DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

TRENT UNIVERSITY

HISTORY 2601H
(Winter 2017)
Public Health and Medicine:
Doctors, Nurses and Patients in History
(Peterborough Campus)

Instructor: Trent Email: Telephone:

Dr. Kevin Siena ksiena@trentu.ca (705) 748-1011 ex. 7139
Campus: Office Location: Office Hours:
Peterborough Champlain College I 3 Wednesday 10:00-11:00

Academic Administrative Assistant: Email:

Trisha Pearce history@trentu.ca
Office Location: LEC S. 101 Telephone: (705) 748-1011 ex. 7706

Course Description:

The history of health and medicine – broadly defined – offers a rich window into the past. Of all the
scientific endeavors medicine may be the most profoundly social. What gets defined as a disease? Who
heals? Who has access to healthcare? What is the state’s role in the health of the citizenry? These and
similar questions reveal the deep political, cultural, social and economic forces that have, throughout
history, shaped medical encounters and informed the production of medical knowledge. This course
explores a variety of examples that highlight this interaction between the scientific and the social, such
as epidemic diseases, sexually transmitted infections, public health, vaccination, gynecology,
institutionalization, the science of race and eugenics.

Required Text: (Available at Trent Bookstore)

John Harley Warner & Janet A. Tighe, (eds.) Major Problems in the History of American Medicine
and Public Health Houghton Mifflin, 2001).

Learning System/Blackboard: Some course materials, such as assignment instructions, will be

posted on Blackboard. The seminar readings for week 10 will also appear there. Both the Book
Review and Research Essay will be submitted there via Safe Assign (in addition to handing in a
hard copy in class.)
Course Format: One 2-hour lecture + one fifty minute seminar per week.

Type Day Time Location

Lecture Tuesday 15:00-16:50 ESC B203
Seminar Thursday 10:00-10:50 SC W1
Seminar Thursday 11:00-11:50 SC W1

Course Goals:

Students will obtain a deeper awareness of the political, social, economic and cultural forces that have
historically informed medicine (broadly defined). Students will develop their skills in historical research,
analysis, interpretation, and problem solving, working with both primary and secondary sources, and
critically evaluating the ideas of major thinkers in the field. Students will be encouraged to make use of
the tools of interdisciplinary theory and historiography to situate their own original arguments in the
context of ongoing historical debates and to assess evidence critically. In essays and class discussions,
students will hone their ability to communicate ideas effectively and logically. Students on completing
the course successfully should understand the basic conventions of historical writing, the rules of
academic integrity and professionalism, the importance of personal initiative and accountability, and
the evolving nature of historical knowledge.

Learning Outcomes: I have developed the course to address several learning outcomes. By the end
of the course a successful student should:

1. Apprehend how medicine, whether practiced by doctors, nurses and other practitioners or
experienced by patients, changed over time due to socio-political forces.
2. Gain a deeper appreciation of the methods historians use to draw conclusions about medicine
and the body.
3. Become more adept at handling primary sources.
4. Improve their understanding of historiography.
5. Become a better writer and researcher.

Course Evaluation:
Type of Assignment Weighting Due Date
Seminar Participation I & II: (Weeks 1-6 and 10% + 10% = 20% In seminar, weekly
7-12)
Seminar Leadership: Each student will lead 10% Questions due at the start of
discussion once, by composing ten questions on that seminar
week’s readings, to be handed in. Students will
choose topics in seminar Week 1
Book Review: a 1250-1500 word essay reviewing a 13% Feb. 14
scholarly monograph on a topic related to the History
of Medicine
Bibliography: A bibliography of ten scholarly 7% Feb 14
history books and/or articles on the same topic as the
book reviewed for the Book Review assignment.
Research Essay: a 2,500-3,000 word research 20% April 4
essay on a topic related to the History of Medicine
Final Exam 30% Exam Period - TBA
2
SCHEDULE
Week 1: Lecture (January 10): Introduction: Typhoid Mary and the History of Public Health

Seminar (January 12): Sign up for Seminar Leadership

Week 2: Lecture (January 17): Early Medicine and the Lessons from Plague

Seminar (January 19): Medicine around 1800

Warner & Tighe, Major Problems:

Chapter 2: “Colonial Beginnings: A New World of Peoples, Disease and Healing”
pp. 26-54
+
Chapter 4, Essay # 1: Rosenberg “Belief and Ritual in Antebellum Medical
Therapeutics,” pp. 108-114.

Week 3: Lecture (January 24): The Pox: Sex, Disease and History

Seminar (January 26): Sex, Disease and Ethics: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments

Warner & Tighe, Major Problems:

Chapter 12: “The Culture of Biomedical Research: Human Subjects, Power and the
Scientific Method, 1920-65,” pp. 388-423
+
Chapter 13, Document # 4: pp. 431-35.

