Medicine, Science and Modernity (HSTM60162)

Aims and Objectives

On completion of this unit successful students will have:

  • a thorough knowledge of the interactions between the biosciences and medicine, from 1800 to the mid-twentieth century;
  • an understanding to the historiographical development and issues in the field;
  • a grounding in relevant methods and techniques to support dissertation research.

Students successfully completing this module will have developed:

  • a familiarity with the major developments in biosciences and medicine
  • experience of presenting oral arguments in seminar discussions
  • the ability to identify and research a topic of their own choosing
  • the ability to find and assess critically primary and secondary sources
  • the ability to write, with full scholarly apparatus, an essay on the basis of their individual research

Course Content

Topics include:

  • The rise of hospital medicine
  • Professionalisation and expertis
  • Public health
  • Natural History to ‘Biology’
  • Evolution
  • Experimental medicine and its critics
  • Bacteriology and immunology
  • Mendelism and the rise of genetics
  • Vitamins and biochemistry
  • Sera, vaccines and antibiotics

 

Assessment

This course is assessed by essays

 

Credits: 30

Compulsary/Optional: Optional