.

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Sensational Study of HEREDITY May Produce New Race of Men
By Sterling Gleason

BLACK light, heat, and X-rays are being used by experimenters in sensational efforts to solve the mysteries of heredity. Workers in a score of laboratories in many different countries are delving for secrets locked in the living animal cell.

From their discoveries may emerge a new human race, stronger, more intelligent, and better able to resist disease. As the first step, they have produced an amazing chart by which the character of generations of flies yet unborn can be accurately foretold.

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I love that they store the oxygen in a bag.

SWIMMERS PEPPED UP BY WHIFF OF PURE OXYGEN
Athletes were transformed into super-swimmers in a recent test at Springfield College, Mass. Each of the swimmers was given two deep breaths of pure oxygen before he leaped into the water. Holding their breath until they had entered the tank, eleven of the seventeen youths taking part beat their own previous records in a 100-yard dash through the water.

Those who wear them say:

ERICKSON LEGS are Wonderful
because they do not chafe, overheat or draw end of stump.

“If I hadn’t been all through it myself, I wouldn’t have the assurance to tell you to “cheer up.”
ERICKSON.

If you have bad a recent amputation send for new booklet on TEST LEGS for beginners.
E. H. ERICKSON CO.
38-A Washington Av. N. MINNEAPOLIS • MINN.

Device Bares Vocal Chords
CONSISTING of an intricate maze of hidden mirrors in a long, slender metal tube, one end of which is inserted into the mouth far back toward the throat, an “auto-phonoscope” device enables voice teachers to peer at pupils’ vocal chords while they are in action. Tiny, but powerful, electric bulbs at the tip of the tube provide light within the pupils throat during the examination.

Human Body Gets Machine Tests

JUST as they might keep performance charts of a steam engine or gasoline motor, engineers are now studying the human body, an engine far more efficient at turning fuel into work than any other known. At the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, in Germany, subjects work in a miniature mine, operate sewing machines and compressed-air hammers, drive make-believe cars and walk treadmills, while electric contacts record their movements, and their diet and respiration are chemically analyzed. The data obtained will lead to improved factory design and management.

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Frame Suspends Patient For Surgical Operation

ALTHOUGH it resembles a medieval torture machine in general appearance, a newly developed operating room frame is said to provide increased comfort for the patient and affords the surgeon free access to the field of operation. The frame is specially designed for fracture and orthopedic operating work.

The new apparatus employs the principle of suspension from above, rather than support from beneath and the patient’s body lies on padded rests at the head, small of the back, and below the thighs. The feet and hands are strapped to other supports on the frame

New “Camera” Makes X-Ray Movies

MOTION pictures made with a rapid-fire X-ray “camera” devised by a Belgian radiologist will help physicians to study and to diagnose the ailments of moving body organs. Instead of making single shots, the machine exposes a series of large X-ray films in quick succession. This is done by mounting the specially slotted films upon a motor-driven revolving drum, seen within the machine in the right-hand view above. For examination, the resulting sheaf of pictures may then be transferred to motion-picture film and run off in a projector at any desired speed, so that the movements of the internal organs, as they appear on the film, are vividly shown on a conventional screen.

But is it worth it if you also get seasick?

ROCKING BED EASES HEART STRAIN
Sufferers from heart ailments are said to be aided by a new rocking bed. Operated by an electric motor, the bed alternately raises
the head and feet of the patient, helping the blood circulate to all parts of the body, thus easing the strain upon an over-taxed heart.

Doctors Listen to Noises in Patient’s Head
With his head “wired for sound,” George Yocum, Pennsylvania miner, faced a group of doctors and medical students at Temple University recently as amplifiers reproduced the roaring and whistling sounds that have bothered him since he suffered a skull fracture two years ago. A microphone placed against his forehead allowed doctors to diagnose his ailment as a cranial aneurysm, or swelling of a brain blood vessel.

Service Station for Skeletons

Medical-School Specimens Overhauled in Novel Shop

FIRST AID to skeletons! That’s the business of a strange “hospital” in New York City that annually takes apart, cleans, repairs, ana reassembles scores of dusty and damaged skeletons sent in by medical schools where they are used for study and demonstration. After skilled technicians have finished work on the eerie figures they are returned to their owners as good as new!

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New Noses in 40 Minutes

IN A forty-minute miracle of modern surgery, an unshapely nose now can be transformed in such a way as to change the owner’s face completely. Working entirely through the nostrils in order to leave no unsightly scar, the surgeon’s deft hands are guided almost exclusively by the sense of touch as he removes the hump and shortens the nose to normal proportions. Only a local anesthetic is used and the patient is conscious throughout the delicate operation. The complete transformation of the patient’s nose is accomplished in about forty minutes. In the accompanying photographs, a highspeed camera has caught the successive steps of the work in one of the most dramatic series of pictures ever made in an operating room.