Tag: movies
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Movie review: Miss Evers’ Boys
P. Ravi Shankar Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Segregated water fountains. Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. U.S. Army photo. The Tuskegee Syphilis study was a dark chapter in United States history. In 1932, the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) began to study the natural history of progression of syphilis. The study was originally called the “Tuskegee…
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Jaws and galeophobia
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Ignorance is the parent of fear.”– Herman Melville, Moby Dick The 1975 thriller film, Jaws, takes place in a New England summer resort town. People flock to the beach, and two swimmers are killed by sharks. A marine biologist brought in to help find the killer thinks the swimmers were killed by…
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Movie review: Bisturi: La Mafia Bianca
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Surgeons operating aboard the USS Harry S. Truman. US Navy photo via Wikimedia. Public domain. “Medicine is power. It makes us giants.” – Dr. Daniele Valotti in Bisturi: La Mafia Bianca Bisturi: La Mafia Bianca (1973) is an understated, well-acted, and critical “doctor movie.” Unlike The Hospital, it is…
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Movie review: Where Does it Hurt?
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Peter Sellers in 1971. RR Auction. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. “This film is dedicated to the honest, sincere MDs—whose lives are dedicated to the sacred Hippocratic oath. Will these three doctors please stand up?” This dedication sets the tone of Where Does It Hurt? (1972). Unlike the 1971 film…
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Understanding so little: Cinema and mass shootings
Eelco WijdicksRochester, Minnesota, United States The horrific 2012 shooting in Aurora, Colorado, during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, was serendipitously preceded by a trailer for Gangster Squad, which showed a fictitious shooting of a movie theater audience. Filmmakers have revisited the topic of mass shootings and their aftermath in portrayals not only of…
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Medicine and cinema—A cultural symbiosis
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom For doctors and lovers of cinema, 1895 was an important year. On November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen, a fifty-year-old professor of physics, discovered X-rays in his laboratory in Wurzburg, Germany. On March 22 1895, the Lumiere brothers presented the first film on a screen to an audience of 200 in…
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Screenwriting: psychiatry in reverse
Stephen Potts Edinburgh, United Kingdom Introduction Good Will Hunting publicity poster The subject matter of medicine is inherently dramatic. Decisions taken by professionals who are highly skilled, but still human and therefore flawed, are applied to suffering patients in situations of pressure and can have radically diverse outcomes: life or death; disability or cure:…