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An original film series

Biomeds Through the Ages

Three and a half centuries of medical engineering, one story at a time: the people who built the things that keep us alive, each told as an original song and a film made for it. Watch them in order, try how each invention works, and test yourself on which came first.

Explore the timelineWhich came first?

Watch them in order

13 original films, each made for its own song, from 1676 to 2007. Press play and they run back to back, oldest first.

Film 1 of 13 · 1676 · Delft, Dutch Republic

Little Animals in the Rain

The single-lens microscope

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Little Animals in the Rain
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All 13 play back to back in date order: each film rolls straight into the next.

The timeline, 1676 to 2007

Every film so far and the ten coming next, in date order. Open a Learn panel to see how each invention works, and try it with your own hands.

  • Out now
  • Coming next
  • A long gap in time
  1. 1676

    Out now · film 1 of 13

    Delft, Dutch Republic

    Little Animals in the Rain

    Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723)

    The single-lens microscope · Microbiology

    Learn · try itHow the single-lens microscope works

    The problem

    Nobody had ever seen a living thing too small for the eye. A drop of rain looked like nothing at all.

    The idea

    A cloth merchant ground a tiny bead of glass, set it in a little brass plate and held it close to his eye. One lens, no tube, but it made a raindrop's world look hundreds of times bigger.

    Try it · Magnify a raindrop

    Drag the slider to magnify a drop of rain water, the way Leeuwenhoek's single lens did, and watch for what lives in it.

    1 mm

    A raindrop, about as your eye sees it: clear water and nothing inside.

    Today

    Microscopes are how a hospital lab finds the germ behind an infection and picks the medicine that will beat it.

    Did you know?

    His letter of 9 October 1676 to the Royal Society in London described 'little animals' swimming in rain water: the first written account of bacteria. Robert Hooke, the Society's Curator of Experiments, saw them for himself in November 1677.

  2. 109 years later

    1775–1785

    Out now · film 2 of 13

    Shropshire and Birmingham, England

    The Foxglove Recipe

    William Withering (1741–1799)

    Digitalis from the foxglove · Cardiology

    Learn · try itHow digitalis from the foxglove works

    The problem

    Dropsy, the swelling that comes when a weak heart cannot keep the blood moving, had no medicine that reliably helped.

    The idea

    A family remedy of twenty or more herbs worked when doctors' medicines failed. Withering worked out that the foxglove leaf was the active part, dried and powdered it, and found by careful trial how small a dose helps without poisoning.

    Today

    Digoxin, a medicine from the foxglove family, is still prescribed to help some failing or irregular hearts, always in tiny measured doses.

    Did you know?

    In 1775 Withering was asked about a dropsy remedy long kept secret by an old woman in Shropshire. After about ten years of trials he published An Account of the Foxglove in 1785, reporting every case in which he had used it, good or bad.

  3. 31 years later

    1816

    Coming nextSong written

    Paris, France

    Listen to the Heart

    René Laennec

    The stethoscope

    A shy young doctor rolls a sheet of paper into a tube, puts one end to a patient's chest, and hears a heart more clearly than ever before.

  4. 34 years later

    1850

    Out now · film 3 of 13

    Koenigsberg, Prussia, Germany

    Look Into My Eyes

    Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894)

    The ophthalmoscope · Ophthalmology

    Learn · try itHow the ophthalmoscope works

    The problem

    Doctors had no way to see inside a living human eye to examine the retina.

    The idea

    Helmholtz built a simple hand mirror of tilted glass plates that reflected candlelight into the eye and let the examiner look along the same line of sight into the retina - the first working ophthalmoscope.

    Today

    The ophthalmoscope, refined into modern versions, remains a standard tool in every eye exam worldwide.

    Did you know?

    On 6 December 1850 Hermann von Helmholtz, then a 29-year-old professor of physiology at Koenigsberg, demonstrated his ophthalmoscope to the Berlin Physical Society, and published a full description in 1851. The eye surgeon Albrecht von Graefe became its first routine clinical user and said Helmholtz had ‘opened a new world’ to ophthalmology; in 1858 Graefe presented him with a cup inscribed to ‘the creator of a new science.’

