Health Care in America: 1800-Present

Catalog description

This course will focus on the history of doctors, patients, epidemics, and other illnesses from smallpox to HIV/AIDS over the last three centuries. It examines the rise of the health care professions, changing meanings of disease, scientific discoveries, new problems of high costs and insurance, and medicine's effects on society. Topics include vaccinations, public health, popular images of medicine, childbirth, the modern hospital, Medicare, and Medicaid.