To participate in the present initiative of medical dramas in film or tv, the first thing that came to my mind was a television series that was seen a lot in my house in the 70s, I am from Venezuela and in those years the television programming was saturated with series filmed in the 60s.
In this particular case the introduction of this series was something fascinating: a hand-drawn drawing on a blackboard of the symbols ♂ , ♀ , ✳ , † , ∞. Then a narrator leisurely recites the name of each, man, woman, life, death, infinity.
The series was called Ben Casey:
In this introduction in addition to the symbols I was very struck by the theme of David Raksin a composer known as the grandfather of soundtracks in film and tv. This theme always echoed in my mind together with the one of another series but this time of the west that I used to watch a lot called Bonanza.
Ben Casey is an intense and idealistic doctor at County General Hospital, who always listened to the advice of his mentor Dr. David Zorba, a temperamental neurosurgeon who stands up for his principles, and in the series we see the lifestyle of a hospital in the 1960s. Dr. Zorba, the head of Casey's department, protected the irritable Casey from hospital administrators and families of angry patients.
Ben Casey manages to address through the microcosm of County General Hospital situations such as racial tensions, drugs, euthanasia, etc. The problems of Ben Casey's patients are not just physiological, and in many episodes the psychological drama of the characters is exploited through their interaction with the doctor. He is an incorruptible doctor in the face of power, money and sex. This doctor's concern is not surgery, it is the psychological well-being of his patients for which he is constantly struggling to defend them in the face of adversity.
The show manages to present a romantic touch, as the main character falls in love with a patient, (played by Stella Stevens), who comes out of a coma after thirteen years.
The public hospital (County General Hospital), where Casey works, is visually a sanitized place, and the patients are treated with devotion and fairness. It is a perfect, clean hospital with smiling, busy nurses.
The patients have spacious, sunny rooms. In short, the program shows the goodness of the American way of life and served as a public relations exercise for the American state, which was complicated by the Vietnam War, the Cold War and the struggle for equal civil rights for African-Americans.
The series, which consisted of one-hour episodes, launched the leading man, Vince Edwards, as a leading man who would generate sighs in the female audience. It ran for six successful seasons between 1961 and 1966 and became one of the pioneer series of medical dramas on television.
Sam Jaffe was Dr. David Zorba between 1961 and 1965, Harry Landers was Dr. Ted Hoffman, Bettye Ackerman had the role of Dr. Maggie Graham, Nick Dennis as assistant Nick Kanavaras, Jeanne Bates as Nurse Wills and Franchot Tone as Dr. Daniel Niles Freeland, the new chief of surgery (1965-1966).
Guest artists included such names as Rod Steiger, Rody Mcdowall, Lee Marvin, Jerry Lewis, Tuesday Weld, Suzanne Pleshette, Keenan Wynn, Gloria Swanson, and Kevin McCarthy. Among the directors of the series were Irvin Kershner, Jerry Lewis himself and Sydney Pollack.
Novels inspired by the series, comic books, and daily and Sunday comic strips were adapted. In 1988 Vince Edwards returned with the telefilm The Return of Ben Casey.
Ben Casey was created by James E. Moser, who met Dr. Allan Max Warner when he was developing ideas for this medical drama, and decided that Ben Casey should be a neurosurgeon like Dr. Allan Max Warner. Warner, who served as the show's technical advisor, showing the actors how to operate the medical instruments, as well as neurosurgeon Joseph Ransohoff, one of the pioneers in the field of neurosurgery.
Watching this series is like watching ER but set in the 1960s.
Another series that impacted me as a child was one in which a medical pathologist became involved with the police in solving various cases:
Quincy ME.
Quincy (Jack Klugman), was a coroner in the city of Los Angeles, this helped by his assistant Sam Fujiyama (Robert Ito), manages to discover clues that lead him to a different conclusion than the police, thus generating conflicts, both with his superior and with the authorities.
This hard-working, impatient and brilliant forensic scientist could not stand corruption, incompetence and negligence. He acted like a medieval knight to change people, laws or situations for the protection of society.
It aired between 1976 and 1983 in the United States and was a crime hospital drama, where the police were aided by the ideas and findings of Dr. Quincy , a forensic pathologist working for Los Angeles County. His boss was Dr. Astin, (John S. Ragin). His other colleagues were Sam Fujiyama, his chief technician, who was very capable, efficient and accustomed to Quincy's personal preferences. Quincy had very frequent contact with Lieutenant Monahan (Garry Walberg) and Sergeant Brill (Joseph Roman), two Los Angeles homicide detectives. Danny (Val Bisoglio) , restaurateur and friend to all the other characters, had a place where the others would meet and describe the conclusion of the case on which each episode was based.
Among the topics covered in the series are medical malpractice or incompetence, autism, agoraphobia, post-traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism, ignorance in gathering medical evidence after a suspected rape, substance abuse, teen suicide, child abuse, elder abuse, availability of handguns, life-threatening fraternity hazing, orphan drugs, adult illiteracy, sudden infant death syndrome, brain death at the time of organ transplantation. biased expert witness testimony, post-traumatic stress disorder surgeries in which the registered surgeon is not present during a procedure and these are performed by a younger surgeon or resident.
Both in the series and in real life, emphasis was placed on the need to develop treatments for diseases that pharmaceutical companies did not spend money on because the market was too small and therefore not profitable.
This series is recognized as a direct influence on the CSI series.
Medical dramas on television have always been liked and in many cases unfairly compared to soap operas, given the interest in them by the female audience, this taste was changing over time and therefore have also liked the male audience have been broadcast series such as E.R., M.A.S.H, Grey's Anathomy, Doogie Howser, M.D, Scrubs, General Hospital, House M.D., The Good Doctor, Nip/Tuck, Dr.Kildare, General Hospital, Dr Quinn, Northern Exposure and New Amsterdam among others. Each of them has something that may interest us or that we can criticize.
In my case, the two series I am commenting on got me hooked as a child, teaching me that:
Diseases are not only in the body, but can also upset us mentally, and therefore in addition to the cure of diseases must also be treated at the psychological level. This from Ben Casey. By the way, in Latin America we always missed the neatness of the hospital where Casey worked, in those 70's that was almost utopian here.
As for Quincy, I understood that the work of a doctor when he must discover the reason for a death or what disease causes it is like that of Sherlock Holmes, which requires irony, sense of justice, wit, with extensive scientific knowledge and a lot of malice. I think the character of Dr. House, keeping the distance of course, is very much influenced by Quincy.
For now, I hope that reading this post has been entertaining and that you have enjoyed it.A big greeting and good luck in this new contest related to our favorite medical dramas Link Here.