Studying at York
From Grave-robbing to HIV: the Rise of Modern Medicine - HIS00135I
- Department: History
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: I
- Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
Module summary
What is ‘modern’ about modern medicine? How is the history of health and disease related to wider historical contexts such as revolution, industrialisation, empire and globalisation. This course looks at the factors prompting changes in medical knowledge and practice from the eighteenth century to the present day. It focuses on the rise of scientific medicine and explores the increasing importance of empirical observation, experiment, statistics and technology for understandings of the body, disease and its treatment. At the same time, it explores the ethical issues generated by the emergence of laboratory medicine. The growth of medical research from the late eighteenth century generated questions about the use of cadavers for dissection and the value of live animals and human beings for experiments and clinical trials. The increasing centrality of the laboratory to medicine gave rise to drugs that created new opportunities for profit, reformulated definitions of disease and transformed the relationship between doctors and their patients. Historians have explored the relationship between innovations in medicine, and race, class and gender and analysed the relationship between medical knowledge and social control.
Historians do not tell the story of the rise of scientific medicine as a story of unfettered progress. This course considers the changes to medical care and knowledge that have been wrought by a shift to scientific modes of knowledge production, placing these in their wider historical context, and considers the ways in which scientific medicine has helped shape the modern world.
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Semester 1 2024-25 |
Module aims
The aims of this module are:
- To provide students with the opportunity to study particular historical topics in depth
- To develop students’ ability to examine a topic from a range of perspectives and to strengthen their ability to work critically and reflectively with secondary and primary material
Module learning outcomes
Students who complete this module successfully will:
- Have acquired a deep knowledge of the specific topic studied
- Have developed their ability to use and synthesise a range of primary and secondary sources
- Be able to evaluate the arguments that historians have made about the topic studied
- Have developed their ability to study independently through seminar-based teaching
Module content
Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1. Students will then attend a 1-hour plenary/lecture and a 2-hour seminar in weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11 of semester 1. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing Weeks (RAW) during which there are no seminars. Students prepare for and participate in eight 1-hour plenaries/lectures and eight 2-hour seminars in all.
Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:
- Cadavers
- The laboratory and the research ideal
- Miracle cures and the birth of an industry
- Technology in the hospital
- Human experimentation
- Ensuring the safety of drugs
- Making the contraceptive pill
- Constructing a disease - HIV/AIDS
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Special assessment rules
None
Additional assessment information
For formative assessment, students will complete a referenced 1200 to 1500-word essay relating to the themes and issues of the module. This will be submitted in either the Week 5 or Week 9 RAW week (on the day of the weekly seminar).
For summative assessment, students will complete an Assessed Essay (2000 words, footnoted). This will comprise 100% of the overall module mark.
Summative assessments will be due in the assessment period.
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Module feedback
Following their formative assessment task, students will typically receive written feedback that will include comments and a mark within 10 working days of submission.
Work will be returned to students in their seminars and may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss the feedback on their formative work during their tutor’s student hours. For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.
For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.
Indicative reading
For term time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:
- Porter, Roy. The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: a Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present. London: Harper Collins, 1997.
- Washington, Harriet A. Medical Apartheid: the Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Harlem Moon, 2008.
- Millward, Gareth. Vaccinating Britain. Manchester University Press, 2019.