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Needles and Bullets: Media Theory, Medicine, and Propaganda, 1910–1940

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Endemic

Abstract

In this chapter, Thibault retraces the emergence and the circulation of the “magic bullet” metaphor in medicine and media theory in interwar USA. He argues that media were not only crucial in shaping cultural understanding of contagious and endemic diseases but that rhetoric about the power of media to educate the public on these diseases was itself constructed as an epidemiological model. Revisiting the history of mass communication research through the lenses of medicine and microbiology, Thibault concludes that a contagion theory in media studies should interrogate “curing” as a counterpart narrative to the panic often associated with viral narratives.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Peters (1999, p. 207).

  2. 2.

    See Canales (2010), and especially Chap.6, for a discussion about the diffusion of cinematography outside the scientific laboratory.

  3. 3.

    See, for instance, Cartwright (1995).

  4. 4.

    Several of the arguments behind social hygiene in the USA found their resonance in the eugenic movement that associated venereal diseases with “racial poisoning.” In this view, educating the public about sexually transmitted diseases helped to maintain the moral integrity of the family and to shield “the race” from the integration of external defects (see some examples of these discourses in Brandt 1985, p. 19).

  5. 5.

    Ibid, (p. 24).

  6. 6.

    Ibid, (2007, p. 31).

  7. 7.

    See Butters (2007, p. 142).

  8. 8.

    For instance, Cartwright (1995), Lederer and Parascandola (1998), Ostherr (2013), Tomes (2002), Reagan, Tomes, and Treichler (2007) and Schaefer (2004).

  9. 9.

    See Cohen (1979, p. 122–3).

  10. 10.

    Both scientists welcomed the “full cooperation” (1922, p. 3) of the American Social Hygiene Association to the research when it came to selecting the films and participants in the study.

  11. 11.

    Social scientists studying the broadcast reenacting an attack from Mars noted how the contagion of fear, evoking Le Bon’s crowd theories, played an important role in the listener’s reaction as they tuned into CBS that night (Cantril et al. 1940, p. 140). Recent scholarship (Heyer 2003) attributed the panic to Welles’ mastery of the theatrical possibilities of radio (his “media sense”) and to the channel surfing of listeners, who were not able to hear the warnings at the beginning of the broadcast. Pooley and Socolow (2013) also show that the (inflated) mass hysteria following the radio broadcast was less about media effects than it was about individual decisions.

  12. 12.

    See, for instance, Jowett, Jarvie, and Fuller (1996) on the Payne Funds studies; see Peters and Simonson (2004) for a recension of early propaganda studies.

  13. 13.

    A homogeneous category that historians have tried to unpack lately, see Park and Pooley (2008).

  14. 14.

    For instance, DeFleur and Larsen (1958, p. 23).

  15. 15.

    Pietilä (1994) surveyed some of the scholars who evoked the twin theories as myths; please refer to his article for a literature review on this topic. A noteworthy recent contribution debunking the myth is Lubken (2008).

  16. 16.

    See Lenoir (1997) for a discussion on Ehrlich’s microbiological research in Frankfurt and the commingling of scientific inquiry and industry in Germany.

  17. 17.

    Parascandola (1981, p. 22).

  18. 18.

    Brandt (1985, p. 41).

  19. 19.

    The film was initially entitled Test 606 and then changed to a tentative The Life of Dr. Erhlich before the Hollywood studio settled on Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet. The choice of the phrase “magic bullet” apparently dismayed De Kruif, who was convinced that he had come up with the expression (Lederer and Parascandola 1998, p. 352). In response, he reissued the second edition of Microbe Hunters that same year as Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet and the Discoveries of Eleven Other Microbe Hunters (1940).

  20. 20.

    See Elena (1993).

  21. 21.

    Parascandola (2007, p. 72).

  22. 22.

    As illustrated by communication scholars pioneers DeFleur and Larsen (1958, p. 164).

  23. 23.

    On propaganda prophylaxy, see Gary (1999).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université de Montréal, City, USA

    Ghislain Thibault

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  1. Ghislain Thibault
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. English, Southern Methodist University, USA, Dallas, Texas, USA

    Kari Nixon

  2. Department of English, University of California Riverside, USA, Riverside, California, USA

    Lorenzo Servitje

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Thibault, G. (2016). Needles and Bullets: Media Theory, Medicine, and Propaganda, 1910–1940. In: Nixon, K., Servitje, L. (eds) Endemic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52141-5_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52141-5_4

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