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Medicine in America: Comparative Perspectives
HI 31LRoberta Bivins
The history of medicine and
the history of America• Why a medical perspective on the American past?– Health and the body are enduring and immediate concerns across historical periods and peoples of America;
– Allows approaches to both natural and built environments;
– Offers a unique perspective on social and cultural trends and beliefs: shows how they filtered into and influenced PRACTICE and daily life;
– Shows interplay between cultural, political, economic and social spheres.
And what is this ‘comparative’ thing about?• Why a comparative perspective on medicine in the US?– US medicine has over the course of the 20th century taken a very distinctive form: by looking at medical practices and healthcare systems in other cultures, we can address the reasons why US health care has taken the form we see today.
• Where else will we look?– Britain– Japan, Australia, Canada and elsewhere in the Americas.
What kind of history is this?•Social•Political•Economic•Cultural
Approaches to the history of medicine
• Through case studies• Through individual accounts• Through politics• Through professionalization• Through technologies, images and artefacts
• Through media representations
(Some)Themes in the module
Gender in/Gender and Medicine
Medicine, Healthcare & Race
Professions and Professionalisation
War, Medicine and the State
Medicine and Immigration
Institutional History
Medical Education
Medicine and the Body Politic
Diseases
Medicine and
Technology