Postgraduate Course: Medicine and Society in Modern Britain (PGHC11347)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Credits | 20 |
| Home subject area | Postgraduate (School of History and Classics) |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
None |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | In recent decades, the history of medicine has emerged as a rich and mature sub-discipline within history. Drawing upon the social, cultural, and sociological approaches taken by many of these scholars, this course will explore the factors that shaped medical thought and practice, and the evolving relationship between doctors and patients after c.1750. Given the breadth of the field, it is not intended to give a comprehensive overview of the history of medicine, but to focus upon themes of historical and historiographical significance. Geographically, while focusing on Britain, the course will occasionally draw upon European and American studies as a source of comparison. |
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| Displayed in Visiting Students Prospectus? | No |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Delivery period: 2011/12 Semester 2, Available to all students (SV1)
|
WebCT enabled: No |
Quota: None |
| Location |
Activity |
Description |
Weeks |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
| Central | Seminar | Seminars | 1-11 | | | | 14:00 - 15:50 | |
| First Class |
First class information not currently available |
| No Exam Information |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete the course will be able to:
&· engage critically with the key historical debates, approaches and sources encountered in the history of medicine
&· develop an understanding of the changing relationship between doctors and patients throughout the period, and in relation to broader processes of social change
&· demonstrate in their coursework essay the ability to locate, analyse, compare and contextualise evidence in order to assemble a structured, coherent and supported argument
&· show, in seminar participation, the ability to produce sound, structured and supported arguments, and to process and respond to the arguments of others
&· display good time-management and the ability to organize the workload effectively in order to meet the established deadlines
&· employ sensitivity and nuance in dealing with potentially difficult and emotive issues relating to bodies, illness and death
|
Assessment Information
| Following common School practice in the assessment of MSc courses in the History subject area, students will be required to write one essay of approximately 3,000 words. |
Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
The course aims to introduce students to the history of medicine, using methods drawn predominantly from social and cultural history. Students are expected to acquire a firm understanding of the social, clinical and political forces that have shaped medical thought and practice in modern Britain. They will be encouraged to examine a range of historical interactions between doctors and patients, and to relate them to broader processes of social change. Students will be introduced to a range of primary sources in the history of medicine, including films, the collections at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and the holdings of the Lothian Health Services Archive (University of Edinburgh&©s Centre for Research Collections). |
| Syllabus |
The course will be structured thematically as follows:
Week 1: Introduction to the History of Medicine
Week 2: Caveat Emptor: The Georgian Medical Marketplace
Week 3: Extending the Medical Gaze: The Rise of the Hospital and Disappearance of
the Sick Man
Week 4: The Anatomical Tradition: From Burking to Plastination
Week 5: Guinea Pigs and Elephant Men: The Ethics of Experimentation
Week 6: Resisting the Biological Straitjacket: Women as Doctors and Patients
Week 7: Laboratory versus Clinic: The Art and Science of Medicine
Week 8: The Medicalization of Death: From Premature Burial to Premature
Dismemberment
Week 9: Mediating Motherhood: Infertility, Pregnancy and Reproductive
Technology
Week 10: Patient Power: Pressure Groups and the Rise of the New Consumer
Week 11: Framing Disease: Illness as Biological Event and Social Phenomenon
|
| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
Indicative Bibliography
Erwin Ackerknecht, Medicine at the Paris Hospital, 1794-1848 (1967)
Jonathan Andrews and Anne Digby (eds), Sex and Seclusion, Class and Custody:
Perspectives on Gender and Class in the History of British and Irish Psychiatry (2004)
David Armstrong, Political Anatomy of the Body: Medical Knowledge in Britain in
the Twentieth Century (1983)
Hannah Barker, $ùMedical Advertising and Trust in Late Georgian England&©, Urban
History, 36 (2009), 379-98
Catriona Blake, The Charge of the Parasols: Women&©s Entry to the Medical
Profession (1990)
Ian Burney, Bodies of Evidence: Medicine and the Politics of the English Inquest, 1830-
1926 (2000)
W.F. Bynum, Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century (1994)
W.F. Bynum and Roy Porter (eds), Companion Encyclopedia of the History of
Medicine (1993)
W.F. Bynum and Roy Porter (eds), Medicine and the Five Senses (1993)
W.F. Bynum et al. (eds), The Western Medical Tradition 1800-2000 (2006)
Lawrence Conrad et al. (eds), The Western Medical Tradition, 800BC to AD1800 (1995)
Roger Cooter and John Pickstone (eds), Companion to Medicine in the Twentieth
Century (2003)
Roger Cooter and John Pickstone (eds), Medicine in the Twentieth Century (2000)
