Ode to muscle relaxants

Lucy Smee, Assistant Curator in the Moving Image and Sound Department at the Wellcome Library, has been cataloguing moving images for the Wellcome Film project since June 2008. As part of her work, Lucy has seen every single title digitised so far, cataloguing and segmenting them for online delivery. A year on, and over 200 titles later, there are a few that she has found particular interesting, unique - or just plain weird:

'Neuromuscular block, 1956, is one of my favourites. Its delivery is amazing; possibly the only film in existence in which a clay model man in a dress suit and beard cheerfully delivers a rhyming poem about muscle relaxants.'

The film explains the theory and clinical practice of muscle relaxants using actual experiments and stop-frame animated cartoon characters. You can read more about Neuromuscular block on the Library's online catalogue or (for HE/FE subscribers) on Film and Sound Online.