By Mark S. Micale
Schizophrenia was a new diagnosis in interwar American medicine. Invented in 1911 by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler (1857–1939), the term gradually supplanted “dementia praecox,” which after World War I was associated too closely with German psychiatry.
By Zoe Beloff
A tiny, black-robed woman scurries down a deserted street and ducks into an alley overgrown with ivy.
By David Cantor, PhD
The release of Man Alive! in 1952 signaled a change in American anti-cancer campaigns. Since their emergence in the early twentieth century, such campaigns had focused most attention on recruiting women into programs of early detection and treatment.
By Mikita Brottman
Made shortly after the end of World War 2, this curious little nightmare movie addresses black soldiers. It depicts them as overgrown, impulsive, hypersexualized children who are not able to contain their primordial desires.
By Kathy High and Michael Sappol, PhD
It’s 1950 and a fine upstanding teenager named Rodney is stricken with the deadly tuberculosis bacterium (Mycobacterium tuberculosis).
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By David Cantor, PhD
The Reward of Courage sought to transform public ideas about cancer by encouraging people to seek help from a recognized physician at the first sign of the disease or its possibility: early detection and treatment being the ASCC’s main approach to cancer control.
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By Michael Sappol, PhD
Filariasis, a parasitic disease typically found in tropical areas, is caused by microscopic thread-like nematodes (roundworms; also known as filariae).
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By Michael Sappol, PhD
As America entered World War II, the prestige of science and technology was very high. From early on, the conflict was seen as a total war and a modern war, requiring modern methods in every respect.
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By Paul Theerman, PhD
Reconnaissance for Yellow Fever in the Nuba Mountains, Southern Sudan, 1954 is one of the several dozen films that Dr. Telford H. Work created during his distinguished career in arbovirus (“arthropod-borne virus”) field research.
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