Table of Contents

More than Illustrations: Early Twentieth-Century Health Films as Contributors to the Histories of Medicine - Martin Pernick Celebrity Diseases - Nancy Tomes Syphilis at the Cinema: Medicine and Morals in VD Films of the U.S. Public Health Service in World War II - John Parascandola Medicine, Popular Culture, and the Power of Narrative: The HIV/AIDS Storyline on General Hospital - Paula Treichler Mandy (1952): On Voice and Listening in the (Deaf): Maternal Melodrama - Lisa Cartwright Projecting Breast Cancer: Self-Examination Films and the Making of a New Cultural Practice - Leslie Reagan American Medicine and the Politics of Filmmaking: Sister Kenny (RKO, 1946) - Naomi Rogers Passing or Passive: Postwar Hollywood Images of Black Physicians - Vanessa Northington Gamble From Expert in Action to Existential Angst: A Half Century of Television Doctors - Rachel Gans-Boriskin and Joseph Turrow Hollywood and Human Experimentation: Representing Medical Research in Popular Film - Susan Lederer Technicolor Technoscience: Rescripting the Future - Valerie Hartouni

About the Author

John Parascandola received his PhD in the history of science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and later served as the chief of the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine and as the Public Health Service historian. The author of The Development of American Pharmacology (1992) and Sex, Sin, and Science: A History of Syphilis in America (2008), he is currently a historical consultant and teaches courses in the history of modern biology and of poisons at the University of Maryland. He lives in Rockville, Maryland.

Reviews

This collection will be indispensable to scholars. -- Jennifer Tebbe-Grossman * FILM & HISTORY *
While these essays are focused as stand-alone pieces that individually make a significant contribution to our understanding of representational work in selected media forms, they also point to the need for a more comprehensive view of what still remains essentially uncharted territory in the available histories. -- Julie K. Brown * TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE *
[A] collection of engaging, original essays . . . [T]hey correct a common but misleading dismissal of medicine's cinematic and televisual depictions as frivolous and inconsequential in comparison with the serious and socially important practice of medicine. -- Kirsten Ostherr * AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW *
Medicine's Moving Pictures is a welcome contribution in exploring how visual culture has shaped and responded to the changing practice, politics, and promotion of medicine in America. . . [This book] offers a glimpse into the rich and creative scholarship that awaits American historians who venture into the relatively untapped collections of health-related films and television shows produced over a century of America's changing visual and medical culture. -- Gregg A. Mitman * THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY *
Of particular interest is the well-documented corporate and political give-and-take regarding how a sensitive medical subject will be treated. -- R.D. Arcari * CHOICE *
A consistently illuminating and engaging exploration of medicine's representation in film and television. In the language of Variety, it combines art and box office: a substantive and accessible contribution to cultural and media studies as well as to the history of medicine. -- Charles Rosenberg, Professor of the History of Science and Ernest E. Monrad Professor in the Social Sciences, Harvard University
Film and television representation of health and medicine is neglected, both as an area of historical study and as a research resource. This collection, ranging as it does from wartime public heath films about syphilis to post-war TV doctors, is therefore to be welcomed. Its interdisciplinary approach helps us begin to decode important areas of twentieth-century American cultural history. --Virginia Berridge, Professor of History, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine * . *