"WHEN MORE DOCTORS SMOKED CAMELS: A CENTURY OF HEALTH CLAIMS IN CIGARETTE
ADVERTISING"
The National Museum of Health and Medicine will host "When More
Doctors Smoked Camels: A Century of Health Claims in Cigarette Advertising,"
a free illustrated lecture and gallery talk presented by Alan Blum, M.D., on
Saturday, Feb. 17 at 1 p.m., highlighting the exhibit "Cartoonists Take Up
Smoking," on display through April 1, 2007.
Week in and week out from the 1920s through the 1950s, tobacco
companies used images of physicians and their implied endorsements to help
sell cigarettes. Such advertisements appeared not only in most issues of
Life, Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report, but also in the
Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of
Medicine.
"Through the years, cigarette advertising depicted doctors almost as
often as movie stars and sports heroes," said Blum, curator of the exhibit,
and whose lecture will feature many such ads and vintage television
commercials. Although cigarette advertisements were banned from TV in 1971, their
print counterparts did not completely disappear from medical journals until
the 1980s. Blum also cites recent ads, such as the one in Time and People Magazine in
2001 for a brand by Liggett called Omni, which claimed to have "less
carcinogens."
"Such hokum isn't much different than the same company's
advertisements that proclaimed 'Stay safe, smoke Chesterfield' and 'L & M,
just what the doctor ordered' in the 1950s," he said.
He describes the creation of the filter, low-tar brands and "light"
cigarettes as marketing ploys to allay public anxiety about smoking.
"Cartoonists Take Up Smoking," is an exhibition of original
newspaper editorial cartoons retracing the 40-year battle over the use and
promotion of cigarettes since the publication of the landmark Surgeon
General's report on smoking and health in 1964. It also addresses
complacency on the part of organized medicine, politicians, and the mass
media in ending the tobacco pandemic.
The exhibit features 55 original cartoons by more than 50 nationally
known American editorial cartoonists and is supplemented by smoking-related
items, from the original newspaper headlines that inspired the cartoons to
advertisements promoting the health benefits of lighting up.
In addition to the cartoons, several mini-exhibitions are on view,
including the airline flight attendants' battle to get Congress to pass the
ban on smoking on commercial aircraft; a history of the Kent Micronite
Filter, made from asbestos; the advertising of cigarettes in medical
journals from the 1920s to the 1980s; and the selection of cigarette
commercials and smoking scenes from TV and the movies. Two preserved lungs
from the museum's anatomical collection-one showing the ill effects of
smoking and the other a healthy lung-highlight the exhibit.
"Cartoonists Take Up Smoking" is curated from the collections of the
University of
Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society that Blum founded and
directs. It holds one of the largest sociocultural archives on tobacco,
including more than 300 original editorial cartoon artworks on
smoking-related themes.
"The wide ranging controversies surrounding tobacco are captured in
the cartoons, from the misguided quest for a safe cigarette to the targeting
of tobacco advertising to women and minority groups," Blum said. "Cartoons
on smoking have had an impact at both local and national levels. Editorial
cartoons practically laughed Joe Camel out of town and helped pass countless
clean indoor air laws."
The exhibit will be on display at the museum, which is open every
day except Dec. 25 from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The museum is located at Walter
Reed Army Medical Center, 6900 Georgia Avenue and Elder Street, NW,
Washington, D.C. For more information call (202) 782-2200 or visit
www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum. Admission and parking are free.
To view our online multimedia news release and to download images, click
here.
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