Module Database

Information for module HMEDG010

This module is available for: The next academic year(provisional)

If you're a member of UCL you can add this module to your personalised course list

This information is for guidance only. If you are a UCL undergraduate interested in studying one of these courses, you must seek permission from both the providing department and your 'home' department. Appearance in this database is not a guarantee that a course is running in any particular academic year.


Module code:HMEDG010(Add to my personalised list)
Title:Early Modern English Medicine
Credit value:15
Division:Division of Biosciences
Module organiser:Stephanie Eichberg
Organiser's location:Medical Sciences Building
Organiser's email:s.eichberg@ucl.ac.uk
Available for students in Year(s):
Module prerequisites:Available to Postgraduate Masters students only  
Module outline:Early Modern English Medicine The ‘medical cosmos’ of the early modern English world reflects historical changes and continuities in unique ways: diseases and remedies, patients and healers, knowledge and practice, scientific revolutions and ancient theories of the body - all these reflect the make-up of, and subtle shifts of meaning, in early modern society. This course will also discuss the task of historiography: is it a mere retelling of the past, or does it mirror the particular interests and concerns of our own medicalized modern world? > 
Module aims:By the end of this course, students should be able to demonstrate: • knowledge of the course content • the ability to interpret critically both primary and secondary sources • knowledge of the different historiographical approaches to topics in early modern medicine 
Module objectives:History can and should be the study of the present at the remove of the past. This course will consider the construction of healers, patients, bodies and sicknesses outside the familiar arrangements of a self-governing consumer exercising choice and thereby valorising their self-esteem, while accessing informatics and engaging with modes of collective identity such as genomics. In order to gain historical understanding of current beliefs and practices, one can engage with the early modern archive as a kind of 'distancing exercise' that questions the supposed naturalness, stability and obviousness of present-day medicine. To this end, this course will survey secondary literature and primary sources so as to investigate some political and social aspects of the healing arts during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This will include reflection upon the various and contested meanings of the word 'modern'; consideration of the displacement of Galenic humoral models of the human body by chemical physiologies; the 'discovery' of the circulation of the blood; the role of physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, midwives and unlicensed healers; the nature of early modern public health; transformations in the function and purpose of hospitals; and the commercialisation of healthcare.  
Key skills provided by module:By the end of this course students should be able to demonstrate: knowledge of the course content; the ability to interpret critically both primary and secondary sources; an appreciation of the principles of using historical analysis to reflect critically upon present-day medical beliefs and practices.  
Module timetable:https://cmis.adcom.ucl.ac.uk:4443/timetabling/moduleTimet.do?firstReq=Y&moduleId=HMEDG010 
Module assessment:2 essays 100.00%.
 
Notes: 
Taking this module as an option?: 
Link to virtual learning environment(registered students only)https://moodle.ucl.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=3971 
Last updated:2013-03-15 12:51:56 by