An Underappreciated Problem with Auscultation

When it comes to the depiction of the medical world on the motion picture screen or on television, you can count me out. The errors and inconsistencies that pop up there are more than this observer can tolerate. A story set in the 1930s or 1940s meticulously observes the clothing, furniture, and even automobile models of the period. Then, when a senior physician appears, he is not wearing a long white laboratory coat appropriate to his position but, rather, a short white jacket, more properly worn by medical students and junior houseofficers. We are shown a scene in an examining room or operating suite, and there on the x-ray view box is the chest film of the patient—inserted backwards. (And no, Virginia, the story is not about an outbreak of situs inversus.)