You are looking over the shoulder of Dr. Samuel Fogelson, while he operates on a patient in the Wesley Memorial Hospital in Chicago. As he teaches other doctors by television new surgical techniques that are helping to increase our life span, he symbolizes for all of us the march of medicine."
With these dramatic words, television, serving as the eyes of more than five million watchers from coast-to-coast, moved down over the operating table to show the skilled hands of a surgical team performing the difficult procedure for the removal of a stomach.
With this event, put on in cooperation with the AMA by the pharmaceutical manufacturing firm, Smith, Kline & French Laboratories, television in America reached a maturity undreamed of but a few years ago. Through its all-seeing and uncompromising eye, the television camera moved in on one of the most sacrosanct of assemblies in the entire country, the annual conclave of the American Medical Association. Its piercing eye roved with openness and frankness about the exhibit hall of the convention, showing sometimes unpleasant sights, but always revealing the facts of medical progress.
Under the symbolic title of "The March of Medicine," the two television reports of the world's largest medical meeting were brought to the public with Dr. Roy K. Marshall ("The Man Who Makes Science Easy") serving as a guide. Their subject matter ranged from a sane, unhysterical discussion of the new "TB drugs" to a demonstration of new heart-lung apparatus. Overweight, infantile paralysis, cerebral palsy, new methods of manipulating artificial limbs, new methods of portraying and recording important heart sounds, a new technique of artificial respiration, a new "lung penicillin" called Neo-Penil, a new "way of life" for cripples and heart disease victims--these were the vital subjects surveyed by the television cameras, advances which demonstrated how the medical profession is working to give the nation the best health care in the world.
Of all the mysteries unveiled, it was the surgical operation that aroused the most interest and provoked the greatest controversy. As Dr. Fogelson and his operating team calmly carried out their delicate surgical mission on the ulcer patient, they probably knew that the event would raise a great debate. It did. Even officials of the AMA questioned the propriety of the public telecast of surgery, and the British Medical Journal opined that "relays direct from the operating theater should be banned as unsuitable entertainment." American television critics either praised or questioned the surgical telecast, and predicted the displeasure of the medical profession.
But the medical profession and the general public took the event in their stride. No public outcry came forth from Mr. and Mrs. America, and the instigators of the event reveal that a searching survey found the medical profession overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the March of Medicine telecasts.
But though the ulcer operation stole the "March of Medicine" spotlight, the program brought other medical news to the American public.
Every day during the week-long convention, actual demonstrations of new 345