Many pulp magazine artists learned that playing on the fears of the public was good for a sale, and one of the best such bits was "strapped to the operating table" theme.
There's nothing more sinister than a masked man holding a gleaming knife standing above you as a bright light blinds you.
The unsettling theme of the blood-hungry doctor still lives on today with stories of botched surgeries making headlines and lengthy reports of such incidents running on news programs.
Likewise, the theme of a doctor cavalierly plying his trade has been the subject of movies like "Malice." And mad doctors with more sinister plans have been the subject of horror films as early as "Frankenstein."