MEDVL 307Concepts of Health and Disease in Western Medical History

This course introduces students to three paradigms in Western medical history, characterized by the primary clinical locations at which they were practiced: bedside medicine (a holistic approach), hospital medicine (a localized approach), and laboratory medicine (a lab-based approach). It does this by exploring the origins of Western medicine in premodern and medieval contexts. Students will engage in close readings of primary and secondary sources to explore how and why certain diseases, like cancer and tuberculosis, were understood differently within these three paradigms. They will learn to engage in an interdisciplinary dialogue by applying humanities-based methodologies and vocabularies to the study of health and disease. By focusing on historical case studies and asking students to look at how ancient, medieval, and premodern people conceived of health, the course shows how all perceptions of well-being, including our own, are socially constructed and in constant negotiation.