Medical Motion Pictures

The Department of Audio-Visual Medical Education was known by several very similar names during its existence: the Office of Visual Medical Education, the Department of Visual Medical Education, Visual Education, and the Department of Audio-Visual Education. We will refer to it as the Department of Audio-Visual Medical Education (DAVME).

DAVME was established as the result of a meeting at Passavant Memorial Hospital on August 8, 1941. Irving S. Cutter, MD, the Dean of the medical school, convened a group of physicians, medical students, and photographers to discuss creating a unit dedicated to providing visual education resources for the medical school, in three primary media: photography, illustration, and film. Dean Cutter—who was set to retire at the end of the month—tapped Andrew C. Ivy, PhD, MD, J. Roscoe Miller, MD (Cutter’s successor as dean), John S. Schweppe, MD, and Donald C. Balfour, Jr., MD as committee members to establish the office. John Schweppe endowed the office in memory of his parents, Charles Schweppe and Laura Shedd Schweppe.

Harry B. Harding, MD served as the first director of DAVME, and he initially focused on developing the motion picture arm of the department before other formats. Harding conducted site visits at the Mayo Clinic Photographic department and the University of Minnesota Bureau of Visual Instruction to inform the design of Northwestern’s program, and he attended an American Medical Association conference on medical motion pictures that featured leaders in the field of medical cinematography.

DAVME officially opened on May 27, 1942, though it had been showing films since February. The department managed an internal film screening service, wherein instructors would arrange to have a DAVME projectionist screen a film for their class or department. While the onsite film collection was modest at just 36 films in June 1943, patrons could rent films from holding institutions across the country through the department and it likewise loaned its films to others.

DAVME served as a producer of medical motion pictures created by Northwestern faculty members. The department financed film production and facilitated the process of working with freelance cinematographers and animators. DAVME often contracted Chicago cinematographer Mervin LaRue to produce its medical motion pictures. LaRue had early on established himself as a specialist in medical and scientific film, and in 1954 was honored by his peers for his “development and adaptation of motion-picture techniques to research, to visual instruction and to science (La Rue, Jr., Mervin W. “Mervin W. La Rue, Sr. Honored as SMPTE Pioneer in 1954 and by BPA in 1956.” Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. 1957 April, 66: 224.).”

In addition to screening and producing films, the DAVME staff maintained all the film equipment, coordinated the film schedule, and kept its film catalog up-to-date. Julie Anne Morgan, who became director in 1943 after Harding retired from the position, supervised the creation of a card catalogue of 1,524 medical motion pictures held at institutions across the US. The catalog was indexed by subject and holding institution, and entries included standard descriptive data, plus brief reviews of the quality and effectiveness of the film.

At some point in the mid- to late 1940s, DAVME expanded its scope beyond film, becoming 3 sections: Motion Pictures, Still Photography, and Medical Art. The department staffed these sections with a photographer and an artist—both full time and salaried—who were supported by part-time assistants. They worked for faculty on a fee-based schedule. Thus, these sections paid for themselves most of the time, while the Schweppe endowment funded the Motion Picture section.

It is unknown when Julie Anne Morgan stepped down; records indicate it was before 1945, and the department operated without a director for some time. Alexander A. Day, MD, a professor of bacteriology, took over the directorship, most likely in 1946, and when he retired from Northwestern in 1949, William B. Wartman, MD, the chair of the Department of Pathology, became the last DAVME director.

By the September of 1950, DAVME had depleted the Schweppe fund. The department had been screening films for free since its inception, but began to charge $5 per screening to cover external film rental fees, secretarial services, projectionist pay, and equipment repair and purchase. This fee did not, in fact, cover the expenses of the film section, and on January 1, 1951, a librarian from the Archibald Church Library took over the work when the film section staff member was laid off.

It seems that DAVME dissolved in 1954 or 1955, though the fact that faculty members were still publishing films after that date shows that the work of the department had not ceased altogether. Medical motion pictures were no longer novel, and since DAVME had run out of funds and could not cover any production costs, faculty may have started to produce films directly with cinematographers.