Jonathan M Metzl’s research while affiliated with University of Michigan and other places

This essay sheds light on present-day pharmaceutical advertisements by looking back to an important early chapter in pharmaceutical company–sponsored promotion: the Great Moments in Medicine and Great Moments in Pharmacy series of commercial paintings produced by Parke, Davis and Company between 1948 and 1964. Beginning in the early 1950s, Parke-Davis delivered reproductions of the Great Moments series to physicians and pharmacies throughout the United States and Canada and funded monthly pull-out facsimiles in key national magazines. The images also appeared in calendars, popular magazines, and "educational" brochures. By the mid-1960s, articles in both the popular and the medical press lauded the Great Moments images for "changing the face of the American doctor's office," while describing the painter, Robert Thom, as the "Norman Rockwell" of medicine. Our analysis uses source material including popular articles about the Great Moments series, existing scholarship, previously unexamined artist's notes, and, ultimately, the images themselves, to explain why these seemingly kitschy depictions attained such widespread acclaim. We show how Great Moments tapped into a 1950s medical climate when doctors were considered powerfully independent practitioners, pharmaceutical companies begged doctors' good graces, and HMOs and health plans were nowhere to be seen. The article concludes by suggesting that the images offer important lessons for thinking about the historically embedded beliefs painted into the many pharmaceutical advertisements that confront present-day doctors, patients, and other consumers.

The authors shed light on present-day pharmaceutical advertisements by looking back to an important early chapter in pharmaceutical company-sponsored promotion: the Great Moments in Medicine and Great Moments in Pharmacy, a series of commercial paintings produced by Parke, Davis & Company between 1948 and 1964. Beginning in the early 1950s, Parke-Davis delivered reproductions of the Great Moments images to physicians and pharmacies throughout the United States and Canada and funded monthly pullout facsimiles in key national magazines. The images also appeared in calendars, popular magazines, and "educational" brochures. By the mid-1960s, articles in both the popular and the medical press lauded the Great Moments for "changing the face of the American doctor's office" while describing the painter, Robert Thom, as the "Norman Rockwell" of medicine. The authors' brief analysis uses source material including popular articles about the Great Moments, existing scholarship, previously unexamined artist's notes, and, ultimately, the images themselves to explain why these seemingly kitschy paintings attained such widespread acclaim. They show how the Great Moments tapped into a 1950s medical climate when doctors were thought of as powerfully independent practitioners, pharmaceutical companies begged the doctor's good graces, and HMOs and health plans were nowhere to be seen. The authors conclude by suggesting that the images offer important lessons for thinking about the many pharmaceutical advertisements that confront present-day doctors, patients, and other consumers.

This article traces the history of the term "voyeurism" from its psychoanalytic origins in the 1950s to contemporary uses in popular culture and post-Freudian, biological psychiatry. It begins with an overview of the psychoanalytic foundations of the term, paying particular attention to the ways Freudian theory helped shape clinical definitions of voyeurism in American psychiatry in the mid-twentieth century. Subsequently, it follows popular and psychiatric concepts of voyeurism through the 1970s and 1980s, leading to current TV programmes and internet sites, and definitions of voyeurism in present-day academic psychiatry. Reading against the assumption, common in social science literature, that there are distinct forms of 'pathological' and 'normal' voyeurism, I argue that medical and popular notions of voyeurism developed in relation to one another in ways that help explain their configuration in the present day. Such overlap is evident in many contemporary uses of 'voyeurism' in popular culture, as well as in the (relatively few) psychiatric research articles still concerned with 'voyeurism' as a mental illness. I conclude by arguing for a rethinking of the boundaries of voyeurism, and a rethinking of voyeurism itself, based on consideration of the ways voyeurism is a relational concept forged between medical and popular sensibilities.

This study examines how Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants have played a contributing role in expanding categories of women's "mental illness" in relation to categories of "normal" behavior. We hypothesized that between 1985 and 2000, as Premenopausal Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), postpartum depression, and perimenopausal depression were increasingly treated with SSRIs, popular categories of depressive illness expanded to encompass what were previously considered normative women's life events such as motherhood, menstruation, or child birth. We quantified and qualified this expansion through an in-depth analysis of popular representations of depressive illness during the time period when SSRIs were introduced. Using established coding methods, we analyzed popular articles about depression from a mix of American magazines and newspapers spanning the years 1985-2000. Through this approach, we uncovered a widening set of gender-specific criteria outside of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual criteria for dysthymic or depressive disorders that have, over time, been conceived as indicative of treatment with SSRIs. Our results suggest that SSRI discourse may have helped shift popular categories of "normal/acceptable" and "pathological/treatable" womanhood, in much the same way that the popularity of Ritalin has shifted these categories for childhood.

For instance, Prozac's role in Friends For Life suggests how psychotropic medications can convey socially determined gender expectations. In the novel, Meredith's request for a "birthday cake with Prozac icing" is closely tied to worries that her age will make it more difficult to marry the man of her dreams, while Prozac carries the promise of a drug that will make her more beautiful. Meanwhile in "Superman My Son," medications function as potent brand-name commodities, able to shape symptoms, actions, and ultimately subjectivities in addition to treating them. Jones's protagonist Walter's appearance is controlled by the mood-stabilizing drug Eskalith , his potency by Prozac, and his behavior by Tegretol and Xanax . Walter eventually credits his behavior to the fiction that "the pills have started to work." Similarly in Splitting, medications function as symbols of chemical subjectivity: Edwin's father does not control medication through acts of cognition. Instead, his newfound potency and agency result directly from the Prozac's effects on him.

This paper examines the discourse surrounding the release in 1955 of Miltown, America's first psychotropic wonder drug. According to many histories of psychiatry, Miltown heralded the arrival of a new paradigm in treating psychiatric patients – as a drug that operated on a neurochemical level, it was argued to replace a psychoanalytic approach with its focus on the mother-child relation. Between 1955 and 1960, articles about pharmaceutical miracle cures for mental illnesses filled mass-circulation news magazines and top fashion magazines. Through analysis of these representations, this article shows how the newly discovered pills came to be associated with existing concerns about conditions problematically referred to as ‘maternal conditions,’ ranging from a woman's frigidity, to a bride's uncertainty, to a wife's infidelity. Using these representations, the paper demonstrates how in American popular culture, psychoanalytic notions of motherhood prevalent in the 1950s shaped early understandings and uses of psychotropic drugs.

Peer Reviewed http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44967/1/10912_2004_Article_454182.pdf