History of Medicine

This course offers a survey of the history of medicine in the Western world from the ancient Greeks to the present. We will consider several key moments in this history, such as the so-called Greek miracle in medicine (Hippocrates), the discovery of blood circulation (William Harvey), and the invention of bacteriology (Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch). In the last two class sessions we will focus more specifically on the history of psychiatry. All of the class readings are primary sources.