24. Medicine
The evolution of medicine and medical care in the United States are trackable through their appearances in films, both those purporting to depict historical events and in contemporaneous settings. For decades, doctors went to their patients rather than the other way around. In cities and larger towns, doctors did both, examining and consulting with patients in their offices, and following up with them in their homes. A doctor’s black satchel made him recognizable to all as he went about his rounds. Surgeons often performed operations in their own surgeries, rather than in hospital operating rooms and theaters, which were used for training.
When automobile ambulances emerged, they were little more than a car equipped with a stretcher and a siren. Life-saving equipment beyond simple bandages weren’t available. Not until the 1960s did corporate medical care, driven by the health insurance industry and specialization by physicians, come to dominate health care in the United States. Ambulances became trauma care units, supported by connection to physicians in emergency rooms. Americans once visited their doctor, paid for his services, and presumably followed his advice, as seen in hundreds of films from the past. Those days vanished near the end of the 20th century.
