Thursday, March 17, 2016

Mysterious 1933 Autopsy Film: Michael Sappol from the National Library of Medicine Collection


Michael Sappol--historian at the National Library of Medicineauthor of A Traffic of Dead Bodies, and curator of Dream Anatomy--just shared news of a mysterious film in his Library's collection. This 1933 film contains, in the Library's own words, "an autopsy, perhaps the first ever performed before a motion picture camera. On screen, a bespectacled man in a white coat happily cuts open an unidentified dead man, chatting all the while with students and colleagues..."

You can watch the film (probably NSFW) above. The full description of the film follows; you can also read a post about it on the Circulating Now blog.
Herr Professor Doktor Jakob Erdheim Search the transcript
1933 / 5:16
Film fragment, no producer, no director, Vienna, Austria
Silent, black-and-white.

Sometime in the last century a fragment of silent film landed at the National Library of Medicine. How it got there is a mystery: no paperwork survives to tell the tale; no other prints of the film appear to have survived; no other sources on its making or showing have turned up. The film itself gives no direct information on its origins or purpose. It has no real title or credits, only a single intertitle that tersely announces the featured player, setting, and time: “Herr Professor Doktor Jakob Erdheim. Prosektor. Krankenhaus Der Stadt Wien. September 1933.”

What comes after that is extraordinary, a minor landmark of medical cinema: an autopsy, perhaps the first ever performed before a motion picture camera. On screen, a bespectacled man in a white coat happily cuts open an unidentified dead man, chatting all the while with students and colleagues...

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