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A while back I chronicled some interesting trivia on 7 Famous Medical TV Shows. I admit that many of the famous shows in that post were based on my subjective evaluation; there are several shows, albeit lesser known to me, which absolutely need mentioning, starting with:

1. Ben Casey

In the beginning, there was Ben Casey. Earlier than M*A*S*H, earlier than General Hospital, this show shares the cake for being one of the two oldest medical TV shows in existence (the second is Dr. Kildare, see below).

Much of Ben Casey’s character was based on the show’s consultant, famed neurosurgeon Joseph Ransohoff. Ethics in medicine, limits of clinical medicine, and sociology of medicine and society were all topics explored by the series. The introduction of the show featured the infamous chalk-on-blackboard "man, woman, birth, death, infinity", which you can sample below. It takes a while for the story to get rolling, but it’s worth it to see Dr. Casey’s classic doctor demeanor and his interactions with patients.

The Day They Stole the County General (part 1):

(Parts 2, 3, 4, and 5)

The show lasted from 1961 until 1966.

2. Dr. Kildare

Over a dozen "Dr. Kildare" films were made from 1937 to 1947, including Internes Can’t Take Money, Young Dr. Kildare, Calling Dr. Kildare, The Secret of Dr. Kildare, Dr. Kildare’s Strange Case, Dr. Kildare Goes Home, and Dr. Kildare’s Crisis. (I think the Ernest movies borrowed this naming structure.) Dr. Kildare made the transition to television the same time as Ben Casey, running on NBC from 1961 to 1966.

In this short clip, Dr. Kildare and Dr. Becker (played by James Mason) share a rather heated argument over the ethics of end-of-life care and the appropriateness of surgical intervention in a 74 year-old female:

In these next clips is "Tyger, Tyger", a 2-episode Dr. Kildare about a young epileptic surfer. It’s filled with old-fashioned fun; you even get to see a high-tech "EEG machine" used, trimethadione prescribed, and old-time doctoring. The accuracy of this episode however, at least in retrospect, leaves much to be desired because it turns that voluntary hyperventilation does not increase the probability of seizure. There goes the premise of that entire episode.

Episode 1: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Episode 2: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

On a side note, short white coats look as bad 45 years ago as they do today.

3. The Doctors

Yet another medical soap opera. But, it wasn’t always like that. The Doctors was originally intended to be a freak-of-the-week medical emergency show, focusing on one case per week and any particular episode would not influence future storylines. That format only lasted for one season, which was replaced with a serial storytelling format, describing cutthroat competition amongst doctors, and genuinely "catty" behavior in the hospital. Doctors murdering other doctors and covering it up, constant bickering and hospital politics, and doctors driving nurses to suicide. It was the Grey’s Anatomy of a generation, from 1963 until it was cancelled in 1982.

4. Marcus Welby, M.D.

When you consider unorthodox ways of approaching medical practice, it is usually the younger doctors who think differently. Not so with Marcus Welby; the older doctor turned out to be the deviant in this extremely popular (#1 in Nielsen Ratings) early 1970s medical drama. The show strove to educate as much as entertain, and so it dealt with many important medical issues including depression, brain damage, breast cancer, mononucleosis, sexually-transmitted diseases, epilepsy, leukemia, dysautonomia, rape, and painkiller addictions.

5. Medical Center

Medical Center is a medical drama which takes place in an unnamed academic medical institution in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Lochner and Dr. Gannon are the main characters, crusty chief of staff and young surgeon respectively. The show had plenty of stories to tell over its 7 year lifespan, dealing with the treatment of patients and the teaching of medical students. The opening narrative goes like this:

Operator: "Medical Center. I’ll ring."
Female: "Computer medicine."
Male: "Blood pressure dropping 100 over 60."
Operator: "Dr. Lochner report to cardio-pulmonary, inhalation therapist to Emergency Room.
Male: Increase the hydrocortisone."
Female: "Red Blanket."
Male: "It’s a massive pulmonary embolism."
Operator: "Operator … Medical Center."
Female: "Carbon tetrachloride poisoning."
Male: "Start cardiac massage."
Male: "Aortic stenosis with probable insufficiency."
Female: "Stat call!"
Operator: "Dr. Joseph Gannon."

The chances of carbon tetrachloride poisoning these days is fairly low, especially since CFCs decreased in demand since the 1980s. But what is "computer medicine"?

