Welcome to the History of Medicine
at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Founded in 1929, the Institute of the History of Medicine is the oldest history of medicine department in the US. We are dedicated to scholarship on the history of medicine, disease and the health sciences, and their relation to society. In addition, the Institute seeks to bring historical perspectives to bear on contemporary health issues. ...more...

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We are in the process of redesigning our site to provide fresh, new content and keep our material up to date. In the mean time, department news and updates are being posted to our Facebook page. The badge at the bottom of this page links you to it. "Like" us ("Institute of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins") on Facebook to stay abreast of news of the department and the field!

Prospective graduate students are strongly encouraged to arrange with Dr. Nathaniel Comfort to visit, interview with the faculty, and meet our current students during the Fall semester. However, we regret that we will not be accepting applications for the fall of 2013. We will read applications again for the fall of 2014, with the application deadline in December, 2013.

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	The next Critical Global Health seminar is Tue., Feb. 26 at 9:30 a.m. in Gilman 186 (Homewood Campus). See the full list of seminars on their website.
	The spring colloquium poster is now online. View it here or subscribe to our Google calendar.
	The department faculty is offering a series of seminars on research ethics, which fulfill the Office of Student Affairs' requirement for Responsible Conduct of Research. Register and/or read more about them.
	Some upcoming talks by faculty: Nathaniel Comfort will be speaking at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, on Jan. 24 at 4:00 pm, in the VCU Commons building. His title is: "From medical eugenics to genomic medicine: 100 years of relieving suffering and the self-direction of human evolution." Daniel Todes will be giving a pair of lectures at Drexel University, on "Ivan Pavlov as Creative Personality." The lectures are on February 7 and 14, from 6:30-8:30 pm, in 326 Randall Hall.
	Graduate student Katherine Arner has just been awarded a Dean's Teaching Fellowship for next year. She'll be teaching a course of her own design called  “From Colonial to Global Health: Health, Healing and European Expansion, 1500-1950”. Congratulations, Katherine!
	On Dec. 10, Prof. Daniel Todes will be giving the Amalie and Edward Kass Lecture at University College London. His lecture is titled, "'What is the most terrible thing in life?' Ivan Pavlov's Final Thoughts on Christianity, Communism and his Life's Quest."
	The Charles Singleton Center for the Study of Pre-Modern Europe has awarded graduate student Justin Rivest  a prize for his essay, "“Trials of an Extraordinary Empiric: The Career of Jean Thibault, Astrologer Physician 1529-1545” and a fellowship to support his research in Paris this coming spring (2013).
	Nathaniel Comfort's new book, The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine, is out from Yale University Press.
	Scholarly Concentrations Win! Johns Hopkins medical student Sarah Wallace has published in the American Journal of Public Health the paper she wrote for her scholarly concentration in the history of medicine. Way to go, Sarah!
	Congratulations to our Graduate Students! Our students prove there is life after graduate school. Also check here for news of grad student fellowships and other honors. Also, over in the grad lounge, read the history of the The Sacred Boa and Tiara of Erudition (pictured at left), and see pictures of our students partaking of this ancient ritual after delivering their colloquium papers.
	Calendar Click here for a schedule of colloquia and other department events; lectures and other appearances by our faculty; and other events of interest. (Note: this opens in a new window)
	The Center for the History of Public Health and Disease joins with the Departments of Anthropology, Health, Behavior and Society, and the Institute for Global Studies to create a new cross-divisional initiative to engage global health studies from a critical and inter-disciplinary perspective.
	Institute faculty map historical patterns of health inequality in Baltimore