History of Western Medicine, Health, and Society, 1500-2000

Catalog description

Designed especially for non-History majors, this course examines the social and cultural histories of medicine and perceptions of health from 1500 through the modern era. We will examine developments regarding health advice, the medical profession, and how environmental changes affected approaches to maintaining a healthy lifestyle in different periods. To do this we will analyze shifts in medicine and perceptions of healthiness through the lenses of major historical transitions beginning during the Renaissance where colonization of the ‘New World’ brought about transformations in medicinal practice and radically altered Western interpretations of the world. We will then proceed through the Enlightenment to show how understandings of medicine and health continued to shift alongside concepts of individual rights and scientific thought through the age of Atlantic Revolutions and into the 20th century where Western medicine evolved in response to the demands of the world wars and the nuclear age.