The story of Papworth : the village of hope.

Dramatised history of a factory worker with tuberculosis who attempts to deny and conceal his illness for fear of bringing unemployment and poverty on himself and his family before eventually undergoing a successful course of treatment and rehabilitation at Papworth Hospital and Village Settlement, Cambridgeshire. Nowadays best known for open heart surgery, between the Wars Papworth was an isolation hospital and model village "settlement" for convalescent tuberculosis patients. Does not show the medical treatment of tuberculosis in any detail, but includes excellent footage of the open-air "chalets" for convalescent patients in the hospital grounds, the Papworth craft workshops, presses and poultry farm, and the village housing for convalescent patients. Highlights "...the real tragedy, the "economic" tragedy, which adds to the fear of tuberculosis" - namely, that in an era of mass unemployment, prior to the creation of the National Health Service, "the average worker literally cannot "afford" to be tuberculous". (H.R.H. the Duke of Kent, President of the Papworth settlement) Intended to loosen the heart-and purse-strings of the cinema-going public; concludes with a direct appeal for a 100,000 capital endowment to support the work of the Hospital and Settlement by Major C. Aubrey Smith, who flourishes a letter from Lord Nuffield promising a donation of 25,000 if the public subscribe the remaining 75,000... Despite its very thin and manifestly improbable story-line, a brilliant piece of public health propaganda, equally memorable for its powerful "social" message, upbeat faith in the curability of mass entertainment in the service of medicine, not least in its use of humour, character acting and the choice of Madeline Carroll to introduce the film. Of the greatest interest not only to social historians of medicine but to historians of the cinema and popular culture generally.