Health and Healing in America

Our next three class sessions all bring us up through the 19th century to the early 20th century in medical / health practices, professionalization, and technological and scientific progress.

For Wed 2/22 Reading: Porter Blood and Guts, Ch 4-5 “The Laboratory” and “Therapies,” and Burnham Health Care in America, Ch 4 “Setting the Stage for Modern Medicine and Health, 1850s-1880s.” Bonus links: Koch’s Postulates; Lydia Pinkham’s Ladies Health Pamphlets; Typhoid Mary

For Mon 2/27 Reading: Porter Blood and Guts, Ch 6-7 “Surgery” and “The Hospital” and Burnham Health Care in America, Ch 5-6 “The Age of Surgery and Germ Theory, 1880s-1910s” and “Physiological Medicine, 1910s to 1930s”

For Wed 3/1 Reading: Burnham Health Care in America, Ch 7 “Physicians, Public Health and Progressivism.” Response #2 is due, posted to the Response Journal on Blackboard by classtime 12:30 pm. Prompt: discuss some of the key changes in medical technology, perception, or practice from the 18th to the early 20th centuries in a 400+ word response. Be specific; quote from our readings; think about which of these changes were most important in the development of “modern” health care. Pro tip: Compose and proofread your response offline, and then cut/paste into the Blackboard platform.

Bonus links: Radium Girls

NOTE: This section of the class contains a lot of reading, obviously. A STRONG suggestion as you go: identify key terms and add them to the class Glossary on Blackboard.

Medical students observe a surgery at Yale Medical School around 1900