Society and Health in Historical Perspective

2019/2020

Academic Year

ENG

Instruction in English

4

ECTS credits

Delivered at:

Department of History

Course type:

Elective course

When:

4 year, 3 module

Instructor

Loskutova, Marina

Course Syllabus

Abstract

This course surveys the history of medical knowledge and practice from antiquity to the early 20th century. The course will explore a number of ongoing themes: race, bodily difference, and medicine; medicine and the environment; women, gender, and medicine; the history of the body; the history of sexuality; and the close connections between forms of social order and forms of medical knowledge.

Learning Objectives

• Students will understand the fundamental questions and methods of the history of medicine; they will develop critical skills of assessing medicine’s complex role in contemporary society.

Expected Learning Outcomes

• Student will be able to read analytically academic literature for seminars, summarise it, highlight the main arguments, and critically evaluate them
• Students will be able to discuss academic literature during a seminar and participate in a group discussion in English
• Student will be able to read academic literature for seminars, discuss it during a seminar and participate in a group discussion in English.

Course Contents

• Introduction
  Health and disease from a historical perspective. The practitioners' perspective and critical social history of medicine.
• Health and disease in antiquity
  Paleopathology and paleomedicine. Medicine in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. Medicine and health in the Graeco-Roman world.
• Health, illness and disease in the middle ages: Europe and the Islamic world.
  Health, illness and disease in the middle ages: Europe and the Islamic world.
• Medicine and the Enlightenment.
  Medicine and the Enlightenment.

Assessment Elements

• Participation in seminars
• Short oral or written summary
• The exam

Interim Assessment

• Interim assessment (3 module)
  0.2 * Participation in seminars + 0.4 * Short oral or written summary + 0.4 * The exam

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Bynum, W. F. (2008). The History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: OUP Oxford. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=363643

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Porter, R. (2001). Bodies Politic : Disease, Death and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900. London: Reaktion Books. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=440604