Fourth-Dimensional Surgery
There’s something charming about seeing “futuristic” 30th century medicine as imagined by writers in the 1960s. Here’s a good example from Adventure Comics #303: 4th Dimensional Surgery.
The doctor takes the “healing capsule” and, using special equipment (which pretty much looks like a pair of needle nose pliers wired up to a 9-volt battery), becomes immaterial by entering the 4th Dimension. Once the capsule is immaterial, it is inserted into the body near the injury and within just a few days, the patient is entirely healed.
The doctor in me wonders:
Doesn’t having such a large foreign body cause an immune reaction? Or cause any pain of its own?
Is the capsule taken out or does it stay there forever (or does it break down over time?)
How do you know the capsules in the right place and not bisecting an important nerve or artery?
Lightning Lad and Sun Boy both have pretty mild injuries — probably just sprains. Wouldn’t a few days’ rest work just as well?
What if you accidentally implant a fourth dimensional Junior Mint?
On the other hand, the writers did show some medical prescience. While modern medicine has yet to master the fourth dimension, there are times surgeons implant our own versions of “healing capsules.” Antibiotic infused beads can be surgically implanted to treat deep tissue or bone infections, such as diabetic foot infections. Radioactive beads can be implanted to assist in the treatment of certain cancers. I’m still hoping for a pair of those fancy needle-nose pliers.
(Anybody remember the Made-for-TV movie White Dwarf on Fox about 12 years ago? It was a fascinating and surreal sci-fi/medical movie, and it’s a shame nothing ever came of it. It featured a similar trick: special gloves that made the surgeon’s hands immaterial so he could reach inside the patient. Of course, it still shares a big problem with the 4th dimensional pliers — you can’t see what you’re doing and where you’re going. Ask any surgeon — operating blind is never a good idea).
March 3rd, 2008 at 6:52 am
The latest episode of Torchwood has a similar tool as a major plot point, but calibration is very important. In the Torchwood episode it was only used for removal of embedded objects.
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:39 am
I think the best point is the one about bisecting part of the body with the capsule.
The 4th dimensional pliers also don’t have much application other than capsule-insertion. If you use it to remove an object,unless that object were inserted carefully, the forceps wouldn’t heal the damage caused by the object.
White Dwarf was a neat idea. Sort of like Dr. Franklin’s MedLab from B5 mixed with ER. I can see why it would work, but also why it was destined for failure. Maybe Sci-Fi needs to bring it back…
March 3rd, 2008 at 8:50 am
“What if you accidentally implant a fourth dimensional Junior Mint?”
LMAO on that Seinfeld reference.
Seinfeld - Junior Mint
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqnf7sLkmqs
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Wow.. I haven’t thought about White Dwarf in a very long time. That movie was pretty darn neat.
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Isn’t TIME the generally accepted “fourth dimension”? Perhaps the concept behind fourth dimensional surgery/foreign object insertion is that the procedure is just done at “some point in the past” (using boring third-dimensional terms of thought), then the object is removed after “some point in time” pre-calculated to be of highest benefit to the patient, but before the immune reactions, etc. can happen?
This could prove quite a boon to those surgeons you read about who enjoy dropping wristwatches, keys, and golf balls into their patients, just to see what would happen.
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I don’t get it: what happens to the tissue occupying the space that the “healing pill” phases back into?
Why can they still see the end of the pliers and the pill even though they need to be completely out of our particular 3rd dimensional plane in order to pass through anything?
How is implanting a pill a form of surgery? They didn’t cut anything. Is it surgery when I insert an oreo into my mouth?
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:56 pm
just to clarify, I was thinking of the TV show ‘Mercy Point’. I don’t think I’ve ever seen ‘White Dwarf’.
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:21 pm
How can we be having this conversation without remembering the most important thing?!? THERE’S A TINY MAN WITH A RADIO INSIDE THE CAPSULE!
http://the-isb.blogspot.com/2006/02/crank-file-part-2.html
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Oh, and was just thinking about those gloves from White Dwarf the other day. The SFX for putting on those gloves was simply rolling film backwards, and yet I was rapt with attention every time they did it. It looked so awesome as the glove ‘attacked’ the fingers
March 4th, 2008 at 1:26 am
“Ask any surgeon — operating blind is never a good idea.”
Somone should tell Dr. Mid-nite that…
March 4th, 2008 at 7:03 am
Ben: You’ve opened up a can of worms with that. Now we have to wonder how the tiny man eats and breathes (and evacuates waste) while inside Sun Boy’s ankle bone (!?)
March 4th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Bad said: “I don’t get it: what happens to the tissue occupying the space that the “healing pill” phases back into?”
Ah, but the doctor never actually says that the capsule phases back in. I propose that it remains in fourth-dimensional space, somehow connected to Sun Boy’s ankle. From there, its unspecified curative rays can filter back into the three-dimensional world at a predetermined rate and arrive at the site of the injury.
Mind you, if the capsule is invisible, intangible and away in the Fourth Dimension, they only have the doctor’s word for it that he’s done anything at all.
March 6th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Never mind any of that. If it’s the 30th century, why is the doctor still wearing glasses?
March 16th, 2008 at 1:47 am
SurgeXperiences 117…
Let’s begin with a little fun. There’s plenty of serious stuff for later.
Scott who writes the blog, Polite Dissent, Comics, Medicine, Politics & Fun, recently had a post on “Fourth-Dimensional Surgery”. In his words, “There’s something …
June 6th, 2008 at 5:27 am
HIs glasses obviously gives him fourth dimensional vision. Duh.
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