Warner & Tighe, Major Problems in the History of American Medicine and Public Health
Lewis, Sinclair, Arrowsmith
Rosenberg, C.E., The Cholera Years

Articles on reserve
electronic reserves
Gerald Grob, "The Growth of Public Mental Hospitals"
Judith W. Leavitt, Typhoid Mary, chapter 2
Michael MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam, chapter 2
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg and Charles Rosenberg, "The Female Animal"
Charles Rosenberg, "Inward Vision and Outward Glance"
Sarah Stage, Female Complaints, chapter 4

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Catalog Description

This course explores the social and cultural forces that have influenced the development of modern medicine.  Although it examines important trends in England, France, and Germany, it focuses especially upon the transformation of medicine in American from the colonial period to the twentieth century.  Through primary and secondary sources, it looks at changing pattterns of disease and illness, the social response to disease, the development of the medical profession, and the rise of health care institutions.  It pays particular attention to the question of how individuals and groups have used medicine and medical ideas to determine cultural ideas of health and proper behavior.

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Course Objectives

The course challenges students to see medical history as a reflection not only of scientific discoveries, but of changing social, economic and political values.  As a history course, it will focus upon health and disease in past eras, as well as the roots of contemporary practice of medicine.  Students will be expected to read,  analyze and discuss several monographs and articles, as well as write a short paper based on at least one primary source.
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Grading

Test 1 and 2           20 % each
Test  3                    25%
Paper                     25 %
Discussion              10%

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Class Schedule

February 12:   Introduction

February 17   Medical World of the 17th Century
                        due:  on reserve, Mystical Bedlam, chapter 2
                     electronic reserves

February 24   Health and Disease in America
                        due:  Warner & Tighe, pp. 40-48

February 26   The Inoculation Controversy
                      due:  Warner & Tighe, pp. 30-37; 48-54

March 3          The World of Benjamin Rush
                       due:  Warner & Tighe:  pp. 60-62; 64-67; 80-90

March 5          The World of Martha Ballard
                       due:  Warner & Tighe pp. 63-64; 67-69; 73-80
                        for additional optional materials see: martha ballard's diary

March 10        Early 19th century American medicine
                       due  Warner & Tighe, pp. 70-71; 81-90; 108-114
                        begin reading The Cholera Years

March 12           The revolution in France/ test review

March 17           TEST 1

March 19&;      Medical Social Thought:  The South and Slavery
                        due:  Warner & Tighe, pp. 103-108; 120-123

March 24        Medical Social Thought:  Women and Sex
                        due:  on reserve, Rosenberg, "The Female Animal"
                     electronic reserves
                                Warner & Tighe, pp. 131-133; 140-142; 339-347

March 26        Self-Help and Sectarian Medicine
                        due:  Warner & Tighe, pp. 71-73; 129-130; 135-136
                        due:  on reserve, Stage, Female Complaints, chapter 4, pp. 89-110
                       electronic reserves

April 7             The Civil War
                        due:  Warner & Tighe, pp. 165-195

April 9             Changing mid-century medicine
                        due:  The Cholera Years  for discussion

April 14            The Hospital and the Nurse
                        due:  on reserve, Rosenberg, "Inward Vision and Outward Glance,:
                     electronic reserves
                                Warner & Tighe, pp. 29-292; 304-309; 362-366; 368-372
                                Start reading Arrowsmith

April 16         Insanity and the Insane Asylum
                     due: on reserve:  Grob, "The Growth of Public Mental Hospitals
                     electronic reserves
                            Warner & Tighe, pp. 99-101; 322-324
                             continuing reading Arrowsmith

April 21        The world of Charles Guiteau/test review

April 23        TEST 2

April 28        Revolutions in Science
                    due:  Warner & Tighe,  ppp. 198-207; 213-215; 216-232
                    continuing reading Arrowsmith

April 30       Flexner and changing medical education
                    due:  Warner & Tighe,  pp. 133-140; 277-289; 292-298; 309-315
                     continuing reading Arrowsmith

May 5         The germ theory and its impact
                    due:  Warner & Tighe, pp. 232-264
                     continuing reading Arrowsmith

May 7          Public Health and Eugenics
                    due:  on reserve,  Leavitt, Typhoid Mary, chapter 2
                 electronic reserves
                    Warner & Tighe, pp. 268-272; 324-329; 379-386
                     continuing reading Arrowsmith

May 12        Specialization and professionalization
                    due for discussion,  Arrowsmith
                    Warner & Tighe, pp. 351-366; pp. 372-279

May 14         Health Insurance and Politics
                    due:  Warner & Tighe, pp. 427-441; 469-481; 485-489

