Assignment Questions

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1) Return to the surgery photographs earlier in this section. If surgical procedures, surgical personnel, and the surgical setting look much the same in all three of these photographs, can we conclude that the expectations for and the experience of surgery was much the same in all these places? Do you think this was the case for everyone—the patients, the professionals, and the families—involved? What else do you need to know to decide, and what other sources might give you the information you need to draw that conclusion?

2) Reexamine the illustration "Diseases on the Way Out" (1939) and the graph of "Mortality from the Major Communicable Diseases, 1900-1960" (1963), and briefly describe the representational strategies used by the creators of these images. What were the intended audiences for these images? What messages are the creators of these images trying to convey? How do you think the creators of these two images expected their audiences to use this information?

3) The article about John R. Brinkley, "The Great Rejuvenator," was published in a mass-circulation magazine the late 1940s as part of a recurring series, and one of its authors was JAMA editor and medical spokeman Morris Fishbein. Judging from the description of Brinkley’s practice here, what did Brinkley offer the men and women who consulted him? What might this article about Brinkley tell you about medicine as practiced by the regular physicians who belonged to the AMA and its constituent societies? How was Brinkley’s practice similar to and different from what his opponents offered?