Wearing T-shirts that read “Ride, Sally Ride,” Americans cheered as Dr. Sally K. Ride became the first American woman in space as she blasted off aboard STS-7 on June 18, 1983.1 Ms. Magazine celebrated that Ride's flight penetrated “NASA's world of ‘flaming phallic rockets,’” symbolizing American women's breakthrough and visibility in male-dominated spaceflight. Her flight took place as Americans attempted to navigate women's growing independence and the pop-culture world of Three's Company, Annie Hall, stay-at-home dads and Erma Bombeck. At the same time, rugged indi¬vidual masculinity reemerged in films such as Rocky, Rambo, The Right Stuff, and Top Gun as Jerry Falwell and Phyllis Schlafly blamed feminism for social ills. Ride's feat came at a time of clashing American gender roles, an identity crisis following the wave of defeat in Vietnam, civil rights and a new reusable spacecraft that once again promised hope.

American spaceflight needed to be reinvigorated as Americans grew increasingly bored with space feats. Between 1973 and 1979, Skylab circled the Earth. On July 15, 1975, NASA launched the first Apollo-Soyuz mission, and it appeared the Americans and Soviets made détente in space. Jet pilot team¬work prevailed, and Americans grew tired of the “pale, male, and stale” astro¬nauts. NASA proposed a new space transportation system (STS) to “salvage human spaceflight” at a time when “ordinary passengers who might receive little training, and could be almost anyone” could fly in a reusable shuttle.

Matthew H. Hersch's Inventing the American Astronaut argues that the shuttle, and the diversity of the astronauts aboard, democratized American spaceflight technology.

On May 5, 1961, NASA launched the first American astronaut into space aboard the Mercury craft Freedom 7. The feat came less than a month after the Soviets blasted cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit on April 12, 1961. Aboard his capsule, Vostok I, Gagarin spent a total of one hundred eighty minutes in space. He orbited the Earth once. Shepard's flight lasted around fifteen minutes, about five of which were in space. He did not orbit the Earth but rather completed a suborbital flight. However, the American public discourse lauded Shepard's feat as more impressive than Gagarin's because Shepard exercised control over his craft. Even Shepard recalled in his memoir that while shifting his capsule he shouted out, “We’re doing something in space on our own. We’re first with it! Manual control of a spaceship. Dyn-o-mite!”Shepard's emphasis on being first with manual control acted as a meta¬phor for a reinvigorated masculinity as the Americans trailed the Soviets into space. Jet test pilot-controlled spacecraft defined the American astro¬naut image. The spacecraft and its technology in relation to the astronaut's body created a cultural narrative of spaceflight that brought hope for the future. This astronaut-controlled spacecraft railed in the face of a perceived flagging American vigor. The first astronauts reinvigorated masculinity as they performed death-defying feats while mastering technology. They were men who performed masculinity through Michael W. Hankins’ fighter-pilot characteristics of aggressiveness, independence, heroic imagery, technology and community that depicted astronauts as metaphorical medieval space knights. But the first astronauts were also men who were reliant on automa¬tion, button-pushing and teams of engineers for successful spaceflights on the New Frontier.

In September 1989, Billy Joel’s lyrics “Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, Heavy Metal Suicide” blasted through stereos across the United States. The lyrics were from his pop hit “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” The song represented Joel’s passion for history and societal angst within progressive and destruc¬tive Cold War events. Ride made the cut along with Sputnik, space monkey and John Glenn. Astronaut Mullane joked with Joel about why Mullane was not chosen for the song. Perhaps there was a little jealousy. Ride had always stayed clear of Mullane and his self-professed sexist jokes. The two mission specialist astronauts were opposites. Mullane grew up in a culture that viewed women strictly as passive, sex objects. He epitomized early Cold War masculinity, being hardened by combat in Vietnam and his belief that women were undeserving of the astronaut title for their lack of combat experience. Ride was new to him—and the world. She was a feminist with a sticker on her office wall that read “A woman’s place is in the cockpit.” Mullane’s pilot astronaut friend remarked to Ride, “A woman is a COCKPIT.” Aviation and aerospace history acted as artifacts for social change, both progressive and regressive. The private discourse within the astronaut corps at times mir¬rored that within the public discourse as the shuttle introduced conventional masculinity to the women’s rights movement.

Early aviation pioneers viewed the airplane as a tool for social change. A man who conquered the sky could surely rid the world of inequalities and inhumanity. History is wrought with uncomfortable lessons, and the plane became a weapon for war and the continuation of social and gender norms. Rotating turrets and dogfights weaponized the airplane during World War I. Segregation laws banned people of color from earning pilot’s licenses.

This chapter provides some context to better understand the significance and outcomes of the Cannes Medical Conference. It does so by briefly reviewing medical conferences that preceded the Cannes Medical Conference and assessing where they had fallen short. Until Cannes, there had been no successful attempts to create a truly international non-government organisation to make recommendations and take action on the issue of global public health. This chapter historicises the thinking and the climate behind the creation of the first voluntary humanitarian and global public health organisation: the League of Red Cross Societies. The professional backgrounds of the delegates to the Cannes Medical Conference – some of the most eminent medical specialists of the time, including Nobel Prize winners – are presented in the second section of this chapter, as well as the chief organiser of the conference: Henry Pomeroy Davison and the role he played in designing it.