May 19        Race and medicine
                    due: Warner & Tighe, pp. 366-367;  389-422

May 21        Twentieth first century disease and practice
                    due;  Warner & Tighe, pp. 441-457; 481-485; 489-498
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Class Format

This class will consist of lectures and discussions.  Be prepared to discuss the readings on the day they are due.
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Paper Assignment

There will be a short paper (6-8 pages) on a topic of choice.  Papers should be based on at least 5 outside readings, one of which must be a primary source, and only one may be from the internet.  A list of suggested topics is included below.  These are only general suggestions  Others are welcomed.  If you have trouble finding primary material, consult the links to the web given here, or go to First Search and order your book through interlibrary loan (ask how to do this, if you do not know).  It will take about 2 weeks to get the book, so plan early.  Any plagiarism will result in an automatic F.

 College of Physicians of Philadelphia
medical history on the web
 medical images
history of medicine
american memory
primary sources +
19th century American primary sources
Yellow fever
Defoe's Journal of the Plague
 phrenology
civil war medicine
 

Paper topics are due, in writing, on April 7th.  As this is a history course, the paper must be historical in nature.  Please confine yourself to topics before 1970, or the paper tends to read like a newspaper article.  If you wish to change your topic, you must discuss it will me and submit the change in writing.    No paper will be read on a topic that has not been previously submitted.

Papers are due on May 12th.  If you wish to submit a draft, plan to get it to me early so I can read and return it in order for you to submit the final paper on time.  A late paper will be marked down one complete grade:  No excuses.

Possible paper topics:

Physicians attitudes toward or treatment of:
sex                           the elderly
slavery                     women
religion                     African Americans
the poor                   death
the rich                     birth control
abortion

Reforms:
public health             diet
sewers                     dress
syphilis                     bathing

Organization of the profession:
education                 malpractice
licensing                  specialization
insurance                 public health
new laws, (Medicare; Hill-Burton, etc.)

Development of specialties:
pediatrics                 geriatrics
neurology                 surgery
psychiatry                 psychiatry
obstetrics                 gynecology
.
Therapies and sects:
bloodletting               thomsonianism
lobotomies                phrenology
hydropothy               spiritualism
homeopathy             Christian Science
faith healing               mesmerism
chiropaths                 osteopaths

Institutions:
hospitals (the more specific the better)
insane asylums
doctors' office
clinics
sanitariums

Health professionals
midwives
nurses
domestic healers
dentists
pharmacists

War time medicine
(any war)

Psychological therapies
moral therapy           Freud, Watson, etc.
electric shock           psychoanalysis
lobotomy                 phrenology
 

Changing disease theories:
any theory -- miasma, contagion, astrology, germ theory, humoral, etc.

Procedure and techniques:
forceps                   birthing chair
x-ray                      twilight sleep
stethoscope            bloodletting
antiseptic surgery    antibiotics

Diseases and epidemics:
pneumonia              syphilis
influenza                  yellow fever
tuberculosis            small pox
polio                      hysteria
cholera                   neurasthenia
malaria

Medical controversies:
autopsies
vivisection
eugenics
medical nihilism
euthanasia

Autobiographies and biographies:
S. Weir Mitchell          Richard Cabot
Charles Caldwell         W.E. Kellogg
Daniel Drake               Clara Barton
John Morgan               Mary Gore Nichols
Benjamin Rush             J. Marion Sims
William Welch             George Beard
Harriot Hunt                Elizabeth Blackwell
                                   Mary Putnam Jacobi
 

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Advice for Success

There are no hidden secrets to doing well on this course.  If you keep up with the reading, participate in class and keep careful notes, you will succeed.  Study guides for tests will be passed out one week before the exam.  Take them seriously!!! If you can answer the general essays, you can answer both the essays and identifications that will confront you.  Do not save your paper until the last date.  I have supplied general areas for paper topics.  Within these broad topics try to find specific questions.  The paper must be historical in nature.  Without special permission, no paper should focus on a topic after 1970.  Be prepared to discuss and ask questions.  For many of you, this material (or at least some of it) will be quite new.  For the science-oriented students, the history may be unknown; for the historians, the science may be quiet foreign.  I do invite questions about either at anytime, especially if they reflect a thorough reading of the assignment.  If you must miss a lecture, please ask a fellow student for the notes.  I will be happy to clarify them if you do not understand something.
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Policy on Student Class Attendance

Although attendance will not be kept, roll will be called in order to learn names.  As there is no general text for this course, it is impossible to do well unless you attend.  Discussion will take place throughout the semester, and especially upon completion of the assigned books. Obviously, you cannot get credit for discussion if you are not there.  In the end, it is far easier to go to class than to try to make it up.

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