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"I was wholly addicted to watching Kojack, for as long as it was on television."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Phymech | ||
| A robotic physician. |
| Far more intricate than a mere robot-mechanical, yet far simpler
than a human brain, it was capable-after proper conditioning-of the most delicate of operations. Further, the "phymech", as it was tagged soon after, was capable of infallible diagnosis, involving anything organic.
The House of Congress appointed a committee of fact-finders, from the firm of Data, Unlimited... They found phymechs could be operated in all the socialized hospitals of the Continent, for far less than was being spent on Doctor's salaries. A phymech absorbed one half pint of Iiquified radiol every three years, and an occasional oiling, to insure proper functioning.
So the government passed a law.
The Hippocratic Law of of 2088,
which said, in essence: Johns Hopkins was the first to be de-franchised.
 (Phymechs from 'Wanted in Surgery' by Harlan Ellison) A few specialist schools were maintained for a time, but it became increasingly apparent after the first three years of phymech operation, that even the specialists were slow compared to the robot doctors. |
| Technovelgy from Wanted in Surgery,
by Harlan Ellison. Published by IF Worlds of Science Fiction in 1957 Additional resources -
|
Additional details:
but no, it had to be a
brain job, with the phymechs' thirty
telescoping, snakelike appendages
extruded, and snicking into the
patient...
One of the telescoping, snakelike
tentacles of one phymech had a
wafer-thin circular saw on it, and
as Thomas watched, the saw sliced
down, and they could hear the buzz
of steel meeting skull...
...the snicker and gleam of the instruments being
whipped from their cubicles in the
phymech's storage-bin chest.
Compare to the emergency treatment tank from Agent of Vega (1949) by James Schmitz, the shipboard medical treatment from Contagion (1950) by Katherine MacLean, the
Gobathian from Time is the Simplest Thing (1961) by Clifford Simak, the surgical homeostatic unit from Now Wait For Last Year (1966) by Philip K. Dick, the diagnostat from The Man in the Maze (1969) by Robert Silverberg, electronic body analyzer from The Andromeda Strain (1969) by Michael Crichton, the crechepod from The Godmakers (1972) by Frank Herbert and the autosurgeon from Altered Carbon (2003) by Richard Morgan.
There
were no operating lamps in the
ceiling, as in old-style hospitals, for
the phymechs each had their own powerful "internal" light mounted
atop their heads, that served more
accurately than any outside light
could have...
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Wanted in Surgery
More Ideas
and Technology by Harlan Ellison
Tech news articles related to Wanted in Surgery
Tech news articles related to works by Harlan Ellison
Phymech-related
news articles:
- Robot Surgeons No Better Than Humans
| Artificial Skin For Robots Is Coming Right Along |
| Robot Guard Dog On Duty |
| Wearable Artificial Fabric Muscles |
| Dancing Robots Taught Dance Moves |
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
