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DATE: 1925 LENGTH: 13 min CATEGORY: Educational & Instructional, Animation, Silent, Black & White |
DIRECTOR: Jacob Sarnoff PRODUCER/PUBLISHER: Bray Productions |
Summary
The Blood Vessels and Their Functions is one reel of a six-reel series, The Human Body in Pictures. Brooklyn surgeon Jacob Sarnoff (1886–1961) produced this movie atlas of the human body between 1920 and 1924. Sold alongside a textbook and slides, the series was designed as an educational tool for physicians-in-training. For The Blood Vessels and Their Functions, he attempted a cinematic first: to dramatize the workings of the heart, he removed the veins from a day-old infant, mounted them on a board, and devised an air-pumping system—which he termed “Pneumo-Viscera”—to push air through the circulatory system….Read the Essay