Eugène-Louis Doyen (1859-1916), one of the most famous surgeons of the turn of the century, was amongst the first to use cinema for research and teaching modern surgical techiniques. Doyen worked with three cameramen who, between 1897 and 1906, shot around sixty of his operations. He presented these films at various international medical conferences such as the one held in Lisbon in 1906. Upon his return to Paris, Doyen broke off his collaboration with Clément Maurice after finding out that he had given some films to French street traders, seriously damaging his international reputation. He decided to interrupt the production of new films and gave a French company exclusive distribution rights to his collection. Between 1906 and 1911 Doyen prepared three thematic anthologies of his films, which he gave to the Société Générale des Cinématographes Éclipse for distribution, upon condition that they be shown solely for didactic or scientific purposes. After Doyen’s death in 1916, nearly all his collection was lost. By the beginning of the nineties only five of the nearly sixty medical films that he produced had been found. In 2002 the Cinemateca Portuguesa identified, amongst its collection, two of the three thematic anthologies that Doyen prepared for Éclipse. The two anthologies seem complete and have all the original French and Spanish intertitles, in all likelihood written under Doyen’s direction. The discovery of these films is a veritable event not only as far as the history of scientific cinema is concerned, but also for the history of medicine and the evolution of surgical techniques. The following Portuguese doctors financed the restoration of these films: António Gutierres Setúbal, Eduardo Roberto, Fátima Fausino, Francisco Salvado and José Bismarck.

Tiago Baptista – Cinemateca Portuguesa