  5. 45 years later

    1895

    Out now · film 4 of 13

    Würzburg, Germany

    I Can See Your Bones

    Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845–1923)

    The X-ray · Radiography

    Learn · try itHow the X-ray works

    The problem

    A doctor could not see a broken bone or a swallowed coin without cutting the skin open to look.

    The idea

    A glass tube fired by a high-voltage spark sends out invisible rays. They pass through skin and flesh like light through fog, but bone and metal block them, so the bones leave a shadow on a glowing screen or a photographic plate.

    Today

    X-rays show the doctor where an arm is broken, and the dentist checks your teeth with one in a second.

    Did you know?

    On the evening of 8 November 1895 a coated paper screen two metres from Röntgen's covered tube began to glow. On 22 December he photographed his wife Anna Bertha's hand, its bones and her ring showing through. He took no patent on the rays, and in 1901 he won the first Nobel Prize in Physics.

  6. 0 years later

    1895–1902

    Coming nextSong recorded

    Mobile, Alabama, USA

    Can You Hear Me, Lyman?

    Miller Reese Hutchison

    The electric hearing aid

    A teenage tinkerer in Alabama builds an electric hearing aid so his deaf school friend Lyman can hear him.

  7. 1 year later

    1896

    Coming nextSong written

    Turin, Italy

    Pump Up the Cuff

    Scipione Riva-Rocci

    The blood-pressure cuff

    A doctor wraps an inflatable cuff round the upper arm, pumps it up with a rubber bulb until the pulse at the wrist goes quiet, and reads the pressure off a column of mercury.

  8. 4 years later

    1900

    Out now · film 5 of 13

    Vienna, Austria, Austria

    Not a Vampire

    Karl Landsteiner (1868–1943)

    The ABO blood groups · Hematology / Transfusion medicine

    Learn · try itHow the ABO blood groups works

    The problem

    Early blood transfusions between people sometimes worked and sometimes killed the patient, and no one knew why.

    The idea

    Landsteiner mixed red blood cells and serum from himself and his laboratory colleagues on glass slides. Some mixtures stayed smooth; others clumped. He sorted the pattern into blood groups A, B and O (AB was identified the following year by colleagues), explaining why some transfusions were compatible and others were not.

    Today

    Blood typing before every transfusion, standard practice worldwide, traces directly back to Landsteiner's 1900 bench experiment.

    Did you know?

    Landsteiner published his findings in 1900-1901 while working in Vienna. In 1907, Reuben Ottenberg in New York was the first to use blood-group matching (crossmatching) before a transfusion in clinical practice, performing 125 successful transfusions with no bad reactions. Landsteiner received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930 for the discovery.

  9. 3 years later

    1903–1905

    Coming nextSong written

    Leiden, the Netherlands

    Put Your Hands in the Salt Water

    Willem Einthoven

    The electrocardiograph (ECG)

    Patients sit with their hands and a foot in buckets of salt water while a thread thinner than a hair dances to their heartbeat, and a telephone wire carries it across town.

  10. 34 years later

    1937

    Out now · film 6 of 13

    Chicago, Illinois, United States

    The Blood Bank

    Bernard Fantus (1874–1940)

    The hospital blood bank · Transfusion medicine

    Learn · try itHow the hospital blood bank works

    The problem

    A patient who needed blood in an emergency had to wait for a matching donor to be found and brought to the hospital on the spot.

    The idea

    Fantus, director of pharmacology and therapeutics at Cook County Hospital, kept donor blood in sealed, cooled glass bottles with sodium citrate added to stop it clotting, ready to use the moment it was needed. He coined the name ‘blood bank’ himself, likening it to a bank where the community made deposits of blood ‘on account’ for anyone who needed a withdrawal.

    Today

    Every hospital blood bank in the world today traces directly back to the one Fantus opened at Cook County Hospital.

    Did you know?

    The Cook County Hospital blood bank opened on 15 March 1937. Fantus described it in a landmark article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that July. In the year after it opened, transfusions at the hospital rose from 649 (in 1936) to 1,354.

