You know the image…when a mad scientist’s lab is opened and a human being is upright in a tube filled with liquid, with a mask over their face providing oxygen and their exhaled bubbles come out. Or sometimes it’s a captured monster.
It’s an iconic image. Where does it come from? Is there a reason in a non-mad scientist situation a normal person could find themselves in a situation like that? I’m not afraid of water but it’d be terrifying to have people watch me underwater breathing from a mask for some reason.
So medical reasons, or scientific reasons, what could they be?
Generally, it doesn’t make sense. But I can think of a few ways that this trope might have got cemented in.
Stem cells / embryology. If you are growing tissue or a complete organism, there may be a need to keep the organism in some sort of nourishing and supporting fluid.
Preserving dead bodies. So, in films, one way you could make a lab look sciencey is by having big jars with dead organisms in them. Then, you just need a couple of films where the hero is startled to see the thing in the jar is still alive before the idea of keeping something alive in a jar/tank of liquid becomes established.
Specific films. In some films there are reasonable, specific reasons for keeping an organism in a tank (bizarrely, Splash was the first movie that came to mind). You only need a couple of films to show something before no-one thinks why any more.
There’s also an image of Rico suspended in a tank of liquid in the movie Starship Troopers. He’s having his leg wound sewn up at the time, but it’s otherwise not clear why his whole body had to be submerged.
I suspect it’s all Rule of Cool – it looks cool and futuristic, even if it dosn’t necessarily mean anything.
There are certain emergency treatments that require immersion in water to regulate body temperature. You can use an ice bath as an emergency measure to treat heat stroke. You’re also supposed to immerse frostbitten body parts in warm water (NOT hot water).
But these are things you do with a bathtub. I know of no (real life) procedure that requires the patient to be completely immersed, head-to-toe, floating in a tank of glowing liquid.
Gotta be real careful warming up people after they’re hypothermic. Immersion in hot water is generally frowned on, as it will dilate all the peripheral vasculature (which had been constricted due to cold) and may cause a severe (even fatal) hypotension as a result.
The only reasons I’ve ordered patients into tanks full of water is for a thorough scrubbing/cleaning, or for a deep sitz bath due to severe perineal issues.
I will note personally that when one has a few fractured ribs, floating in a tank of water does ease the pain of basic activities like movement and breathing.
The cinema cliché is just that, it’s purely for aesthetics. It’s a way to show a character/prisoner in full body profile (often scantily clad) and seemingly immobilized. What possible medical reason would there ever be for needing to see the person’s body in an enormous, expensive, fluid-filled, vertical glass tank?
My first thought was that it replicates the environment inside the womb, which is filled with water, and this is where the idea originated from. One advantage that I can think of is that it makes it easier to maintain body temperature.
An early example of this (sort of) is in the pilot episode of the original Hawaii Five-O (1969). The long time villain, Chinese spy Wo Fat, would capture US agents/spies and suspend them in a big swimming pool in a suit which wouldn’t allow any movement and cause complete sensory derivation, just a breathing hose. After a day or so they’d take them out and it would have driven them so insane that they’d answer any questions. Creepy idea anyway…
“Cocoon” - That’s basically the only episode of H50 I remember, other than the one where they had to incinerate the surfer who had become contaminated with some military superbug.
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned Wolverine in this context. He was shown in the goo tank several times in the movies. I assume it would have something to do with retarding his super-heal so they could finish his modifications…
Not to me… that sounds like heaven, actually. I love water, and I love being confined, and I really like sleeping for truly obscene amounts of time with no interruptions. I would have the best nap EVER.
I’ve often thought that if I ever had vast sums of money to waste, a giant tank of lovely hot water to be soaked in would be a perfect thing to waste it on.
My vote for the trope tho is that it gives a great opportunity to combine “freaky medical science” with “hot nekkid actor person.”
There’s also the horizontal tank, seen in Avatar. One of my assumptions about the “reason” for it is to support the body over the long term so it wouldn’t develop bed sores or need to be rotated from time to time (in Avatar, the bodies were test tube babies being grown throughout a multi-year interstellar crossing).
Apparently somebody tried putting subjects in water for a week to simulate the effects of zero gravity on the body. They’re just floating them in a giant bathtub, rather than a vertical tank of liquid.
Interesting excerpts:
“thermoneutral immersion swiftly causes a significant decrease in muscle tone and muscle tension”, “prompt centralization of fluid and an increase in total blood volume”, “prompt redistribution of body fluids towards the thoracocephalic region”
In other words, floating someone in warm water makes their muscles weak and the blood gathers in the core.
It also says…
“Many studies have been published on “wet” immersion; however, they have mostly focused on short-term exposure (up to 6–9 h).”
So, there’s not a lot of research out there on floating in a bacta tank.
The above study indicates that over time, a person will suffer muscle loss and weakness. Basically, the same problems that astronauts have when they are weightless. The study recommends that nobody attempt immersion for more than seven days, to avoid these problems.
Most medical conditions related to immersion are caused by hypothermia. You can get “trench foot,” which is foot rot caused by walking around in cold puddles. Not quite what you mean, though. I’ve also read accounts by people who have been adrift at sea for days or weeks, like shipwreck survivors. They report abrasions from the rubber and salt, and sunburn, but nothing related to immersion in the water itself.