Medicine in America: Comparative Perspectives HI 31L Roberta Bivins.

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