By Sarah Eilers The road to abundant life is not hard to follow and it is not expensive. So we are told in the opening frames of the 1937 silent film The Road to Health and Happiness, produced by Salem, Oregon dentist and filmmaker David Bennett Hill. Mental as well as physical habits are key. […]
Tag Archives: film
December
14
The Cry for Help, 1962
posted by Circulating Now
By Sarah Eilers Fifty years ago, renowned American documentary filmmaker George C. Stoney made a series of short training films tackling a tough topic: how police respond to people who are mentally ill, suicidal, or alcoholic, how to do so more effectively, and why the officers should care. One film in that series, The Cry […]
November
17
Scrub Away the Thanksgiving Troublemakers
posted by Circulating Now
By Sarah Eilers Pine-cone crafts, cranberry sauce, and…poultry handling. As Thanksgiving and other winter holidays approach, many of us find ourselves thinking about these things. More than 60 years ago, and not just for the holidays, the Communicable Disease Center (now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) was thinking about food safety, too. In […]
October
06
Fresh Air and the White Plague
posted by Circulating Now
Circulating Now welcomes guest blogger Cynthia Connolly. Dr. Connolly is Associate Professor of Nursing at the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. She is a pediatric nurse and historian. She studies the history of children’s health and social welfare policy and practice in the […]
September
20
Man to Man, 1954
posted by Circulating Now
By Sarah Owen and Sarah Eilers “Sanctuary, refuge, hospital….The doors are locked, but it’s not a prison that we enter….This is his job, his living. This ward is his work world.” The film Man to Man (1954) takes the viewer inside the day-to-day job of ward aide Joe Fuller, who supervises and tries to connect […]
July
06
Leprosy in India, ca. 1931
posted by Circulating Now
Circulating Now welcomes guest blogger Magnus Vollset. Dr. Vollset is a researcher at the University of Bergen, Norway, and holds a PhD in medical history from the same institution. Leprosy in India [Lepra in India in the original German] is a hard film to watch. In the course of its 12 minutes, it puts before […]
May
24
Vulnerability to Covert Attack, 1959
posted by Circulating Now
By Sarah Eilers Vulnerability to Covert Attack. The film title seems as relevant today as it must have when it was made, in the Cold War days of 1959. In the 1950s and ’60s, the United States government produced, or supported the production of, scores of films concerning the threat of atomic, biological, and chemical […]