6. Quincy, M.E.

C.S.I. is exceedingly popular these days, but did you know that there was a crime scene investigation show 30 years ago? Yes, Quincy, M.E. (he was a medical pathologist and surgeon) was here first, and it is the definitive embodiment of the exciting world of criminal pathology. The following introduction will take you back to the 70s, in a good way:

 

Like all crime-shows revolving around mysteries which get solved, Dr. Quincy and his episodes follow a similar pattern in diagnosis, as Wikipedia so eloquently puts it:

1. Somebody dies, seemingly by natural causes.
2. Quincy notices something that causes him to suspect foul play.
3. He then changes roles from medical examiner to detective.
4. Quincy’s boss gets upset, believing that Quincy is seeing evidence that doesn’t exist and that Quincy should work on routine cases. The police get their feathers ruffled as he "shoulders-in" on their territory as well.
5. He argues quite loudly with some bureaucratic individual impeding the case.
6. Quincy solves the murder.

The flow and format of the Quincy, M.E. was predictable but highly successful. The show ran from 1976 until 1983.

7. Trapper John, M.D.

What does this show teach us about professionalism in medicine? It teaches that someone can be named John "Trapper" McIntyre and still be taken seriously by his colleagues and patients. Where does the nickname "Trapper" come from? Supposedly, John McIntyre got his nickname from a time in his past where he was caught having sex with a woman in a bathroom on a train after which the woman screamed "[Dr. McIntyre] trapped me!"

Officially and legally, Trapper John, M.D. was declared a spinoff of the 1970 film MASH, rather than a spinoff of the television show M*A*S*H, due to a prolonged legal battle over royalties. The show ran for 7 years from 1979 to 1986.

8. St. Elsewhere

St. Elsewhere received 13 Emmys during its highly successful 6 seasons in the 1980s. The series has had profound influence on later medical series including ER and Grey’s Anatomy, as seen in the serial storytelling and in the chaotic hospital environment. Denzel Washington (the George Clooney of the 80s?) received his first major role as Dr. Chandler. Other notable features of the series include the famous "You can kiss my a**" ending of one episode along with the series finale’s "Tommy Westphall Universe".

The introduction can be viewed here along with a few clips from an episode of St. Elsewhere.

9. Doctor Doctor

Dr. Stratford and three other doctors, all Harvard Medical School graduates, start Northeast Medical Partners in Providence, Rhode Island. Dr. Stratford and his zany antics are the center-point of this alleged comedy; however it turns out that neither he nor his antics were terribly funny. A sample clip from "Doctor, Doctor" reveals why the show was dropped after two seasons. (Bonus: Babu Bhatt from Seinfeld makes an appearance as the news anchor.)

If you want to see more, watch the pilot episode:
Part 1, 2, and 3.

10. Chicago Hope

Can a high-powered Chicago hospital medical drama on one network compete with another Chicago hospital medical drama in the same time-slot? No: Chicago Hope ultimately lost the fight to E.R. in the 1990s, further exacerbated with the disappearance of Emmy-winning actor Mandy Patinkin during the second season. The show also answered the question: can a network television show get away with showing frontal nudity during the primetime? Yes, but probably only because nobody was watching. Chicago Hope had plenty going for it, but unfortunate circumstances led this show to do a swan-dive from a sixth-story window onto George Costanza’s car. You can view the intro here.

11. Becker

For some reason a graduate of Harvard Medical School is running a small primary care practice in The Bronx. Why is it that fictional physicians always graduate from the most prestigious medical schools? Armed with a $5 stethoscope (see photo) and a dearth of empathy, Becker strives to make a difference in the world, primarily by showing exactly how physicians should not interact with patients or the rest of humanity. He is impatient, easily annoyed, and not very fun to watch. The low viewership in its last seasons earned Becker a cancellation in 2004.

12. Providence

A plastic surgeon gets tired of the hard work of doing plastic surgery procedures for the rich and famous in Beverly Hills and comes back home to Providence, Rhode Island to do something easier with her life: practice family medicine. What is it with medical TV shows and Providence, Rhode Island? And is it really that easy to stop practicing a surgical subspecialty and start up family medicine? Maybe these questions were explored in later episodes, but since reruns are only on "Lifetime Woman", the network where no man dares to venture, these questions will remain unanswered.

13. Nip/Tuck

Nip/Tuck, while not on the major broadcast networks, has a very strong fan following on the cable network FX. The show is known for its superficiality, vanity, hedonism, and grotesqueness, proving that beautiful exteriors can have very ugly interiors. How grotesque? The Parents Television Council president claimed that one episode featured "incestuous necrophilia", or as the show depicted it, a funeral home worker reassembling body parts of dead women to make "the ideal woman". If that doesn’t deter you from watching, then perhaps the content-warnings shown multiple times during each commercial break would. But there are plenty of genuinely good things to come from the series, including the creation of Dr. 90210 and the influencing of thousands of medical school graduates to match into plastics, to, um, treat burn wounds and facial trauma.