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History Medicine News of the Weird

A bit of “irrational exuberance” about medical breakthroughs from the 1930’s

There are lots of medical discoveries today that are breathlessly hyped far beyond what their actual benefits are likely to be. This, apparently, is not a new phenomenon, as this story shows. (Click on the pictures above for larger images of all four pages of the article, which appeared in 1939.) On the other hand, […]

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History Medicine

Another reminder of how times have changed

I’ve seen ads like this before in issues of LIFE Magazine from the 1940s that I inherited from my uncle, but they never cease to make me cringe when I see them: (Click for a larger image and to read the text of the ad more clearly.) Get a load of the text:

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Entertainment/culture History Humor Movies Popular culture

Casual racism in the 1930s

After having been pointed yesterday to a video of an old Betty Boop short that strongly suggests that Boop may have been a homeopath, I couldn’t resist clicking on the links to a couple of other old Betty Boop cartoons. One of them reminded me of just how different our culture was 72 years ago […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture History Humor Medicine Movies Popular culture Quackery

Betty Boop: Homeopath

While reading through a mailing list I belong to, I came across a link that demonstrates that alternative medicine has been ingrained in popular culture since at least the 1920’s and 1930’s. Indeed, I never realized that that icon of flappers, Betty Boop, practiced homeopathy. Don’t believe me? Well, here’s incontrovertible evidence in the form […]

Categories
History World War II

Remembering D-Day

Sixty-three years ago today, Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, thus opening up a Western Front in the war against Germany. It was the beginning of the end; eleven months later, Nazi Germany, beset from the East by the Soviet juggernaut and from the West by the Allies, collapsed. Today is a day that […]