History of Medicine and Science
L-132 Sterling Hall of Medicine, 785.4338
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Chair
John Harley Warner
Director of Graduate Studies
To be announced
Faculty
John Heilbron (Visiting, History), Frederic Holmes, Daniel Kevles (History), Martin Klein (Emeritus, Physics), Susan Lederer, David Musto (Child Study), Naomi Rogers (Women's & Gender Studies), William Summers (Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry), John Harley Warner
Affiliated Faculty
Robert Gordon (Geophysics & Applied Mechanics), Dimitri Gutas (Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations), Cynthia Russett (History), Frank Snowden (History), Frank Turner (History)
Fields of Study
Fields of study can be pursued in all periods and areas of the history of medicine and science. Special fields of interest of the core and affiliated faculty include history of medical ethics, Arabic science and medicine, American medicine, disease, therapeutics, psychiatry, alcohol and drug abuse, women in science and medicine, science and medicine in Asia, history of physics, chemistry, physiology, biochemistry, microbiology, molecular biology, and neurobiology.
Special Admissions Requirements
Applicants should have a strong undergraduate background in history and in a science relevant to the direction of their graduate interests. These requirements will be applied with flexibility, and outstanding performance in any field pertinent to the program will be taken into consideration.
Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree
Students are normally required to pass reading proficiency requirements in French and German. A student intending to concentrate in a field or period that requires another foreign language, ancient or modern, may, with approval, substitute that language for either French or German.
Students will ordinarily take twelve term courses during the first two years. All students will normally take the graduate seminar HSHM 601a/602b (Introduction to the History of Medicine, Public Health, and Science), four additional graduate seminars in history of science or medicine, and one graduate seminar in a field of history outside of science or medicine. The remaining courses can be taken in history of medicine or science, history, science, or any other field of demonstrated special relevance to the student's scholarly objectives.
Students who enter having previously completed graduate work may negotiate some reduction in the total course requirement at Yale, the amount being contingent on the extent and nature of the previous work and its fit with intended future work.
All students are expected to demonstrate, prior to entering on their dissertation work, a general command of two of the three fields of: (1) history of the life sciences; (2) history of medicine; (3) history of the physical sciences. This competence may be acquired through a combination of course work taken at Yale or elsewhere and preparation for the oral examination.
Students will normally spend the summer following their second year preparing for the oral qualifying exam to be taken soon after the beginning of the third year. The student will be examined in four fields:
1. One broadly based field, to be chosen from areas such as the following:
History of the life sciences before 1800
History of the life sciences since 1800
History of medicine before 1800
History of medicine since 1800
History of the physical sciences before 1800
History of the physical sciences since 1800
History of a major science, such as chemistry, geology, astronomy, or physiology, without period
History of science or medicine in a major geographic region, such as the history of medicine in America
2 & 3. Two fields with content and boundaries to be established by agreement with the adviser for each field. If the broadly based field (no. 1, above) is in history of science, at least one of these fields must fall within the history of medicine, and vice versa. One of these two fields may be in an area of history outside of medicine or science.
4. One field in an area of history outside of history of science or medicine.
Master's Degrees
M.Phil. and M.A. (en route to the Ph.D.). See Graduate School requirements.
Master's Degree Program
The terminal M.A. program is designed particularly for those who plan to combine teaching or scholarship in these fields with a professional career in medicine or science. Students who enroll in the terminal master's degree program leading to the M.A. are expected to complete six term courses during two terms of study and submit an acceptable master's paper. Course work must include the graduate seminar HSHM 601a/602b and one additional graduate seminar in history of medicine or science. The remaining courses are to be chosen in consultation with the director of graduate studies.
Program materials are available upon request to the Director of Graduate Studies, History of Medicine and Science, Yale University, PO Box 208015, New Haven CT 06520-8015.
Courses
HSHM 601a, Introduction to the History of Medicine and Public Health. John Warner, Susan Lederer. M 1.30–3.20
An examination of the variety of approaches to the social and cultural history of medicine and public health. Readings are drawn from recent literature in the field, sampling writings on health care, illness experiences, and medical cultures in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia from antiquity to the twentieth century. Topics include the role of gender, class, ethnicity, race, region, and religion in the experience of health care and sickness; the intersection of lay and professional understandings of the body; and the role of the marketplace in shaping professional identities and patient expectations. Also HIST 930a.
