This 1961 black and white film was presented as a tongue-in-cheek satire by the Department of Pharmacology for a meeting of the British Pharmacological Society. A new research assistant walks to Examination Hall in Queen’s Square, London. He walks through the laboratory to the secretary’s office, who speedily types on her Corona. She asks him to wait in the professor’s office and hands him “A Career in Pharmacology” book. The Arthur Saunders & Co wall clock with roman numerals shows 10:30 and then noon (:06-2:20). The young man sleeps sitting in the chair. The hands pass 2:30, the entire clock spins, and it’s 9:00. In his dream, a series of people come through the door: a footballer, cleaning woman, police constable with a criminal, a clergy, guitar player, businessman swinging an umbrella, a woman in a graduation robe, a waiter holding a beverage tray, an artist, butcher, violinist, and a vendor riding a bicycle (2:21-4:00). Last is a woman, who enters her office, greets the waiting doctor, and gets her stenographer tablet. She offers the ailing doctor “Prelewdin” pills, which cause him to flirt with her (4:01-4:42). A doctor reads “The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics”. He straps the blood pressure cuff around a patient’s arm, which rises up every time he squeezes the ball. He uses the large book to hold it down (4:43-5:42). A single researcher’s project is completely taken over as multiple staff join (5:43-6:45). A researcher has the results repainted by an artist (7:35-8:17). A “self-inserting suppository” is visualized using a rocket launch (8:18-8:39). A kitchen tray has an enamelware pot. A researcher catches a paper on fire and lights an experiment. Atomic bomb footage is shown (8:40-9:32). A researcher grows bored reading a pharmacology book and replaces it with a tabloid of a bombshell with a pharmacologist. He shows it to a researcher whose head is attached to a machine pulling on it. A doctor uses a magnifying glass to examine research details (9:33-11:21). A researcher watches an experiment counting heartbeats, which speeds up when a pretty girl comes in (11:22-11:51). A stuffed dog is given anesthesia and chained to the table. He makes a cut and pulls out a string of “Y” letters and says “Much wiser.” (11:52-12:33). A little girl (future pharmacologist) performs her own experiment (12:35-13:14). A supervisor destroys an experiment and forces the researcher to begin again. The supervisor chants “inject” over and over as the researcher does an injection (13:15-14:01). An anesthetist casually kills a pharmacologist. An article says there aren’t enough of them (14:02-14:27). “Picture yourself” shows the same man working in a hospital, in industry, in a government lab, and in a university lab, with very different working environments (14:28-15:06). A PhD degree is presented to a student, who then takes bribes from other students taking exams (15:08-16:29). A photograph of British Pharmacological Society members spins and the new researcher wakes up. The doctor finally arrives and comments on the “A Career in Pharmacology” book (16:30-17:36).

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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com