HIS-398: History of Medicine

This world history course is designed to examine the role that health and midicine has played throughout history. Beginning with the primordial origins of medicine, the course traces its development by examining its various directions, approaches, and understandings in different temporal and geographical contexts. Going beyond the various historical milestones that bring health and medicine to the forefront (the bubonic plague, the role of smallpox in the Conquest of Mexico, the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, etc.) the course is designed for students to grapple with the concepts of health and medicine, the divides and continuum between "folk" and "conventional" medicine, and to examine ethical issues in both their historical contexts and in the present.