Medical visions: Producing the patient through film, television, and imaging technologies.

"Kirsten Ostherr focuses on moving images produced in the United States from the early twentieth century to the present day. The types of images she considers are diverse and range from sober education films to television documentaries and fictionalized accounts of medical life. She also considers briefly at the end of the book more recent forms, including “reality” television and such virtual worlds as Second Life. The core of Medical Visions consists of six case studies, arranged in chronological order, that include close readings of specific films and programs. Ostherr is alert to the texts’ ideological dimensions as well as their aesthetic properties, often showing the close relationships between visual techniques associated with cinema and those deployed in medical contexts. The volume is rich in detail about the conditions under which works were made and received; especially telling are the ways in which medical organizations attempted to, and often succeeded in, controlling content and audiences" (https://muse.jhu.edu/article/548082, accessed 02-2018).