HISTORY 249 HEALTH AND THE HEALER IN WESTERN HISTORY Prof. F. Wallis/Prof. T. Schlich Fall term 2012 Tuesday/Thursday 11:35 AM-12:55 PM Leacock 26 CONTACT INFORMATION Office hours: (1) Prof. Schlich, Tuesday 2.00-4.00 PM, 3647 Peel Street 211 (2) Prof. Wallis, Wednesday 10.00-12.00 AM, Leacock 822. Telephone: (1) Prof. Schlich 398-2059 (2) Prof. Wallis 398-6213 (both with Voice Mail). E-mails: (1) thomas.schlich@mcgill.ca (2) faith.wallis@mcgill.ca TEACHING ASSISTANTS: tba COURSE LIBRARIAN Christopher Lyons Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McIntyre Medical Sciences Building, room 414 christopher.lyons@mcgill.ca 514-398-4475, ext 09847# "MY COURSES" (WebCT) This course makes use of "My Courses". Available on the course site are/will be: this course guide (equipped with links to on-line readings) recordings of all lectures instructions for all assignments PowerPoints for all lectures (posted after the lecture) sample examinations Library Resources Page ABOUT THIS COURSE This course is a survey of the history of medicine in the Western world (Europe and North America) from antiquity to the present. It aims: to sketch in chronological sequence the main lines of the development of medicine as a kind of knowledge and as a practice; to examine the ways in which the body, health and disease were conceptualized in the past, and to situate the major shifts in medical knowledge and practice in the context of broader historical changes in Western society; to examine the changing role of "the healer" over time, and in cultural and social context; to track the evolution of some of the major institutional frameworks of medicine, such as medical education and hospitals; to analyse the ways in which past societies and their healers have interacted in the face of medical challenges.
STRUCTURE OF THE COURSE The course is divided into three parts: Part 1 "Western Traditional Medicine" covers the longest time span -- from prehistory to the end of the 18 th century. During this time period, Western medical ideas and practices evolved within what was essentially a stable paradigm, grounded in ancient Greco-Roman scientific concepts, and view of the physician-patient interface that was profoundly shaped by the medicine's "academic turn" in the Middle Ages. The Scientific Revolution and the social transformations of the 17 th and 18 th began the process of dismantling that paradigm. Part 2 " Western Modern Medicine" looks at the momentous changes that took place in medicine from the mid-18 th century to the beginning of the 20 th century. During this period, Western medicine created new models of the body as a biological organism, and revolutionary theories about disease origin and process. This change is paralleled by massive social, economic and cultural transformations in society at large. As a result, the way doctors and patients interacted, and the settings in which they encountered one another, were profoundly altered. Part 3 "Medicine in the 20/21 st Century" looks at the triumphs and the problems of this new paradigm in the context of a rapidly changing society (democratization, consumerism, globalization...). "Biomedicine" rests on an explicit alliance between experimental science and clinical practice, but that alliance is often fraught with tension for doctors as well as for their patients and society at large. Technology has also transformed the experience of being a healer, and being a patient. COURSE REQUIREMENTS Students are required to: 1. Purchase the following at The Word bookstore, 469 Milton Street: Medicine Transformed. Health, Disease and Society in Europe 1800-1930 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004) The Course-pack 2. Do the readings for each lecture, as assigned below. Note that some of the readings are available on-line, and are therefore not in the course-pack. Links have been built into the version of this syllabus which is on WebCT. The readings are extremely important; you will be asked to refer to them in assignments and examinations. Remember that to access these articles, you need to either use a McGill computer or configure your personal computer with Virtual Private Network (VPN), which you can download from www.mcgill.ca/ics/tools/vpn. 3. Do the following assignments: Written exercise 1 (3-5pp): primary source analysis analysis 20%
-due 9 October Written exercise 2 (5-7pp): primary source and historical context analysis 40% -due 15 November Final Take-Home exam due December 11 (40%) All assignments are submitted electronically as e-mail attachments. The date and time on the e-mail must be on or before the due date and time, as specified in the instructions for each assignment. One mark is deducted for every working day an assignment is in arrears The first assignment is a short essay in which you will analyze a historical document ("primary source") pertaining to the history of medicine. The document you will be asked to analyze will concern the period of history covered up to the due date of the assignment (Antiquity, the Middle Ages, or the early modern period the 16-17th centuries). The second assignment will require you to analyze a 19 th -century text and also to find and discuss modern scholarship ("secondary sources") that help you understand that text in its historical context. You will receive more detailed instructions in the assignments at the appropriate time. The final take home exam will consist of essays on topics from the whole course. It will test your knowledge of the readings, the materials discussed in the conferences, and the lectures. In accord with McGill University s Charter of Students Rights, students in this course have the right to submit in English or in French any written work that is to be graded. McGill University values academic integrity. Therefore all students must understand the meaning and consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offences under the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures (see www.mcgill.ca/students/srr/honest/ ) for more information). Calendar of Lectures Week 1 (1) Tues 4 Sept: Class cancelled (Provincial Election) (2) Thursday 6 September: The Five Pillars of Medicine: Nature -- Knowledge -- the Anatomical Body -- Profession -- Therapy. "Western Traditional Medicine": What is it? Week 2 (3) Tues 11 Sept: Medicine in the Ancient Greek World 1. Coursepack: Vivian Nutton, Medicine in the Greek World, 800-50BC, in The Western Medical Tradition 800BC to AD 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 11-38.
