Syllabus

Course Description

This course might be subtitled "America as Medicine".  Its premise is that American medical history is part of broader issues of American history.  There are seven main related issues:

1. Health as freedom in medical practice and individual choice.
2. The conceptualization of class, race, gender, age, lifestyle, and place in terms of health.
3. Health and hygiene as the means of Americanization.
4. The expression of cultural and religious diversity in medicine.
5. Health as the American dream.
6. Health care as the battleground in American political economy.
7. Health care as the locus of the American fascination with technology.

Course Objectives

1. Basic knowledge of differing conceptions of disease, health, and healing thorughout American history.
2. An understanding of the changing role and image of medicine and medical professionals in American life.
3. Knowledge of the changing social and cultural meanings and entanglements of medical science and practice throughout American history.
4. Development of skills for reading the works of historians and evaluating them.
5. Ability to articulate important historical questions and utilize primary sources to answer them.
6. Acquire an historical and critical context that will be of use in encounters with matters of health and medicine as
   • intelligent citizens and professionals on issues of public health and questions of medical ethics; and
   • as creative thinkers about more satisfactory modes of medical practice and health improvement and protection.

Prerequisites

None

Required Texts

• Arthur Hertzler, The Horse and Buggy Doctor
• Alan M. Kraut, Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes and the Immigrant Menace
• Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith
• Linda Nash, Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge
• Sheila Rothman, Living in the Shadow of Death
• James Whorton, Nature Cures: The History of Alternative Medicine in America
• Additional Readings

Grading