Week 4: Lecture (January 31): Doctors, Healers and Patients in the Medical Marketplace

Seminar (February 2): Patients, Practitioners and the Medical Marketplace

Warner & Tighe, Major Problems:

Chapter 3: “The Medical Marketplace in the Early Republic, 1785-1825,” pp. 55-90.
+
Chapter 9: Essay 1, pp. 298-303.

Week 5 Lecture (February 7): Gender, the Body and Women’s Diseases

Seminar (February 9): Gender, Identity and Medical Practice

Warner & Tighe, Major Problems:

Chapter 5: “The Healer’s Identity in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century: Character, Care,
and Competition, 1830-1875,” pp.125-157.
+
Chapter 11: Essay # 2, pp. 372-379, and Chapter 15 Document # 5, pp. 516-520

3
Week 6: Lecture (February 14) Hospitals

NOTE: BOOK REVIEW and BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE at Lecture

Seminar (February 16) Institutionalization and Medical Education

Warner & Tighe, Major Problems:

Chapter 9: “Strategies for Improving Medical Care: Institutions, Science and
Standardization, 1870-1940,” pp. 275-316 (Note: Skip Essay # 1)
+
Chapter 1: Essay # 2, pp. 9-16.
+
Chapter 4: Document # 5 and Essay # 3, pp. 99-101 and 120-123.

READING BREAK

Week 7: Lecture (February 28) The Birth of Modern Public Health

Seminar (March 2) The Sanitary Idea

Warner & Tighe, Major Problems:

Chapter 6: “The Civil War, Efficiency and the Sanitary Impulse, 1845-1870,” pp.
159-195.

Week 8 Lecture (March 7) Medicine and Power: Slavery and Imperialism

Note: It is my goal to return the Book Reviews, Bibliographies and first-half Seminar
Participation grades by this lecture. (The final date to withdraw from Winter Term Courses
is March 10.)

Seminar (March 9) The Laboratory Revolution

Warner & Tighe, Major Problems:
Chapter 7: “Reconfiguring ‘Scientific Medicine,’ 1865-1900,” pp. 196-233
+
Chapter 4: Document # 7, pp. 103-106.

Week 9: Lecture (March 14) Germs and Controversy: the rise of Bacteriology

Seminar (March 16) The Gospel of Germs

Warner & Tighe, Major Problems:

Chapter 8: “The Gospel of Germs: Microbes, Strangers and Habits of the Home,
1880-1925,” pp. 234-273

4
Week 10: Lecture (March 21) Eugenics

Seminar (March 23) Race, Eugenics and Nazi Medicine

ON BLACKBOARD:
Henry Friedlander, The Origins of the Nazi Genocide (University of North Carolina
Press, 1995), Chapter One: “The Setting,” pp. 1-22

Paul Weindling, “The Nazi Medical Experiments,” in Ezekiel J. Emanuel et al (eds.),

The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2008), pp.
18-30.

ALSO Read:
Warner & Tighe, Major Problems:
Chapter 10, Document # 5, pp. 327-329
Chapter 11, Document # 7, pp. 366-68.

Week 11: Lecture (March 28) Public Health and the Welfare State

Seminar (March 30) Public Health, Rights and Access in the Twentieth Century

Warner & Tighe, Major Problems:

Chapter 14 “Rights, Access and the Bottom Line” 459-498 (Skip Document # 5!)
+
Chapter 13: Documents # 2, 3, and 5, pp. 428-31 and 435-437
+
Chapter 15, Essay # 2, pp. 532-38.

Week 12: Lecture (April 4) AIDS and the History of Medicine

NOTE: RESEARCH ESSAYS DUE AT LECTURE

Seminar (April 6) Course evaluations and exam review.

No Readings.

Course Policies:

Late work will be penalized 3 points per day including weekends. Extensions will only be granted
for extenuating circumstances, such as medical emergencies, supported by documentation.

University Policies
Academic Integrity:
Academic dishonesty, which includes plagiarism and cheating, is an extremely serious academic
offence and carries penalties varying from failure on an assignment to expulsion from the
University. Definitions, penalties, and procedures for dealing with plagiarism and cheating are set

5
out in Trent University’s Academic Integrity Policy. You have a responsibility to educate yourself –
unfamiliarity with the policy is not an excuse. You are strongly encouraged to visit Trent’s
Academic Integrity website to learn more: www.trentu.ca/academicintegrity.

Access to Instruction:
It is Trent University's intent to create an inclusive learning environment. If a student has
a disability and documentation from a regulated health care practitioner and feels that
he/she may need accommodations to succeed in a course, the student should contact the
Student Accessibility Services Office (SAS) at the respective campus as soon as possible.