This is a selection of courses offered by History of Medicine faculty. Click the "syllabus" link following the description to view a recent syllabus for the course. More syllabi can be found here and on the individual faculty pages.

140.313 Lives in Science (Todes)
The lives and scientific work of leading scientists from Galileo to Einstein, also including Newton, Lavoisier, Darwin, Pasteur, and Pavlov.

140.703 Popular Knowledge (Fissell)
The focus of this course is popular knowledge -- both that which is "popularized" and that which is popular in the sense of "of the people". In putting these two meanings together, I am asking questions rather than setting out a tidy body of secondary literature. Historians of science in the past 20 years or so have developed sophisticated ways of thinking about what "knowledge" is; historians of culture have debated and re-debated the meanings and utility of the category "popular culture". Our readings will focus on a variety of ways in which these two fields might intersect in explorations of "popular knowledge". (syllabus)

150.706 History of Public Health in China (Hanson)
The modern term for public health "weisheng" in China has changed in the past two centuries from the "safeguarding life" practices of individuals to the state's responsibility for the health of its citizens. This course will examine the history of public health from the earliest evidence of a state medical bureaucracy in Chineses antiquity to the modern problems of STDs, HIV/AIDS, and SARS.

150.711 History of Disease and Disease Control (Marks, Mooney, Packard)
This course examines the long history of disease and disease control from the 14th century plague to the 20th century campaign for smallpox eradication, drawing on historial materials from Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin American. Emphasis is on the ways in which political, social, and economic institutions and practices influence the history of disease, its understanding, and its control. (syllabus)

150.713 Oral History Theory and Method (Comfort)
This graduate course is intended as a practical introduction to oral history. The overarching goal of the course is to provide you with some sense of professionalism as an oral-historian. We will read a little of the history of the field, some theory and techniques, and some models of how to use interviews in historical writing. The emphasis, though, will be on practice. Your main product in this course will be a thoroughly researched and professionally conducted and transcribed oral-history interview. (syllabus)

150.714 Biomedicine in the Twentieth Century (Comfort, Todes)
This seminar-style course is intended for students in the basic sciences and in the history of science and medicine. We will study classic experiments in twentieth- century physiology, immunology, genetics, and neuroscience using both original research papers and historians' accounts. Themes under discussion will include theory and experiment, styles of research, ethics of experimental work and scientific publishing, and the impact of social interactions on laboratory work. This course will appeal to any science students interested in understanding the origins of biomedicine and in exploring what makes biomedicine unique in the history of science and medicine.

150.715 History of Health and Development in Africa (Packard)
This course will examine the impact of colonial and post-colonial development on patterns of sickness, health, and health care in Africa. It will also focus on African responses to changing patterns of health care and disease. Topics include: patterns of disease and therapeutic responses in pre-colonial Africa; colonial epidemics; industrialization, urbanization, and disease; agrarian transformations, malnutrition, and the political economy of famine; sexuality, colonial control, and disease; western medicine and the social construction of African identities; African reproductive health and family planning; recession, debt, and Africa's health care crises; histories of AIDS in Africa.

150.716 History of Chinese Medicine (Hanson)
How did the Chinese conceptualize the human body, health and disease over the past 2,000 years? What were the range of responses from religious to therapeutic to disease in China? What are Chinese acupuncture, moxibustion, and herbal medicine? Who practiced medicine in China; what did they practice; and how do we know what we know about them? Students will engage these and other questions by discussing the latest historical, anthropological, and philosophical scholarship on the history of medicine in China. Students will be expected to attend the lectures of AS140.346, read relevant primary sources in Chinese, and write a research paper using Chinese sources.

150.718 Analogy and Metaphor in Science and Medicine (Todes)
How do metaphors in science, technology, and medicine originate and how do they influence human thought? The course explores such examples as William Harvey's analogy between the heart and a pump, Charles Darwin's concepts of the struggle for existence and natural selection, military metaphors in the history of public health, the use of metaphors of production in medicine, and the comparison of the brain to a computer.

150.808 History of Epidemiology (Marks)
This course will examine the development of modern epidemiological methods in the 19th and 20th centuries, through weekly readings of original texts. Emphasis will be placed on exploring the links between epidemiological methods, concepts of disease and public health practice. Part I deals largely with infectious disease; part II with issues of environmental exposures and chronic disease. (syllabus part I; syllabus part II)

550.605: The History of Modern Public Health (Mooney)
Provides a broad outline of the historical context and development of public health. (syllabus)