Dr. Seuss and Other Masters Of Public Health
The Washington Post has a great article on the “Cartoon Medicine Show,” which features cartoons from the collection of the NLM (previously mentioned here).
“The Inside Story,” a short film that includes this animated segment on the unconscious, gives the government’s view of the Freudian mind and psychosomatic pain. Produced by Paramount Pictures in 1944, it was one of many government-funded health cartoons created to educate military personnel and the public between the 1920s and the 1960s.
And the similarities to Popeye and the Dr. Seuss characters? That, says National Library of Medicine medical historian Michael Sappol, is likely because Dr. Seuss — Ted Geisel — headed up the animation unit of the U.S. military during World War II, and because Paramount had taken over the production company and the animators who were responsible for Popeye.
I really wish I could go see this. 
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