Ever since their early twentieth-century “Golden Age,” postcards on both sides of the Atlantic have recorded popular culture. Through humour, views of urban and rural places, photographs of individuals, fantasy, advertising, and succinct messages, they have documented art and entertainment, social events, commercial practices, reform movements, political propaganda, and countless byways of society. They are the centre of this account as it looks at key facets of daily life, the diverse efforts of individuals to maintain health and treat minor illnesses, relationships between patients and physicians, and popular stereotypes of health care practitioners working inside and outside hospitals.

Readers who wonder whether the scope of cards is too limited to tell any story of health care will find that postcard publishers, in looking for commercial success, focused on topics they felt would resonate with the public. This certainly applied to the countless humorous cards, some “naughty,” “fruity,” or “saucy,” that circulated far more widely than “medical” jokes in such magazines as Punch or the New Yorker. Cards, then, reflect popular fascination with physicians, nurses, medical institutions, the body, illness, and the maintenance of health, albeit with the limitation of little attention to scientific and medical discoveries.

In this book, John Crellin explores the entertaining and creative ways that postcards pertaining to health care provided medical knowledge, treatment options, and humour. Filled with colour images of these postcards, Health Care: A Postcard History of Twentieth-Century Attitudes and Practices provides an in-depth examination of the cards’ history and their impact on the culture of medicine.

*due to the photo heavy nature of this publication, full colour ereaders, tablets, or desktops are recommended.

John K. Crellin holds British qualifications in medicine, in pharmacy, and in the history of science. His career spans three countries, at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in the U.K., at Southern Illinois and Duke Universities in the USA, and at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, where he was John Clinch Professor of Medical History until his official retirement in 2002. He lives in St. Philip’s with his wife, Janet, and continues to teach complementary and alternative medicine at the Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University. He has written several books, some of which have a Newfoundland focus. Mi’sel Joe: An Aboriginal Chief’s Journey, a book he co-edited with Raoul R. Anderson, was a Canadian Aboriginal Books for Schools 2009–2010 Selection; a finalist for the 2010 Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing; and a First Nation Communities Read 2011–2012 “Also Recommended” Title.

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