(4) Thur 13 Sept: Medicine in the Ancient Greek World 2 Week 3 Tuesday 18 September: add/drop period ends (5) Tues 18 Sept: The medical world of Galen Coursepack: Helen King, Greek and Roman Medicine (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 2002), pp. 32-43. (6) Thur 20 Sept: From Galen to Galenism: Medicine in the Islamic world, and the Early Medieval West. Coursepack: Peter E. Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2007), ch. 1 "The Emergence of Islamic Medicine." Week 4 (7) Tues 25 Sept: Medieval Medicine 1: Medicine's "Academic Turn". On-line e-book chapter: Michael McVaugh, "Medicine in the Latin Middle Ages," in Western Medicine: an Illustrated History, ed. Irvine Loudon (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), ch. 4 (pp. 54-65). (8) Thur 27 Sept: Medieval Medicine 2: Practices and Practitioners. On Web CT: Faith Wallis, "Two Case Studies in Medieval 'Medicalization': Leprosy and Plague" Week 5 (9) Tues 2 Oct: Renaissance Medicine: "nature" and "knowledge" at the crossroads. Coursepack:. Mary Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Ch. 3 "Learned Medicine" (10) Thur 4 Oct: "Know Thyself" and "Inevitable Fate": the Paradoxes of Early Modern Anatomy. Coursepack:Andrew Cunningham, The Anatomical Renaissance: the Resurrection of the Anatomical Projects of the Ancients (Cambridge: Scolar Press, 1997), ch. 4 "Vesalius: The Revival of Greek Anatomy". NB: We will be using this reading in next Tuesday's conference as well. Week 6 (Assignment 1 due) (11) Tues 9 Oct: Conference section: Why dissection? Discussion materials on WebCT
(12) Thur 11 Oct: Did medicine have a "Scientific Revolution"? Coursepack: Silvia De Renzi, "Old and New Models of the Body," in The Healing Arts: Health, Disease and Society in Europe 1500-1800, ed. Peter Elmer. Manchester: Manchester University Press for The Open University, 2004) ch. 7 (pp. 166-195). Week 7 (13) Tues 16 Oct: Finding Research Materials in the History of Medicine": Christopher Lyons, Osler Library. (14) Thur 18 Oct: Medicine in the 18 th century Coursepack: Roy Porter, The Eighteenth Century in The Western Medical Tradition 800BC to AD 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 371-458, 472-475. Week 8 (15) Tues 23 Oct: Modern Medical Science I: the Clinical Revolution Textbook: L.S. Jacyna, The Localization of Disease, in Medicine Transformed. Health, Disease and Society in Europe 1800-1930 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 1-30. (16) Thur 25 Oct: Modern Medical Science II: the Laboratory Revolution Textbook: Deborah Brunton, The Rise of Laboratory Medicine, in Medicine Transformed. Health, Disease and Society in Europe 1800-1930 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 92-118, Week 9 (17) Tues 30 Oct: Modern Medical Profession Textbook: Deborah Brunton: The Emergence of a Modern Profession? in Medicine Transformed. Health, Disease and Society in Europe 1800-1930 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 119-150. (18) Thur 1 Nov: The Rise of Surgery Textbook: Thomas Schlich, "The Emergence of Modern Surgery," in Medicine Transformed: Health, Disease and Society in Europe, ed. Deborah Brunton (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2004), 61-91. Week 10 (19) Tues 6 Nov: The Rise of the Lunatic Asylum, 188-1952 (guest lecture Prof. David Wright) Textbook: Jonathan Andrews, "The Rise of the Asylum in Britain," in Medicine Transformed: Health, Disease and Society in Europe, ed. Deborah Brunton (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2004), 298-330.
(20) Thur 8 Nov: Surgery and the Technological Fix Coursepack: Thomas Schlich, The Technological Fix and the Modern Body: Surgery as a Paradigmatic Case, in: The Cultural History of the Human Body (ed. by Linda Kalof and William Bynum), vol. 6 1920-present. The Age of Change (ed. by Ivan Crozier), London: Berg Publishers, 2010 pp. 71-92). Week 11 (assignment 2 due) (21) Tues 13 Nov: Conference section: Why Psychosurgery? Discussion materials on WebCT (22) Thu 15 Nov: The New Hospital Textbook: Hilary Marland, The Changing Role of the Hospital, 1800-1900, in Medicine Transformed. Health, Disease and Society in Europe 1800-1930 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 31-60. Week 12 (23) Tue 20 Nov: Alternative Medicine Coursepack: Norman Gevitz, Unorthodox Medical Systems, in Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine, ed. by William F. Bynum and Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1993), vol. 1, pp. 603-633. Don Bates Why not Call Modern Medicine Alternative?, in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 40 (2000), pp. 1-17. (24) Thur 22 Nov: 20 th Century Biomedicine Coursepack: Allan M. Brandt and Martha Gardner, "The Golden Age of Medicine?", in Medicine in the Twentieth Century, ed. Roger Cooter and John Pickstone (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000), 21-37. Week 13 (25) Tues 27 Nov: Clinical Trials in the 20/21 st Century On-line article: H.M. Marks, "Trust and Mistrust in the Marketplace: Statistics and Clinical Research, 1945-1960," History of Science 38 (2000): 343-355. (26) Thur 29 Nov: Human Experimentation Coursepack: Susan Lederer, Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before the Second World War (1995), xiii-xvi, 1-26. On-line article: R. Benedeck and J. Erlen, "The Scientific Environment of the Tuskegee Study of Syphilis, 1920-1960," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 43 (1999): 1-30. Week 14 (27) Tues 4 Dec: The Five Pillars of Medicine revisited
Take home exam due on 11 December.