Museum Malignancy: Carbon Copy? (05:29)
Audio introduction by Alan Blum, MD
In early-2019 The Smithsonian debuted “More Doctors Smoke Camels,” a small exhibit of cigarette ads from the 1920s to the 1950s featuring endorsements by physicians. The museum did not acknowledge a more substantive exhibition of cigarette advertising on that precise theme, “When More Doctors Smoked Camels: Medical Claims in Cigarette Advertisements, 1888-1988,” which debuted at the Texas Medical Center Library in November 1988 and was subsequently on view at other medical libraries, including the Reynolds Library at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine in 2001. Listen to the back story of copycat exhibitionism.
June 25, 2019
Photograph of “When ‘More Doctors Smoked Camels’” Exhibition
First vitrine (of four)
Curated by Alan Blum, MD (shown in photograph)
Texas Medical Center Library
Houston, Texas
January 1989
Photograph of “More Doctors Smoke Camels” Exhibit
Alan Blum, MD, shown in photograph by David Blum
National Museum of American History
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, DC
May 2019
“Our exhibit is the product of original research, done using the resources of and with the aid of staff in four independently developed, substantive repositories of documents and advertisements from the tobacco industry: our own collection at the Museum of American History; the Minneapolis Depository; the Stanford Research into Tobacco Advertising unit; and the Legacy Tobacco Document Library at UC San Francisco. We stand by the quality of the exhibit and its distinctiveness from any of your own work.”
Robert Horton, M.A., A.B.D.
Assistant Director for Collections and Archives
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of American History
email reply to Alan Blum, MD, April 10, 2019
“I know it was your idea, but it was my idea to use your idea.”
Caption of cartoon By Hafeez
The New Yorker
November 14, 2016
“More Doctors Smoke Camels: A Close Reading of Historical Advertising”
National Museum of American History
Smithsonian Institution
si.edu
2019
“Right: Doctors Smoking? New Exhibit Displays Now-Startling Ads”
Scope
Stanford Medicine
June 27, 2019
The Original Exhibition, “When ‘More Doctors Smoke Camels’: Medical Claims in Cigarette Advertising, 1888-1988”
Texas Medical Center Library,
November 1988 to February 1989
Key to exhibition, “When More Doctors Smoked Camels” Contents and Legends (6 pages)
Texas Medical Center Library
1988
“‘When More Doctors Smoked Camels’–An Exhibit on Cigarette Advertising, 1888-1988”
Texas Medical Center Library Newsletter
1988
Exhibition wall cards with legends–“When More Doctors Smoked Camels” (16 pages)
Texas Medical Center Library
1988
Exhibition wall cards with legends–“When More Doctors Smoked Camels” (16 pages)
Texas Medical Center Library
1988
“When ‘More Doctors Smoked Camels’: cigarette advertising in The New York State Journal of Medicine” (8 pages)
Essay by Alan Blum, MD
New York State Journal of Medicine
December 1983
“When ‘More Doctors Smoked Camels’–Anti-smoking group looks at early cigaret ads” (3 pages)
Article by Steve Carrell
American Medical News
American Medical Association
June 1989
“Cigarette ad exhibit tracks health claims, endorsements” (4 Pages)
Article by Dave Parks
The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times, and UAB Reporter
2001
“When More Doctors Smoked Camels–A Century of Health Claims in Cigarette Advertising” (17 pages)
Photocopy of slides of PowerPoint presentation by Alan Blum, MD for “When More Doctors Smoked Camels: A Century of Health Claims in Cigarette Advertising”
2003
“Classics in Social Medicine: ‘When “More Doctors Smoked Camels”‘…Cigarette advertising in the New York State Journal of Medicine” (9 pages)
25th anniversary tribute to the two theme issues published by the New York State Journal of Medicine in December 1983 and July 1985 on the world cigarette pandemic: reprint of a 1983 editorial by Dr. Blum in the New York State Journal of Medicine
Social Medicine
June 2010
Presentations, Articles, Correspondence, News Coverage, & Research Posters
Coverage of the NYSJM Theme Issues on Tobacco
Second Printing, New York State Journal of Medicine theme issue on the world cigarette pandemic, extra copies order form, newspaper coverage, book reviews (15 pages)
New York State Journal of Medicine (theme issues on smoking)
The Cigarette Underworld (updated version of the second theme issue, published by Lyle Stuart, Inc.)
1984-1985
“The Cigarette Underworld”
Promotional flyer
Alan Blum, MD
1986
Textbook Chapters
“Cancer Prevention: Preventing Tobacco-Related Cancers”
Textbook Chapter by Alan Blum, MD
Cancer: Principles & Practice of Oncology – 5th Edition
Editors: Vincent DeVita et al.
1997
“The Tobacco Pandemic”
Textbook Chapter
Alan Blum, MD and Eric Solberg
Fundamentals of Clinical Practice
Editors: Mark Mengel, Warren Holleman, and Scott A. Fields
2002
Creators of scholarly exhibitions for academic libraries warrant the same respect and citation as authors of scholarly articles.
“Exhibits: Illegitimate Children of Academic Libraries?”
Article by Laurel G. Bowen and Peter J. Roberts
College and Research Libraries
Volume 54, number 5
1993
“Pity the Scientist Who Discovers the Discovered”
Article by Gina Kolata
The New York Times
February 5, 2006
Correspondence
In 2007 the Stanford University School of Medicine Library publicized an exhibit of old cigarette ads with health claims, entitled “Not a Cough in a Carload.” When informed that the exhibit duplicated “When ‘More Doctors Smoked Camels’: Medical Claims in Cigarette Advertising, 1888-1988,” a dean at Stanford sidestepped corroborating documentation by claiming that exhibitions, unlike articles in peer-reviewed journals, do not need to cite previous exhibitions on the precise subject. The individual who acquired the ads for the Stanford exhibit from ebay, Robert Jackler, MD, was acknowledged in the Smithsonian exhibit in 2019.
“Stanford Tobacco Advertising Website Is Now Live”
Robert Jackler, MD to Michael Cummings
March 15, 2010
Alan Blum letter to Stanford Dean – Reply November 21, 2008
October 29, 2008
Comments on Not A Cough in A Carload by Proctor and Jackler(s)
Yale University Press
Matthew Laird
August 03, 2007
Cartoonists Take Up Smoking
Correspondence
Heilemann (Stanford)
June 12, 2007
Cartoonists Take Up Smoking Proposal Reply
Stanford University
Robert Jackler, MD to Alan Blum, MD
April 25, 2007
New York Times article on Jackler exhibition 2008
The New York Times
March 9, 2007
Alan Blum to Patty French of The Lane Medical Library Stanford
Letter
March 28, 2007