HIST 346 Outline

THE KING'S UNIVERSITY

COURSE NUMBER:

HIST 346

COURSE TITLE:

Medicine and Society in the Atlantic World: 1660-1918

NAME OF INSTRUCTOR:

Dr. Richard Vaudry

CREDIT WEIGHT AND WEEKLY TIME DISTRIBUTION:

credits 3(hrs lect 3 - hrs sem 0 - hrs lab 0)

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This course seeks to explore the role which medicine has played in the shaping of North Atlantic societies from the Great Plague of London in the mid-17th century to the Spanish Influenza epidemic of the early 20th. Topics to be discussed include physicians and surgeons, quacks and "irregulars", disease and diseases, hospitals, the practice of medicine, the changing nature of surgery, women and medicine, and medicine and empire.

Prerequisites: 3 credits in history

REQUIRED TEXTS:

W.F. Bynum, History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction
Roy Porter, Blood and Guts

MARK DISTRIBUTION IN PERCENT:


Essay Proposal	10%
Illustrated Essay (3000 words)	40%
Midterm	10%
Final Examination	40%

	100%

COURSE OUTLINE:

Approaches to the Social History of Medicine
Medicine and Atlantic History
Hippocratic Tradition and Galenic Medicine
Medicine in the Early Christian Era and the Middle Ages
Renaissance Medicine
A Reformation in Medicine
Medicine and the New Science
Disease and the ‘Columbian Exchange’
Plague in 17th century England
From the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment
Patients and Practitioners in 18th Century England
Physicians, Surgeons and Apothecaries
From Leiden to Edinburgh: Medical Education
Surgery Before Antiseptics
Quacks, Irregulars and Folk Medicine in the 17th and 18th centuries
Bloodletting and other ‘Heroic’ measures
Transatlantic Medicine: Philadelphia, Boston, Montreal
French Medicine in the Revolutionary Era
The Birth of the Hospital
The debate over vaccinations
Understanding disease
Childbirth, chloroform and women’s bodies
The Cholera Years: Europe, the United States and BNA
War and Medicine
Medicine, Politics and the State
Medicine and Empire
Spanish Influena
Into the 20th Century
The Antibiotic Revolution

Required texts, assignments, and grade distributions may vary from one offering of this course to the next. Please consult the course instructor for up to date details.