Cinema, MD

Cinema, MD follows the intersection of medicine and film and how filmmakers wrote a history of medicine over time. The narrative follows several main story lines: How did the portrayal of physicians, nurses, and medical institutions change over the years? What interested filmmakers, and which topics had priority? What does film's obsession with experiments and monstrosities reveal about medical ethics and malpractice? How could the public's perception of the medical profession change when watching these films on diseases and treatments, including palliative care and medical ethics? Are screenwriters, actors, and film directors channeling a popular view of medicine? Cinema, MD analyzes not only changing practices, changing morals, and changing expectations but also medical stereotypes, medical activism, and violations of patients' integrity and autonomy. Examining over 400 films with medical themes over a century of cinema, this book establishes the cultural, medical, and historical importance of the art form. Film allows us to see our humanity, our frailty, and our dependence when illness strikes. Cinema, MD provides uniquely new and fascinating insight into both film criticism and the history of medicine and has a resonance to the medical world we live in today.

Eelco Wijdicks is Professor of Neurology at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester Minnesota, and Associate Professor of the History of Medicine. He has written on film in Neurology, JAMA Neurology, Neurology Today, The Lancet Neurology and Mayo Clinic Proceedings. His book Neurocinema: When Film Meets Neurology was published in 2015.

- PREFACE
- CHAPTER 1: THE PHYSICIAN IN PRACTICE: SUPREMECY, MD
- Acting the Part
- The Early Celluloid Doctor
- The Specialist in Film
- Cinematic Identities
- It Is All About Surgeons, Isn't It?
- Portraying Compassion
- CHAPTER 2: THE NURSING PROFESSION: STEREOTYPE, RN
- Pioneers
- Innovative Caregivers
- Cut from a Different Cloth
- The Nurse (and often the Doctor)
- Chauvinistic Tropes
- And Then There Was Nurse Ratched
- CHAPTER 3: HOSPITAL AND ASYLUM: CROWDED AND INSANE LIVING
- The Hospital Room
- Bricks and Mortar
- Not all Hospitals are the Same
- The Asylum
- Haunting places
- Abysmal places
- CHAPTER 4: EPIDEMICS: KILLERS AND CRIPPLERS
- Infections through History
- Tragic Misfortunes
- Killer Outbreaks and Other Fantasies
- The 20th Century Epidemics
- Poliomyelitis on Screen
- AIDS on Screen
- CHAPTER 5: DISEASED AND DISABLED: A LANDSCAPE OF SUFFERING
- Diseases in Cinema
- How Much Time Do I Have, Doctor?
- Senses Lost
- Unable To See
- Unable To Hear
- Unable To Feel
- Unable To Taste
- Aging and Frailty
- An Erasing Mind
- CHAPTER 6: MENTAL ILLNESS: CRAZED, HISSY FITS AND A COUCH
- Weimar Kino and Dr Caligari
- When Freud and Psychoanalysis Came Along
- Cinematic Psychopathology
- Labelling Personalities
- Wired Differently
- Maniacal and Murderous
- War and Wounded without Wounds
- A Crazy Side Effect
- Socially Awkward
- Wired Differently
- CHAPTER 7: ADDICTED: THE LAST LEGAL DRUGS
- Live By Example
- To the Brim
- Smooth Smoking
- From Den to Hospital to Street
- CHAPTER 8: TRANSPLANTATION: A SECOND CHANCE
- Stumbling and Rejecting
- Transplantation Horror
- Transplantation Foibles
- Who Receives? Who Matches?
- Metal to Flesh
- Transplantation with Love
- CHAPTER 9: DEATH AND DYING: GOOD, BAD AND ASSISTED
- The Good Death
- The Bad Death
- The Assisted Death
- Posthumous
- The Morgue
- Left Behind in Grief
- CHAPTER 10: MEDICAL VIOLATIONS:A LINE CROSSED
- Cinema of Nazi Physicians
- Forced Sterilization
- The Tuskegee Study
- Vivisection
- Lobotomy
- Psychological Experiments
- CHAPTER 11: GROTESQUES: UNWANTED AND ABANDONED
- Exhibit the Revolting
- Misshapen
- An Odd Face
- The Elephant Man
- The Neurology of Frankenstein's Creature
- CHAPTER 12: ACTIVISM AND MEDICINE: ANGERED AND AGGRAVATED
- Woeful Healthcare
- First Do No Harm?- an American Story
- First Do No Harm? -a British Story
- AIDS Activism
- Big Pharma
- The Abortion Debate
- The Vaccination Debate
- CHAPTER 13: EPILOGUE: MEDICINE IN CINEMA THROUGH THE AGES
- Themes and Tropes
- Defining Decades
- That's Not All, Folks
- Closing Credits
- FILMOGRAPHY
- GLOSSARY OF MEDICAL TERMS