Gallery
Three
HIstorical Portfolio by Peter Palmquist
Mary
Eleanor Browning
New York
SHE
PHOTOGRAPHED HER OWN OPERATION
Written
by Kenneth Wright and published in Popular Photography in June 1951,
this essay may well be among the strangest photographic accounts of
all time! Mary Eleanor Browning made photo-medical history as she produced
a 108 picture series of her own hysterectomy while the surgery was underway.
The essay has been slightly abridged. [P.E. P.]
When free-lance
photographer Mary Eleanor Browning learned that she had to undergo major
surgery she did not bemoan her fate but decided to make an adventure
of adversity by attempting something no photographer had done before-a
picture story of her own operation, the removal of a dangerous tumor.
Could a
woman photograph her own operation without blacking out? Some of the
doctors and most of the nurses at the Kew Gardens General Hospital in
New York where Miss Browning made photographic and medical history did
not think it could be done. The assistant surgeon took a dim view of
the whole idea and predicted that her proposed project wouldn't get
beyond a couple of trembling exposures. But if he thought he knew the
female of the species he certainly didn't reckon with the indomitable
genus photographer. You just don't know the meaning of "determination"
until you've gotten in the way of a photographer on assignment.
Mary Eleanor
Browning was a photographer on assignment-a lens[woman] hell bent on
making a picture story of her own operation from the first incision
to final suture. She had three good reasons for her fantastic plan,
two of her own, and one fortuitously provided by the operating surgeon
who apparently didn't share his assistant's skepticism. He was co-operative
from the outset.
"He told
me," she said, "that if I succeeded it would be a tremendous moral builder
for nervous surgery patients. Naturally if I could remain calm enough
to use my cameras I would prove that a major operation is not a fearful
ordeal."
That certainly
added moral support to her other two reasons: Number one was the plan
to sell the resultant pictures to a magazine. Her other reason was to
prove that she was not a nervous type.
Come hell
or high water nobody could stop Browning. She planned the job, although
warned of the serious state of the tumor, as thoroughly as she would
any important magazine assignment. In order to watch and photograph
the operation from a prone position she purchased a round, framed mirror
22 inches in diameter which was wired to one of the big overhead floodlights
used in surgery rooms for illumination. The mirror added weight to the
boom-supported lamp, which had to be counter-balanced with two small
sandbags slung over the boom. With this mirror in place she could command
a full view of the operation.
Such was
the co-operation she received that she was allowed to bring into the
hospital the following lighting equipment: One Bardwell McAllister 750-watt
spot, one 16-inch reflector with No. 4 floodlamp which she intended
to use for indirect overhead illumination, and a 12-inch reflector with
No. 1 flood for use as a fill-in light. She set these lights up carefully
two days before the operation when she went in to take her test shots,
and explained to the hospital photographer how they were to be placed
during the operation. The were to serve the dual purpose of providing
illumination for the operation-replacing the big light which was now
blocked off by the mirror-and correct lighting for the photographic
job.
Needing
an assistant, she called her friend Florence Harriss, in charge of the
photographic files of the Association of American Railroads, in Washington,
D.C. Mrs. Harriss, cool of nerve and a photographer in her own right,
had photographed-without flinching-an earlier minor operation on Miss
Browning...
On the
morning of the day of the operation, Miss Browning busied herself going
over the photographic details of the job, thus keeping her mind off
the impending surgery. She had asked the anesthetist not to give her
a sedative so she could be as alert as possible. He promised he would
give her "something special" that would calm her but also keep her awake,
and the surgeon promised to "keep things lively" if she got too drowsy...
At 1:45
p.m. the nurse announced "the pie-wagon is here for you, honey," as
she give her a shot of the "special formula" which turned out to be
morphine. At 1:50 p.m. Miss Browning was wheeled into the operating
room where she got her first (photographic) jolt. Only the 750-watt
spot was set up. Through her morphine fog she griped about this but
nobody paid any attention. She realized that she would have to make
the best of it and use only the single spot.
They rolled
her over, gave her a spinal. That was a real shock; she recalls an intensely
sharp pain, but it shook off to some extent the first effects of the
morphine injection. "Then they roller me on my back and as my foot went
to sleep, started giving me the blood transfusion," she says. It is
interesting to note that the transfusion was given through the foot
rather than the arm (the usual procedure) in order to leave her arms
free to handle the cameras.
"Florence
then handed me the exposure meter and I directed the setting of the
mirror in place and took a light reading. With the original set-up I
would have shot1/50 second at f/8 using Kodak Super-XX film and I was
extremely disappointed in having to halve the speed to 1/25. To have
opened the diaphragm to f/5.6 would have reduced the depth of field
to an impractical extent," she recalled.
Florence
handed me the Rolleiflex and I set it and handed it back. We did the
same with the Leica.
"The surgeon,
who was now ready, waited until I finished. 'Ready?' he said. 'O.K.,
go ahead,' I said, taking up ;my Rollei which was focused through the
overhead mirror. I watched and intensely and thought 'if I can get through
the first shock I'll be all right.' I pretended that I was looking at
a television screen."
Few ordinary
people would have much success with such pretense, but Miss Browning
said that she had no trouble watching herself objectively. "Quickly,
the surgeon's scalpel made a deft thrust and I watched the long red
line open ten inches. I was momentarily surprised that I hadn't passed
out. I raised the camera and took the first picture.
"I was
impressed with the surgeon's speed and wondered whether I could stop
his hands in motion. I thought 'people won't blame me if I can't do
it' and instantly thought 'well, if I can't do it I shouldn't have started
this in the first place.' I rechecked my focus and went on calmly shooting.
Before the operation, I had anticipated that the sight of blood would
be the big shock and I was surprised that it wasn't revolting to me.
I was fascinated by the wonderful speed and teamwork of the surgeon's
hands.
"They worked
with incredible speed as the assistant picked up the blood vessels,
tied them with thread and clamped the hemostats. For a long time no
one spoke. I did not notice the flashes of the other photographers (the
hospital had supplied one). I kept on fighting that morphine. I kept
shooting with the Rollei and had taken twenty-four pictures when I started
to hiccup and gasp for breath. I thought I was getting sick and felt
as though I was floating away. The anesthetist grabbed an oxygen hose
and clasped it to my nose as my blood pressure took a terrific tumble.
The assistant surgeon said 'she's through,' but I didn't know what he
meant. The voices sounded far away and seemed to take a long time to
reach me, but after four or five breaths I said, 'no, I'm all right
now.'
"Except
for those few moments when I thought I was really going under, I kept
on taking pictures and asking questions about what the surgeon was doing
as I watched his skilled hands in the mirror. I told jokes to keep awake,
for the drowsiness was getting worse and the cameras were getting heavier
and heavier. Even the little Leica felt like a big studio camera.
"Finally,
the surgeon finished and began stitching the incision. I returned to
the Rollei and got all the details of the stitching and bandaging operations.
When they wheeled me out of the operating room it was 3:25 p.m. For
an hour and a half I had been shooting steadily and had exposed three
rolls in the Rolleiflex and two in the Leica-a total of 108 shots. Florence
had taken 72, the hospital photographer 14.
[Then]....Miss
Browning was returned to her room and given another shot of morphine.
That night she was delirious from shock and pain and was told there
wasn't anything that would help kill the pain because she had been so
keyed up over taking the pictures.
Three days
later she was up and walking around. A week later she made pictures
of the surgeon removing the stitches.
Thus Mary
Eleanor Browning made photographic and medical history by completing
a picture story of her own hysterectomy, proving that major operations
aren't as bad as most people think or that she has the strongest nerves
in the world.
Reference
Library
|