  11. 6 years later

    1943–1945

    Out now · film 7 of 13

    Kampen, the Netherlands (occupied)

    Sausage Casings in Kampen

    Dr. Willem J. Kolff (1911–2009)

    The rotating-drum artificial kidney · Hemodialysis

    Learn · try itHow the rotating-drum artificial kidney works

    The problem

    When the kidneys stop working, waste builds up in the blood. In wartime Holland a patient with kidney failure had days to live.

    The idea

    Blood ran through long tubes of sausage casing wound round a wooden drum that turned in a bath. The casing let the small waste particles seep out into the bath and kept the blood cells in, so clean blood came back.

    Try it · Turn the drum

    Press Turn the drum: blood runs through the sausage-casing tube in its bath, the small waste bits slip out through the casing's pores and the blood cells stay in.

    drum+ casingbath▼ close-up: inside the casingcasing, with tiny poresblood →
    Clean blood
    0%

    The blood is full of waste (the yellow dots). Turn the drum to wash it.

    Today

    Dialysis machines clean the blood of people whose kidneys have failed, often three times a week.

    Did you know?

    On 11 September 1945 a 67-year-old woman in a coma woke after eleven hours on the drum. She lived seven more years: the first patient saved by dialysis.

  12. 4 years later

    1947–1961

    Coming nextSong written

    Helena, Montana, USA

    Holter Put the Heart on Tape

    Norman 'Jeff' Holter

    The Holter heart monitor

    A physicist rides an exercise bike with a heavy radio on his back so a heart can be watched while it works, then shrinks the whole thing into a recorder you can wear all day.

  13. 8 years later

    1955–1958

    Out now · film 8 of 13

    Glasgow, Scotland

    The Boilermaker's Echo

    Ian Donald (1910–1987), with engineer Tom Brown

    Medical ultrasound · Obstetric ultrasound

    Learn · try itHow medical ultrasound works

    The problem

    A doctor could feel a swelling in a woman's belly but could not see inside it, so he often had to guess what it was until an operation showed him.

    The idea

    Boilermakers already checked steel for hidden cracks with sound too high to hear: a probe sends it in, and the echoes come back like a shout in a cave. Donald borrowed the idea, and Tom Brown built machines that turned the echoes into a picture.

    Try it · Send a ping

    Tap Send a ping: the probe clicks out sound too high to hear, and each boundary inside bounces an echo back. The later an echo returns, the deeper its dot goes. Ping across to draw the picture.

    skin4 cm8 cm12 cm

    Nothing to see yet: inside the belly stays dark until echoes come back.

    Today

    A probe glides over a mother's belly and the whole family watches the baby move on the screen.

    Did you know?

    On 21 July 1955 Donald took specimens to the Babcock & Wilcox boiler works at Renfrew to test them with an industrial flaw detector. In 1958 he, John MacVicar and Tom Brown published their ultrasound pictures from inside the abdomen in The Lancet.

  14. 3 years later

    1958

    Out now · film 9 of 13

    Palm Springs, California, USA

    Fly, Bird, Fly

    Forrest M. Bird (1921–2015)

    The Bird Mark 7 respirator · Mechanical ventilation

    Learn · try itHow the Bird Mark 7 respirator works

    The problem

    When illness or injury stops someone breathing well enough on their own, every breath needs a push of air from outside.

    The idea

    A pilot who knew how air behaves under pressure built a small green box that pushes air gently into the lungs when a breath is due, then lets it flow back out: positive-pressure breathing.

    Try it · Give a breath

    Press and hold to try a breath: the machine adds a push of air and the lungs fill. Let go and they empty on their own.

    cm water0the machinelungsbreaths: 0

    Press and hold the button (or hold the space bar) to push a breath in.

    Today

    Ventilators breathe for patients in every intensive-care unit and ambulance.

    Did you know?

    Bird joined the Army Air Corps a week after Pearl Harbor and ferried bombers, fighters and transport planes. The Bird Mark 7 came out in 1958 in an opaque green case.