Medical Conferences Before Cannes: A Concise Background

Delegates to the Cannes Medical Conference understood its significance relative to prior conferences and organisations, which were recalled several times throughout the proceedings. For instance, American delegate and Professor of Hygiene and Public Health, William F. Snow, noted that ‘the historic significance of this particular meeting [Cannes] should not be lost. It ranks with the conference in Brussels or the Conference in 1902 and 1904’. This comparison with past scientific and medical conferences highlights how the Cannes Medical Conference inserted itself in the longer history of public health conferences. Indeed, the late nineteenth century saw conferences multiplying, including but not limited to major diplomatic, humanitarian and medical conferences that sought to resolve pressing issues of the time.

Dr. Wernher von Braun asked a crowded November 1962 Mississippi State College auditorium why the Soviets continued ahead of the Americans in space. He reasoned that Americans had become too “soft” with a “life of comfort, ease, and pleasure.” He challenged the students to embrace new technologies and sciences and to “vigorously” explore space. However, when it came to physically flying a spacecraft, one of the most popular questions reporters asked was when a woman would fly into space. The audience need not worry. Von Braun and Bob Gilruth were “reserving 110 pounds of pay¬load for recreational equipment.” Von Braun's joke about women space fliers, his fears of “soft” living and his plea to move “vigorously” in space mirrored the masculinity crisis in the public discourse. His speech created spaceflight as a masculine space where women belonged as a novelty and not in the seri¬ous business of spaceflight.Women proved themselves to be contributors and active participants in aviation, beginning with the Wright Brothers’ sister, Katherine, who was instrumental in selling flight. Despite sex and racial discrimination, women eagerly earned their pilots’ licenses while corporate airline owners used women as stewardesses to publicly sell the safety of flight. Women pilots accen¬tuated femininity on a spectrum, such as the more conventional femininity of pilot Jackie Cochran, or the more masculine appearance of Amelia Earhart, Florence Lowe “Poncho” Barnes, and the first Black licensed woman pilot, Bessie Coleman. Whatever version of femininity they presented, these women in early aviation danced atop planes, created clubs, flew in air derbies, across oceans and even tested and ferried airplanes during World War II.

Before Cannes, the leading body of the Red Cross Red Crescent movement was the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) based in Geneva. Established in 1863, the ICRC was primarily responsible for alleviating human suffering during times of war and regulating conflicts through the development of international humanitarian law. After the First World War, the ICRC did not wish to be altered too radically, either in terms of structure or in terms of mission. The idea that a new international Red Cross organisation would emerge, or that this organisation would be in competition with the ICRC, surprised and troubled its leadership. Even if what would later be called the League of Red Cross Societies was to operate in a totally different landscape – that of peacetime, in the fields of public health and relief – the process of its creation, which includes the Cannes Medical Conference, was a challenging experience for the ICRC. This chapter considers how Henry P. Davison and representatives of the five national societies that he had assembled within a Committee of Red Cross Societies engaged with the ICRC in their attempt to transform the movement. In other words, this chapter contextualises the Cannes Medical Conference within a greater, longer and more complex process of negotiation between different visions for the future of the movement because it was not only about public health but also about the politics, structures and governance of the movement. This period of fast-paced negotiations enables the conceptualisation of the Cannes Medical Conference as a lens through which to observe the tectonic changes at play in the Red Cross Red Crescent movement at a time when national societies sought to expand the scope of their activities navigating a somewhat cautious and at times reluctant ICRC.

The Cannes Medical Conference can be located within what some have called the ‘Wilsonian moment’: a time that saw a reconfiguration of the world order. As the First World War drew to an end, centuries-old empires collapsed while the United States emerged as a leading global power and sought to redefine international relations. US President Woodrow Wilson championed the creation of the League of Nations, and the League of Red Cross Societies was set to become its non-governmental humanitarian counterpart. Although there had otherwise been a transnational evolution among some of the Red Cross national societies that were already active in peacetime work before the First World War, driving the whole movement towards public health was spearheaded by the American Red Cross in the aftermath of the conflict. The chapter argues that the League of Red Cross Societies was not a revolution for the Red Cross movement, but an evolution, an expansion in a context of global post-war health emergency and identity crisis for Red Cross national societies. That evolution was catalysed by vision, energy and money made in the United States of America, an American leadership that resulted in the creation of the League of Red Cross Societies somewhat paradoxically enabled by the ICRC's reluctance to transform itself. The Cannes Medical Conference took place within a swift interim, after the guns had fallen silent but before the signing of the peace treaties; a time when humanity could dream of different futures and think about its next war: that against disease, one which would be led outside the governmental space, specifically by the League of Red Cross Societies.

NASA released the first job announcement for their new hyphenated scientist-astronauts in 1964. The space administration wanted candidates who possessed a minimum of a bachelor's degree in natural sciences, medicine or engineering but preferred a doctorate degree. The applicants had to be born on or after August 1, 1930, be United States citizens, no taller than six feet and be able to pass the Class I Military Flight Status Physical. With no flying experience required, the scientist-astronauts did not have to be jet test pilots. The goal was to have an astronaut trained to conduct scientific research in space as opposed to relying on a pilot astronaut to conduct experiments.

Up until this point, Dr. Jocelyn Gill taught the astronauts space science. Gill received her bachelor's degree from Wellesley College in 1938, going on to earn a master's from the University of Chicago in astronomy and astrophysics and finally her doctorate from Yale University. Gill started working at NASA in 1961 after serving as a professor at Wellesley and Smith Colleges. She had also previously been a research scientist for MIT. Gill developed close relationships with the astronauts and gave them science debriefings before each launch. At the age of 47 she was too old to be a scientist-astronaut despite that her “petite and attractive figure” would easily fit into the spacecraft. The talent of Gill and her women colleagues had reporters wondering, “With women soaring so high in the space program, what's to keep them from making future voyages to planets?”