Pills and Potions: Histories of U.S. Health Care and Medicine

Catalog description

This course explores the history of attempts to heal Americans from disease over four centuries. The course will consider the complex interplay of scientific ideas about disease with the social and cultural contexts that shaped the experiences of people in accessing health care. Students will consider the increasing success with which medicine has healed the body, and the development of the medical professions from the late eighteenth century to the present. The course will also consider issues of public health as opposed to individual medical practice. Governments' and corporations' inevitable influence on public health measures, as the example of cigarettes shows, will be addressed. The influence of race, class and sex on how bodies are viewed and healthcare is received will be discussed.