International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1934)

88 THE CINEMA IN TEACHING radiological cinematography. Therefore it was very little used, especially in view of the fact that almost the same results were obtained by means of a much simpler apparatus, which cost very little and could be used by all, namely, the seriograph devised by me. Summing up, it was not po sible, with direct X-ray Cinematography, to make use of the continuous photographic method, and in the various experiments made it was found necessary to adopt the method of intermittent photography. The continuous direct cinematography of an organ in movement necessitates extremely rapid turning of a film with poses of about the thousandth part of a second, that is to say, with a fabulous intensity of X-ray, which no radiological apparatus can emit, especially for the duration of several seconds, apart from the danger which the patient would inevitably run. Too many difficulties were encountered in the attempts made to take the necessary 16 radiograms by means of non-continuous or intermittent photography. It is true that one of the obstacles was removed by the use of the double emulsion film placed between two reinforcement screens, the sensitivenes thus reached being very high ; but it was not completely removed, because the reinforcement screen, when exposed to the X-rays, still retains for some little time a residual light which limits its use even for very short poses which succeed one another at short intervals. This difficulty of direct X-ray Cinematography was recently overcome by R. J?nker of Bonn, who described an apparatus of his (in 1931) in which a strip of film, turning rapidly, passes between two strips of reinforcement screen, which also run with same speed and the same stops as the film, but in the opposite direction. So that the new film is continually being placed between fresh and rested sections of the reinforcement screen, sections, that is to say, in which the fluorescent light is already extinguished. Janker used his method with excellent results, but, so far as I understand, only on animals. The danger of lesions to man is still too serious, which means that even his apparatus cannot be applied to the X Ray Cinematographic study of human physiology and pathology. Slow Seriography. If the various experiments in cinematography of early times are considered in the light of facts, we see at once that even in the most nearly perfect of them the number of radiograms per second obtained was always too small for a correct projection. They reproduced, in fact, only the principal phases of a movement. This being the stage reached, I asked myself, in 1912, whether, by still further reducing the number of radiograms, that is to say, reducing them to 4 or to 8 at the most, in one or two seconds, we could not collect in series and usefully the movement of certain organs the activity of which is not too great or is slow, the stomach being of the first order and the articulations of the second ; and thus, with a more limited programme and fewer pretensions, and without the need of costly and complicated apparatus, get a good idea of such movements under both physchological and pathological conditions. I at once put into practice this realistic and eminently practical conception of seriography by means of a very simple slide, with which I experimented for a year in the Radiology Department of the Ospedale Maggiore of Bologna, in the most varied researches and with great success : for instance, on the aesophagus, stomach, duodenum, bladder, flexion and extension of the knee, etc. At the suggestion of the late lamented Professor A. Codivilla, Director of the Rizzoli Orthopaedic Institute, I presented the results of my experiments to the meeting of the Medical Society of Bologna which was held on January 2, 1913. The method was as follows : in the radioscopic apparatus for standing patients (orthoscopy) the fluorescent screen was replaced by a lead plate one or two m/m in thickness, which had a rectangular opening in the middle 12 by 15 cm. The plate was fixed, at the desired height, on the wooden side of the orthoscope. The fluorescent screen