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DATE: 1945

LENGTH: 15 min.

CATEGORY: 
Educational & Instructional, Sound, Black & White

DIRECTOR: Uncredited

PRODUCER/PUBLISHER: Army Pictorial Service Signal Corps

Summary

Publicizes the discovery during World War II of DDT, the first effective industrially-produced insecticide. The film profiles the U.S. military’s use of the chemical against disease-carrying lice, mosquitoes, and flies. DDT was regarded as a revolutionary discovery that would not only help the allies win the war against “the fascists,” but also a larger “war against disease.”


Supplementary Materials

Stills from DDT: Weapon Against Disease


Other Films Featured in the Essay

Explore thirteen films considered in the “Public Health Films Go to War” essay.


In the Collections of the National Library of Medicine

Prints & Photographs Collection

These posters, produced by or for the U.S. military in conjunction with campaigns that also employed films, come from the Prints and Photographs collection of the National Library. Explore these and more from the NLM’s Images in the History of Medicine.

Posted by:Carrissa Lindmark

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