Frequency of breast cancer, lung cancer, and tobacco use articles in women's magazines from 1987 to 2003.

Background: The objective of this study was to compare the frequency of articles in women's magazines that address breast cancer, lung cancer, and tobacco use from 1987-2003 and to ascertain whether the annual number of articles reflected corresponding cancer mortality rates from breast cancer and lung cancer and the number of female smokers throughout this time period.

Methods: We reviewed 13 women's magazines published in the United States from 1987-2003 using the search terms breast cancer, lung cancer, smoking, and tobacco. We reviewed the abstracts or entire articles to determine relevance.

Drink, dames & disease: Erasmus Darwin on inheritance.

Dr Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) readily acknowledged that diseases including gout, consumption, scrofula, epilepsy, and insanity were hereditarily transferred. He also viewed a particular interconnectedness between intemperance (alcoholism) and other hereditary diseases. Darwin's view of 'hereditary' incorporated a malleable admixture of nature and nurture causes.

Professionalism in medical education: the development and validation of a survey instrument to assess attitudes toward professionalism.

Background And Aim: This study examined attitudes toward professionalism in an academic medical center. The paper will describe the development and factorial validity of an instrument to measure attitudes toward professionalism in medical education among students, residents and faculty.

Methods: A factor analysis of the intercorrelations of responses to 36 items reflecting the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) elements of professionalism for a sample of 765 medical students, residents and faculty was carried out.

Confronting "hereditary" disease: eugenic attempts to eliminate tuberculosis in progressive era America.

Tuberculosis was clearly one of the most predominant diseases of the early twentieth century. At this time, Americans involved in the eugenics movement grew increasingly interested in methods to prevent this disease's potential hereditary spread. To do so, as this essay examines, eugenicists' attempted to shift the accepted view that tuberculosis arose from infection and contagion to a view of its heritable nature.

Viewpoint: exploring the human interior: the roles of cadaver dissection and radiologic imaging in teaching anatomy.

For a variety of reasons, new radiological imaging techniques are supplanting traditional cadaver dissection in the teaching of human anatomy. The authors briefly review the historical forces behind this transition, and then explore the advantages and drawbacks of each approach. Cadaver dissection offers an active, hands-on exploration of human structure, provides deep insights into the meaning of human embodiment and mortality, and represents a profound rite of passage into the medical profession.

Bad habits and bad genes: early 20th-century eugenic attempts to eliminate syphilis and associated "defects" from the United States.

American eugenists in the early 20th century distinguished "degenerates," including syphilitics, prostitutes, alcoholics and criminals, from the "normal" population by their particular bad habits. From eugenists' viewpoint, these bad habits were derived from bad character, a flaw that stemmed from an individual's bad genes. This essay explores how eugenists during this period characterized syphilitics and those with associated character "defects" in terms of heredity.