Bert Hansen — "Overlooked Images of Medicine" in America's New Mass Media of the Late 19th Century

Perspectives on Science

To view Professor Hansen's images and for more resources on this topic, please visit: https://www.chstm.org/video/118. Join Professor Bert Hansen as he discusses a number of popular images of American medicine from the late nineteenth century that he has donated to Yale's Cushing/Whitney Medical Library. In this presentation, Professor Hansen shows us what medicine looked like and how it was experienced by the public at that time. Professor Hansen's images use medicine to satirize the politics of the day, often showing politicians, political parties or mascots as sickly and in need of care. These illustrations depict the changing character of medicine and how it was interpreted by journalists, cartoonists, and the reading public in the late nineteenth century. Dr. Hansen's presentation, using images he has collected over decades and which are now part of The Bert Hansen Collection at Yale's Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, reveals the transformation of medicine and its evolving public reception through lively and fascinating mass media cartoons and illustrations. Bert Hansen has been teaching the history of science and medicine, after earning his PhD from Princeton University in 1974, at Binghamton University, the University of Toronto, New York University, and Baruch College of the City University of New York. He has published two books and numerous articles about medical and scientific developments from the 14th century through the 20th and about the imagery and popular attitudes that surround them. He has also written about gay history. His most recent scholarship examines the significance of Louis Pasteur's engagement with the fine arts. For more, see https://berthansen.com.