Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"SF looks towards an imaginary future, while fantasy, by and large, looks towards an imaginary past."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Telemedicine Apparatus | ||
| First reference to a device that allows physicians to examine or aid patients at a distance. |
Vashti lives in an age in which people live alone in a single room - the Machine serves all their needs. Direct experience is a thing of the past - when she faces it, she panics.
| Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into the room, and the wall closed up again.
"Kuno," she said, "I cannot come to see you. I am not well." Immediately an enormous apparatus fell on to her out of the ceiling, a thermometer was automatically laid upon her heart. She lay powerless. Cool pads soothed her forehead. Kuno had telegraphed to her doctor. So the human passions still blundered up and down in the Machine. Vashti drank the medicine that the doctor projected into her mouth, and the machinery retired into the ceiling. |
| From The Machine Stops,
by E.M. Forster. Published by Oxford and Cambridge Review in 1909 Additional resources -
|
This is a very early use of the idea of using some sort of machine to allow physicians to examine patients at a distance. The earliest efforts in telemedicine date from around 1905; telecardiology via telephone was demostrated by Willem Einthoven. Telestethoscopy using the telephone was tried in the 1920's.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Machine Stops
More Ideas
and Technology by E.M. Forster
Tech news articles related to The Machine Stops
Tech news articles related to works by E.M. Forster
Telemedicine Apparatus-related
news articles:
- Remote-Controlled Robotic Hand Performs Breast Exams
- Telemedicine Platform For Consultation Works
- Google Flu Trends - Dr. Google Beats CDC
- Your Telemedicine Future
- E-Health Point Telemedicine In Rural India
- GiraffPlus Robot Helps Elderly At Home
- The 'Internet Of Touch' For Telemedicine
| Skin Electronics Can Show Electrocardiogram |
| Neurodevices For Consumers? Neuroethicists (And Philip K Dick) Say 'Caveat Emptor' |
| BrainEx Restores Some Activity To Severed Pig Head |
| Purdue Pharma Ready To Profit From OxyContin Use Or Addiction Recovery |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
'...a seal of compressed plastifoam to save the air.'
'My hearing, vision and awareness went along with that excellent imitation of a young Adonis...'
'In the gloomy half-darkness the three idiots sat babbling.'
'...a sound tape to supply the noise of a soi-disant "[internal combustion]" engine...'
'You said you wanted him to be able to distinguish between laugh-power in different gags...'
'It drew its power from six square yards of sunpower screens on its low curved roof.'