  15. 3 years later

    1961

    Out now · film 10 of 13

    Prague, Czechoslovakia

    Four Little Lenses

    Otto Wichterle (1913–1998), with Linda Wichterlová

    The soft contact lens · Biomaterials

    Learn · try itHow the soft contact lens works

    The problem

    The contact lenses of the day were hard, and many people found them sore and dry after a few hours.

    The idea

    Spin a bowl of water and the water climbs its sides into a smooth curve. Spin a drop of liquid gel in a tiny cup and it sets in that same curve: a soft, clear lens.

    Try it · Spin a lens

    Drag the speed slider: the faster the little mould spins, the more its liquid gel climbs the sides and the deeper the surface curves. Find the speed that makes a thin, even curve, then let it set.

    spinsmould

    Not spinning: the liquid gel sits in a puddle at the bottom of the mould.

    Today

    Most people who wear contact lenses today wear soft ones.

    Did you know?

    At Christmas 1961, at home in Prague, Otto Wichterle and his wife Linda made the first soft lenses on a little machine he built from his son's toy building set.

  16. 1 year later

    1961–1962

    Out now · film 11 of 13

    Friday Harbor, Washington, USA

    The Jellyfish Glow

    Osamu Shimomura (1928–2018)

    Green fluorescent protein (GFP) · Cell biology

    Learn · try itHow green fluorescent protein (GFP) works

    The problem

    Biologists had no way to see a living process happening inside a cell without killing or damaging it.

    The idea

    Shimomura and Frank Johnson hand-collected thousands of jellyfish at Friday Harbor and isolated a protein that glows green on its own. Decades later other scientists learned to attach it to other proteins like a tiny light, making living cells glow wherever that protein is at work.

    Today

    GFP and its relatives are standard lab tools worldwide, used to watch genes switch on, track cancer cells, and see nerve cells fire in a living brain.

    Did you know?

    In the summer of 1961 Osamu Shimomura and Frank Johnson hand-collected about 10,000 jellyfish (Aequorea victoria) at Friday Harbor Laboratories in Washington state and isolated the glowing protein from them. Shimomura shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien for the discovery and development of GFP.

  17. 3 years later

    1965–1966

    Coming nextSong written

    Belfast, Northern Ireland

    Here Comes the Defibrillator

    Frank Pantridge

    The portable defibrillator

    A heart doctor bolts a defibrillator powered by car batteries into an ambulance and takes the hospital to the patient.

  18. 2 years later

    1967–1971

    Coming nextSong recorded

    Hayes, England

    Slices of Light

    Godfrey Hounsfield

    The CT scanner

    An engineer who built gliders as a boy teaches a machine to see inside the body in thin slices, one turn at a time.

  19. 1 year later

    1968

    Coming nextSong written

    Jaipur, India

    The Jaipur Foot Goes Barefoot

    Ram Chandra Sharma and Dr. P. K. Sethi

    The Jaipur Foot

    A craftsman watches a tyre being mended and shapes a rubber foot that lets people walk barefoot, squat and climb again.

  20. 4 years later

    1972

    Coming nextSong recorded

    Tokyo, Japan

    The Noise Was a Heartbeat

    Takuo Aoyagi

    The pulse oximeter

    An engineer tries to cancel the 'noise' in his blood-light readings and realises the noise is the pulse itself.

  21. 5 years later

    1977–1978

    Coming nextSong written

    Melbourne, Australia

    I Want to Fix Ears

    Graeme Clark

    The multichannel cochlear implant

    The son of a deaf pharmacist pushes a blade of grass into a seashell on a beach and sees how to thread a wire into the ear's spiral.

  22. 3 years later

    1974–1980

    Out now · film 12 of 13

    Aberdeen, Scotland

    The Aberdeen Magnet

    John Mallard (1927–2021), with Jim Hutchison and Bill Edelstein

    The clinical whole-body MRI scanner · Magnetic resonance imaging

    Learn · try itHow the clinical whole-body MRI scanner works

    The problem

    X-rays showed bones clearly, but soft organs and tumours inside the body often looked like grey shadows unless doctors operated.

