Soviet Medical Films

Abstract

ACCORDING to the Soviet Union Year Book Press service, moving pictures are being used in the U.S.S.R. for the treatment of nervous and mental diseases. Prof. Sukharebsky, of the Yakovenko Psychiatric Hospital in Moscow, has obtained remarkable success by showing epileptic patients films depicting calm lakes, picturesque landscapes, etc. He has also obtained good results by the use of a film in which he hypnotizes alcoholic addicts. A plan for a series of 102 short medical films has recently been approved by the Film Committee appointed by the Commissar of Health. The series includes brain operations and diseases of the spinal cord and brain. Other films are designed to assist surgeons to carry out rapid field operations in time of war. A film entitled “A Sick and a Healthy Heart” will be made under the direction of the heart specialist Prof. Zelenin, and another will deal with the development of the child between the ages of one month and two years. The last of the series will be a film entitled “Twenty Years of Soviet Medicine”.