Restricted Electives Course Descriptions

2563    History of Medicine    Olby; 3 cr.

We examine selected issues and events in the history of medicine with the intention of providing both a historical framework into which modern medicine can be fitted, and to offer some of the riches of historical scholarship which have a bearing on specific ethical issues in society today. Topics covered include the history of debates over the need and legitimacy of dissection, vivisection, and human experimentation, and distinction between the normal and pathological, the inherited and the acquired, and the notion of the social construction of a disease. The history of medical institutions is approached by comparing and contrasting the development of health care systems in the USA and UK.

2731    Medical Anthropology 2    Strathern; 3 cr.

This course offers a study of selected topics in contemporary theory and its application in medical anthropology. Topics to be covered include cross-cultural and biocultural approaches to the study of sickness and healing, critical approaches to the study of biomedicine, interpretive approaches to ethnomedical systems, meaning-centered approaches to understanding the experience of suffering and pain, and the social construction of illness and healing. Special topics investigated include the anthropology of the body and sexuality, and physician-patient communication. Other topics can be added in accordance with student interests. Course grade will be based on in-class presentations (30%), and term papers (70%).