Medic was not the first television series about medicine or physicians. Both The Doctor and City Hospital had aired, on NBC and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), respectively, during the 1952–53 television season. Medic is important because, much more than those two, it helped shape the approach that producers and networks took to doctor shows for the next few decades. The program was in large part an anthology of medical cases. They were introduced by Dr. Konrad Styner, played by Richard Boone, who narrated the case and often participated in it.

James Moser had picked up his interest in the details of professions as a writer on Jack Webb’s hit Dragnet radio series, which prided itself on straightforwardly presenting the facts of police cases. Moser’s interest in a TV series about medicine had been stirred through a stint writing the Doctor Kildare radio show, through his creation of an NBC radio pilot about medicine with Jack Webb that did not go to series, and through watching his best friend, an intern at Los Angeles County Hospital, make rounds on a wide array of complex problems. Moser was aware of the strong popularity that medical dramas such as Dr. Kildare and Doctor Christian had enjoyed in the movies and on radio during the 1940s. He felt, however, that those and other previous stories about medicine had not gone deeply enough into the actual ways modern medicine healed.

Consequently, the emphasis in Medic was on portraying physicians’ approaches to their patients accurately; subplots and nuances of characterization were minimal. Because Moser wanted accuracy and because the program’s first sponsor, Dow Chemical, gave the show a relatively small budget that precluded fancy sets, he sought permission from the Los Angeles Country Medical Association (LACMA) to film in actual hospitals and clinics. In return for their commitment to open doors for the show, LACMA physicians required that Moser and his executive producer sign a contract that gave the association control over the medical accuracy of every script.

As it turned out, Moser’s positive attitude toward modern medicine meant that LACMA did not have to worry about Medic’s treatment of health care’s basic setting, characters, and patterns of action. Nevertheless, at a time of growing anxiety about physicians’ power in the larger society, the LACMA committee members insisted that the physician’s image in the show fit organized medicine’s ideal image. They even considered what a doctor drove and how he spoke (the physician was almost always a man). Cars that were too expensive and language with slang or contractions were ruled out. This close involvement by organized medicine in the creation of doctor shows was the beginning of a relationship between organized medicine and doctor-show producers that lasted with few exceptions through the 1960s.

Medic’s first episode revolved around a difficult birth in which the mother died and the child lived; an actual birth was filmed and televised. Other stories dealt with such subjects as manic depression and corneal transplants. Critics generally received the programs enthusiastically, but the series got mediocre ratings against the hit I Love Lucy. Two controversies in the second year, along with those mediocre ratings, seem to have persuaded NBC executives to cancel the series. The first controversy revolved around an episode that showed a cesarean birth, incision and all. Learning about the episode before it was broadcast, Cardinal Spellman of the New York Archdiocese argued that such subjects were not for exposure on television. He persuaded NBC to delete the operation, much to Moser’s public anger.

The second controversy did not become public but further soured the relationship between Moser and network officials. It centered on a Medic episode about a black doctor choosing between staying in the big city where he trained or going home to practice in a small southern town. In an era still steaming with antiblack prejudice and crackling with tension over a recent U.S.

Supreme Court decision that mandated integration in schools and other places, executives from southern affiliates considered the Medic episode a firebrand. They told the network that they would not air the episode, and NBC decided to shelve it.

Such flare-ups notwithstanding, Medic impressed many television producers and network officials of its day for its innovative blending of documentary and dramatic traditions. Its legacy would be the stress on clinical realism that medical series following it adopted. In the 1960s, doctor shows melded that emphasis on realism with a greater concern than Medic showed regarding the personality of the physicians, the predicaments of their patients, and even some social issues. James Moser’s next show after Medic, Ben Casey, contributed strongly to this evolution in television’s dramatic portrayal of medicine.