Polite Dissent

After the infamous 1950s congressional hearings that attempted to link comic books to juvenile delinquency, EC made a dramatic change in its publishing style. Gone were the Tales of the Crypt and other horror and crime comics. Instead, they published their “New Direction” comics. These comics included several topics not usually covered by comic books, including medicine (M.D.) and psychiatry (Psychoanalysis). Unsurprisingly, these New Direction comics weren’t particularly good sellers and lasted less than a year.

M.D. #3 consists of four medical stories and a one-page text piece. The art is in the usual intricate EC style, though the art in the second story does degrade into parody. The lettering is the classic typeface style long used by EC.

The opening story, “What You Need to Know,” warns us of the dangers of sledding and overprotective mothers. After the other boys tease Tad about being a mama’s boy, he grabs his sled and heads to the top of Snake’s Hill. Sledding down the treacherous slope on a dark blizzard night, he crashes into a tree stump. The other boys find him bleeding and unconscious and flag down a passing trooper. Tad is rushed home and Dr. Yates, the local general practitioner, is called.

Dr. Yates examines Tad and diagnoses him with several fractured ribs and a punctured lung. An operation is needed, but the ambulance can’t get through in the blizzard. Dr. Yates decides to operate on the kitchen table. With help from the trooper and Tad’s father, Dr. Yates begins the delicate operation (Tad’s mother, of course, receives a sedative). Due to skill of the doctor, Tad survives. After the operation, does Dr. Yates lecture Tad about taking foolish risks? No, he tells Tad’s mother that it was her fault for being overprotective.

The second story, “The Right Cure,” concerns Appalachian hill folk and their reliance on questionable folk remedies. An older woman has excruciating abdominal pain and her husband has taken her from herbalist to herbalist with no success. Her daughter wants to take her to a doctor, but the father refuses to take her to “a furriner.” When the pain becomes so bad that the old woman begs her husband to shoot her, the daughter sneaks off and finds a doctor. She brings the doctor to their house and then holds a rifle to her father so he can’t interfere while the doctor examines her mother and takes her to the hospital. The patient is diagnosed with an abdominal cyst and successfully treated surgically. Her husband arrives at the hospital with a shotgun and a mad-on for the doctor, but puts down the weapon when he sees how dramatically his wife has recovered. At the end he tearfully promises the doctor that he’ll never go near a folk healer again.

“Shock Treatment” more than any other story highlights the difference between 21st century medicine and the medicine of the 1950s. In this story, a young man attempts suicide and is diagnosed with manic depression. He is admitted to a psychiatric hospital where he is kept heavily sedated for the next ten days in the hopes that he will forget that he’s depressed and suicidal. When that doesn’t work, he is subjected to electoshock therapy, again so that he’ll forget he’s depressed. Meanwhile, the doctor lays the blame for the patient’s depression squarely on the parents and their constant bickering and fighting.

Treatment of depression has improved by leaps and bounds since this story was written. For one thing, there are very effective antidepressant medications available. It’s true that in some situations electroshock therapy (better known as ECT: electroconvulsant therapy) is still used, but not to the extent it once was. We also know a lot more about the causes of depression, and while family life may complicate the situation, it’s not the root cause. Finally, I should point out that the patient was diagnosed with manic depression (i.e. bipolar disorder) despite the fact that he has never been shown to have experienced a manic episode; major depression is probably a better diagnosis.

The last story, “The Lesson,” concerns a young man who was speeding on a wet road and lost control of his car. He has a few bruises, but his girlfriend suffers multiple broken limbs and a closed head injury. The local doctor arrives at the scene and takes everyone to the hospital. The young man is very apologetic but the doctor drags the him into the operating room so that he can watch as his girlfriend’s broken legs are set and a hole is drilled into her skull to relieve the pressure and remove the clot. At the end we learn the reason the doctor insisted the young man witness the operation: his girlfriend was the doctor’s daughter.

There is a single page text piece about Dr. Ignaz Philipp Semmelweiss. Back in the 18th century, Semmelweiss was the first physician to realize that washing hands between patients saves lives, particularly in the maternity ward. Semmelweiss is an interesting character and deserves a post of his own at a later date.

M.D.s are entertaining to read but are clearly a product of their time. As best illustrated by the first story, a not-so-subtle sexism exists in many of the stories. The practice of medicine has changed a great deal in the past fifty years. While some rural general practitioners still perform emergency surgeries, most have long abandoned this practice. House calls are also a thing of the past, mostly for monetary and time-related reasons. Medication and surgeries are much more reliable and effective now. There are reasons to look back fondly on this era, but I much prefer the current state of medical care.