    The idea

    Our bodies are mostly water. A giant four-ring magnet lines up the water's hydrogen nuclei like tiny compass needles, a pulse of radio waves tips them, and as they relax they send back faint radio signals that a computer turns into a clear picture, slice by slice, with no X-rays at all.

    Try it · Listen to the water

    Your body is mostly water. Switch the four-ring magnet on to line up the water's tiny compass needles, then send radio pulses: as they relax back into line, their signals build a slice of the chest.

    Inside the 4-ring magnetmagnet off (random)Slice on the screenscreen waiting for signal

    Magnet off: the water's tiny compass needles inside the body point every which way, so they give no signal.

    Today

    MRI scanners in hospitals around the world image the brain, spine, heart, joints and soft tissues without ionising radiation.

    Did you know?

    On 28 August 1980 at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, the Aberdeen team used their four-coil Mark-One scanner and spin-warp imaging to scan a patient from Fraserburgh, revealing tumours X-rays could not clearly show: the first clinically useful whole-body MRI scan of a hospital patient.

  23. 27 years later

    2007–2011

    Out now · film 13 of 13

    Stanford, for Nepal and India

    Embrace

    A Stanford student team

    A low-cost infant warmer · Neonatal hypothermia

    Learn · try itHow a low-cost infant warmer works

    The problem

    A baby born too early cannot keep itself warm, and far from a hospital incubator the cold can kill.

    The idea

    A tiny sleeping bag with a pouch of special wax: warm the pouch in hot water and, as the wax sets, it gives off heat and holds the baby at body temperature for hours, with no electricity.

    Try it · Keep a baby warm

    Drag through four hours. In an ordinary blanket a small baby cools below 36.5 °C; the warmed wax pouch gives off heat as its wax slowly sets and holds about 37 °C for hours.

    healthy 36.5–37.5 °C33°34°35°36°37°38°01 h2 h3 h4 hwax pouchblankethours after wrapping

    Both start at 37 °C, a healthy temperature.

    An illustration of the idea, not measured data: a newborn's normal temperature is 36.5–37.5 °C, and here the blanket baby drops below it after about 33 minutes.

    See the numbers
    TimeWax pouchBlanket
    0 min37.0 °C37.0 °C
    30 min37.0 °C36.5 °C
    1 h37.0 °C36.1 °C
    1 h 30 min37.0 °C35.8 °C
    2 h37.0 °C35.5 °C
    3 h37.0 °C35.1 °C
    4 h37.0 °C34.8 °C

    Today

    Warmers like it keep newborns warm in places where incubators are scarce.

    Did you know?

    The idea came from a 2007 Stanford class project; a team member went to Nepal to study the need. The first warmers reached a doctor in India in April 2011.

Test yourself

Pairs from across the whole timeline, including the films still to come. Pick the invention that came first; the years show after you choose.

Pair 1 of 8

Which came first?

Tap the one that came earlier.

Coming next

The next ten films, in date order: three songs already recorded and seven written. Tap one to find it on the timeline.

  1. 1816#1Listen to the HeartThe stethoscope · ParisSong written
  2. 1895–1902#2Can You Hear Me, Lyman?The electric hearing aid · MobileSong recorded
  3. 1896#3Pump Up the CuffThe blood-pressure cuff · TurinSong written
  4. 1903–1905#4Put Your Hands in the Salt WaterThe electrocardiograph (ECG) · LeidenSong written
  5. 1947–1961#5Holter Put the Heart on TapeThe Holter heart monitor · HelenaSong written
  6. 1965–1966#6Here Comes the DefibrillatorThe portable defibrillator · BelfastSong written
  7. 1967–1971#7Slices of LightThe CT scanner · HayesSong recorded
  8. 1968#8The Jaipur Foot Goes BarefootThe Jaipur Foot · JaipurSong written
  9. 1972#9The Noise Was a HeartbeatThe pulse oximeter · TokyoSong recorded
  10. 1977–1978#10I Want to Fix EarsThe multichannel cochlear implant · MelbourneSong written