Sound – Medicine on Screen

A black man in a baseball cap talks with a white man in a suit behind a desk in a wood paneled office.

September 18, 2023September 28, 2023

Psychiatric Interview Films in the Age of Reform: Notes on the Depressive Neurosis Series Filmed by the University of Mississippi Medical Center in 1969

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By Linnéa J. Hussein, PhD

When one thinks of audio-visual recordings of psychiatric patients in the United States in the 1960s, the distressing images of Frederick Wiseman’s observational documentary Titicut Follies (1967) may come to mind. The Depressive Neurosis series from 1969 bears no resemblance to these films. Instead, the series offers a rare glimpse into the day-to-day world of late 1960s psychiatric practice, in which people with addiction, mental illness, or mental disabilities seek help and are received with an open mind and treated with dignity by the doctors they speak to and the camera crew that films them.

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A scanned frame of film, with sprocket holes, shows a soldier in a helmet looking at an American flag.

March 27, 2023September 18, 2023

The Public Health Film Goes to War

By Michael Sappol, PhD

Public health and war have long been close companions. In the first terrible round of “modern wars”—the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War and World War I—military officials and civilian leaders called on health professionals and volunteers to help mobilize and protect military forces and civilian populations. Health experts in turn viewed these conflicts as a sort of laboratory to test and implement their theories, and an opportunity to use fresh knowledge and nascent technologies. They boarded the bandwagon to advance their professional, scientific, political, and ideological goals—and film was a medium with which to do so.

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February 1, 2021February 2, 2023

Air Pollution Is a Human Problem: Mary Catterall’s Campaign for Clean Air in Leeds, England

By Angela Saward, BA, MTA, Wellcome Collection

Dr. Mary Catterall (1922-2015), doctor and sculptor, script and medical adviser to the film, It Takes Your Breath Away, became concerned with lung health when she was appointed Senior Registrar in Respiratory Medicine at Leeds General Infirmary, England in 1960. The film won a Silver Medal at the British Medical Association annual film competition in 1964.

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Brown smoke comes out of tall pipes from an industrial area behind a brick building in a grassy landscape.

September 8, 2020February 3, 2023

Darkening Day: Air Pollution Films and Environmental Awareness, 1960–1972

By Jennifer Lynn Peterson, PhD

The 1960s represent a turning point in popular awareness about environmental problems. The modern environmental movement that emerged in the mid-1960s and early ‘70s focused on a new set of concerns such as air pollution, water pollution, and pesticides. More federal environmental bills were signed in the 1960s and early 1970s than at any other period in U.S. history.

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A close up of a woman's face in a surgical mask.

March 31, 2020February 3, 2023

Screening the Nurse: Film, Fear, and Narrative from the 1940s to the 1970s

By David Cantor, PhD

In the early twentieth century, American nursing leaders came to see the motion picture as a quintessentially modern instrument of education, training, and recruitment. In their view, movies were a powerful tool to transform public opinion, to instruct new recruits in the mysteries of nursing practice, and to keep the qualified nurse abreast of new developments in the field.

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A film still of a framed poster that says "Know for Sure-get a blood test for syphilis."

November 20, 2019March 29, 2023

VD at the Movies: Public Health Service World War II Venereal Disease Films

By John Parascandola, PhD

The United States Public Health Service (PHS) released several education films in the 1930s and 1940s as part of a broader campaign against venereal-disease (VD). The agency had been operating a VD program since World War I, when concern over the number of Army recruits infected led Congress to enact a law that created a Venereal Disease Division in the PHS.

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January 23, 2019February 6, 2023

Informative Beauty

By Oliver Gaycken, PhD

The archival record is mostly silent on the origins of this short film produced and narrated by Frank Armitage, a medical illustrator who also worked as a Disney animator and mural artist, and whose work demonstrates the rare beauty of medical art. By tracing Armitage’s career, we can contextualize and elucidate Anatomical Animation.

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December 22, 2017February 6, 2023

The Falls of 1972: John B Calhoun and Urban Pessimism

By Jon Adams and Edmund Ramsden, PhD

“Fall, 1972. Scenes Include Last Survivors.” This is the text on the opening slate. What have we missed? For now, it’s enough to know we’ve arrived late in the game. This is not the event, but its aftermath. This is post-apocalypse.

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August 21, 2017June 2, 2023

Edgar Ulmer, The NTA, and the Power of Sermonic Medicine

By Devin Orgeron, PhD

From the late 1930s through the early 1940s, low-budget filmmaker and perennial Hollywood underdog Edgar G. Ulmer (1904-1972) directed what appear to be eight educational health shorts for the National Tuberculosis Association (NTA).

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March 10, 2017June 2, 2023

For Rebels, it’s a Kick…

By Erika Dyck, PhD

It’s the late 1960s. Teenagers, a hip voice clues us in, are always looking for kicks, and today’s teens express themselves with cool fashions, groovy hairstyles, and kooky pranks.

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Journey into Self (1968)

This is a filming of the first session of an intensive basic encounter group led by Dr. Carl Rogers, widely known for developing a client-centered approach to psychotherapy and as a founder of humanistic psychology, and Dr. Richard Farson, a founder of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute. The session features eight previously-unacquainted persons from different regions of the United States, participating in a loosely structured, conversational “encounter,” a form of group therapy.