Here’s a head mirror scene that’s almost right. The doctor is wearing the mirror over one eye, instead of in the middle, but the hole in the center of the mirror should be over his eye, not his forehead.

He also appears to be an ENT (Ears, Nose, Throat) doctor as vocal cords fall under their specialty, and ENTs are the doctors who use head mirrors the most.

Of course, while he appears to be looking in her mouth, there’s no way he’d be able to see her vocal cords like that. The cords are found in the neck-portion of the throat and you need special equipment (like the laryngeal mirror, below left) to be able to see them.

Still, a good try.

From Action Comics #159, where the plot centers on the fact that Superman has to do whatever Lois tells him to do — but then she gets laryngitis, so she can’t tell him anything.

Then, we’ll squeeze a few days of vacation before heading back home.

Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Comics #72

This cover represents the perfect intersection of two common comic book medical clichés: the head mirror and the x-ray cover gag. (And if I start to see a bunch of comics with doctors who don’t wear pants, then this comic cover has a third cliché covered as well.)

Black Lightning (Jeff Pierce) comes home and finds his friend Peter shot and dying on his front steps. When he cannot detect a pulse, Jeff gives him a large shock.

For once, I’m not going to lecture about “don’t shock a flatline” because that’s precisely the problem — we don’t know what the heart rhythm is. Jeff checked the pulse, but Peter’s lost an awful lot of blood (check the comic for yourself to see, I can’t reprint every panel) — there’s probably not enough left to give any sort of pulse, even if the heart were beating normally. Jeff may be shocking a heart beating normally, or one in ventricular fibrillation, or a flatline — the point is he doesn’t know, and so it’s not a good idea to blindly shock.

Peter’s problems are his massive blood loss and his gunshot wounds. Any heart issues are secondary to these. It’s fine to treat the heart, but it’s not going to do any good if the hemorrhage isn’t dealt with quickly — or if one of the bullets wounded the heart.

Other Thoughts:
1. Now in real life, a situation like this isn’t going to happen: if you have access to a modern defibrillator or an AED, you have access to a basic heart monitor because they are built into the machine. Sure, the monitor’s not usually fancy, but it’s enough get the job done.

2. The reason two paddles are used in defibrillation is to make an electrical circuit with the heart in the middle. Is that what’s happening here? Is current flowing from one of Jeff’s hands into the other? (His hand position’s a little off too, unless he meant to defibrillate the sternum.)

3. Admittedly, Black Lightning’s reaction here is more emotional than medical, and I can’t really fault him for that — but I can use him as a teaching point.

4. Kudos to Jeff for remembering to open up Peter’s shirt before shocking him.

5. If it were me in this scenario? While the electrical powers may look cool, they don’t really change the treatment: I’d keep the airway open, stop the bleeding as much as possible, and provide CPR until properly equipped help arrived.

6. As cliché would have it, despite being found down and pulseless, Peter is able to revive enough to whisper his last words to Jeff.

Peter seems a little unclear on the differences between a democracy and a republic, and he manages to work checks and balances into his confusion, too. At least his heart’s in the right place — rather than some other pigs I know.

This PSA can be found in various DC comics from August of 1951. It was written by Jack Schiff, with art — I believe — by Otto Feuer.

More PSAs

Tags: comics psa peter porkchops democracy jack schiff otto feuer

Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies #21 (Dell, 1943)

And what would Independence Day be without a clip from the musical 1776? Here’s one of the songs, “But, Mr. Adams,” concerning who gets to has to write the Declaration of Independence.

This cover, however, takes to a new ridiculous extreme. Exactly how many tubes and wires does John Lynch need?

cover from Team 7 #2, art by Aron Wiesenfeld

There are days when a gorilla practicing medicine makes as much sense as anything else.