Anne Digby, $ùWomen&©s Biological Straitjacket&©, in Susan Mendes and Jane Rendall
(eds), Sexuality and Subordination: Interdisciplinary Studies of Gender in the
19th Century (1989)
Jacalyn Duffin, Lovers and Livers: Disease Concepts in History (2005)
Nadja Durbach, $ùMonstrosity, Masculinity and Medicine: Re-Examining the Elephant
Man&©, Cultural and Social History, 4 (2007), 193-214
Carol Dyhouse, $ùWomen Students and the London Medical Schools, 1914-39: The
Anatomy of a Masculine Culture&©, Gender and History, 10 (1998), 110-32
Mary Fissell, $ùThe Disappearance of the Patient&©s Narrative&©, in R.K.French and A.Wear
(eds) British Medicine in an Age of Reform (1991)
Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (2003)
Jordan Goodman, Anthony McElligott and Lara Marks, Useful Bodies: Humans in the
Service of Medical Science in the Twentieth Century (2003)
Lindsay Granshaw and Roy Porter, The Hospital in History (1989)
Anne Hardy, $ùDeath is the Cure of All Diseases: Using the General Register Office
Cause of Death Statistics for 1837-1920&©, Social History of Medicine, 7 (1994),
472-92
Jenny Hazelgrove, $ùThe Old Faith and the New Science: The Nuremberg Code and
Human Experimentation Ethics in Britain, 1946-73&©, Social History of Medicine, 15 (2002), 109-35
Sonja van&©t Hof and Malcolm Nicolson, $ùThe Rise and Fall of a Fact: The Increase in
Anorexia Nervosa&©, Sociology of Health and Illness, 18 (1996), 581-608
Joel Howell, Technology in the Hospital: Transforming Patient Care in the Early
Twentieth Century (1995)
E. T. Hurren, $ùWhose Body is it Anyway? Trading the Dead Poor, Coroner&©s Disputes
and the Business of Anatomy at Oxford University, 1885-1929&©, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 82 (2008), 775-819
L.S. Jacyna, $ùThe Laboratory and the Clinic: The Impact of Pathology on Surgical
Diagnosis in the Glasgow Western Infirmary, 1875-1910&©, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 69 (1998), 384-406
N.D. Jewson, $ùThe Disappearance of the Sick-Man from Medical Cosmology, 1770-
1870&©, Sociology, 10 (1976), 225-44
Peter C. Jupp and Glennys Howarth (eds), The Changing Face of Death: Historical
Accounts of Death and Disposal (1997)
Christopher Lawrence. $ùIncommunicable Knowledge: Science, Technology and the
Clinical Art in Britain, 1850-1914&©, Journal of Contemporary History, 20 (1985), 503-20
Christopher Lawrence, Medicine in the Making of Modern Britain, 1700-1920 (1994)
Margaret Lock, Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death (2002)
S. MacIntyre, $ùThe Medical Profession and the 1967 Abortion Act in Britain&©, Social
Science and Medicine, 7 (1973), 121-34
Emily Martin, The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction (1989)
Alex Mold, $ùPatient Groups and the Construction of the Patient-Consumer in Britain: An
Historical Overview&©, Journal of Social Policy, 39 (2010), 505-21
Ornella Moscucci, The Science of Women: Gynaecology and Gender in England, 1800-
1929 (1990)
Karen Newman, Fetal Positions: Individualism, Science, Visuality (1993)
M. Nicolson and G. W. Lowis, $ùThe Early History of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland: A Socio-Historical Study of Lay/Practitioner Interaction in the Context of a Medical Charity&©, Medical History, 46 (2002),
141-74
Andrew Patrizio and Dawn Kemp (eds), Anatomy Acts: How We Come to Know
Ourselves (2006)
Naomi Pfeffer, The Stork and the Syringe: A Political History of Reproductive
Medicine (1993)
J.V. Pickstone, $ùWays of Knowing: Towards a Historical Sociology of Science, Technology and Medicine&©, British Journal for the History of Science, 26 (1993), 433-58
Roy Porter, $ùDeath and the Doctors in Georgian England&©, in Ralph Houlbrooke (ed.),
Death, Ritual, and Bereavement (1989)
Roy Porter, Health for Sale: Quackery in England, 1660-1850 (1989)
Sean M. Quinlan, $ùApparent Death in Eighteenth-Century France and England&©, French
History, 9 (1995), 27-47
Stanley Reiser, Medicine and the Reign of Technology (1978)
Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute (2001)
Charles Rosenberg, Explaining Epidemics (1992)
Charles Rosenberg, $ùWhat is Disease? In Memory of Owsei Temkin&©, Bulletin of the
History of Medicine, 77 (2003), 491-505
Charles Rosenberg and Janet Golden (eds), Framing Disease: Studies in Cultural
History (1992)
George Rousseau et al. (eds), Framing and Imagining Disease in Cultural History (2003)
Edward Shorter, Bedside Manners: The Troubled History of Doctors and Patients (1985)
Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-
1980 (1992)
Michelle Stanworth, Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood and Medicine
(1987)
Julie Marie Strange, $ùMenstrual Fictions: Languages of Medicine and Menstruation,
1850-1930&©, Women&©s History Review, 9 (2000), 607-28
Steve Sturdy, $ùKnowing Cases: Biomedicine in Edinburgh, 1887-1920&©, Social Studies of
Science, 37 (2007), 659-89
Sarah Tracy, $ùReinventing the Sick Man&©, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 66 (1992),
53-89.
I. Waddington, $ùThe Role of the Hospital in the Development of Modern Medicine&©,
Sociology (1973), 211-24
Keir Waddington, $ùHealth and Medicine&©, in Chris Williams (ed.), Blackwell Companion
to Nineteenth-Century Britain (2004)
Bruce Wood, Patient Power? The Politics of Patients&© Associations in Britain and
America (2000)
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| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Gayle Davis
Tel:
Email: Gayle.Davis@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mrs Lindsay Scott
Tel: (0131 6)50 9948
Email: Lindsay.Scott@ed.ac.uk |
|
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