HSHM 602b, Introduction to the History of Science. John Heilbron, Frederic Holmes. W 1.30–3.20
Study of secondary literature, recent and older, in the history of the physical and life sciences from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century. Students acquire familiarity both with the road map of the development of science in general and of its major branches over this period, and an acquaintance with various approaches that historians have followed in interpreting these events. Also HIST 931b.
HSHM 620au, Gender, Science, and Sexuality. William Summers. T 9.30–11.20
Examination of the history of the scientific study of sexuality. Primary and secondary sources, covering the Middle Ages to the present, are used in considering theological, taxonomic, psychoanalytic, ethnological, and molecular approaches to the study of sexual practice. Special attention paid to how these studies both reflect and construct gender ideology.
[HSHM 622bu, Introduction to the History of Life Sciences.]
[HSHM 625au, Women and Medicine in America from the Colonial Era to the Present.]
HSHM 631bu, The Cultures of Western Medicine: A Historical Introduction. John Warner. MW 10.30–11.20
A survey of medical thought, practice, institutions, and practitioners from classical antiquity through the present. Changing concepts of health and disease in Europe and America explored in their social, cultural, economic, scientific, technological, and ethical contexts.
[HSHM 637bu, Race and Medicine in America, 1800–2000.]
[HSHM 642au, Plagues, Old and New.]
HSHM 643au, Nuclear America. Daniel Kevles. T 7–8.30
A history of the nuclear enterprise from its pre-World War II origins to recent times, covering its military and civilian uses and its impact on scientific research and on the environment, regional economies, and American politics and culture. Also HIST 940au.
[HSHM 645bu, Medical Ethics in America since 1847.]
HSHM 676au, The Engineering and Ownership of Life. Daniel Kevles. W 1.30–3.20
The development of biological knowledge and controlling relation to intellectual property rights in living organisms. Topics include agribusiness, medicine, biotechnology, and patent law. Also HIST 938au.
HSHM 677bu, Biology and Society in the Twentieth Century. Daniel Kevles. MW 11.30–12.45
An exploration of issues in the understanding, engineering, and control of life. Focus on the history of genetics, molecular biology, and biotechnology and their interaction with politics, economics, law, and culture, mainly in the United States. Also HIST 939bu.
HSHM 678au, Alcohol and Other Drugs in American Culture. David Musto. TTh 10.30–11.20
The interrelation of alcohol and other drugs since the establishment of the nation. Considerations of scientific, religious, legal, literary, gender, and minority aspects.
HSHM 679bu , The Scientific Revolution. John Heilbron. TTh 1.30–2.45
A survey of the natural science that developed between the Age of Discovery and the French Revolution. The course covers the background in Aristotelian philosophy; the shift from geocentric to heliocentric astronomy; the replacement of scholastic natural philosophy by the ideas of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton; the roles of the Catholic and Protestant churches, universities, and learned academies; the invention and improvement of scientific instruments; and the science of the Enlightenment. Also HIST 618bu.
HSHM 680au, History of Chinese Science. William Summers. W 3.30–5.20
A study of the major themes in Chinese scientific thinking from antiquity to the twentieth century. Emphasis on non-Western concepts of nature and the development of science in China, East-West scientific exchanges, and China's role in modern science.
[HSHM 711b, Experimentation in the History of Life Sciences.]
HSHM 714bu, Science and Technology in the Twentieth Century. Daniel Kevles. T 7–8.30
An examination of the development of the scientific and technological enterprise in Europe and the United States, including its major intellectual achievements, academic and industrial institutions, relationship to war and the state, and standing in general culture. Among topics that might be considered are atomic, nuclear, and particle physics, genetics and molecular biology, microelectronics and computers. Also HIST 933bu.
HSHM 718, Performance, Identity, and the Making of American Medicine. John Warner.
An exploration of the shaping of American medical culture, especially during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on the ways that healers' identities were constructed, perceived, and contested. Themes include conceptions of orthodoxy and alterity; the relationship between European and American notions of the moral, social, political, technical, and epistemological grounding of professional identity; struggles over the place and meaning of "science" in the healer's identity; and medicine and modernity. Case studies examine the fashioning of identities for the medical marketplace and more private constructions of self, with attention to gender ethnicity, race, religion, and region. Readings engage the recent historiography of the field and explore self-representations of practitioners in primary texts ranging from diaries to prescriptive literature, as well as popular depictions in novels and visual media.
HSHM 723, Making the Modern Body. Susan Lederer.
An examination of the ways in which the human body has become both a site for medical and surgical practices and a source of tissues and tools for therapeutic purposes in twentieth-century America. Topics include the scientific developments and social and cultural implications of such technologies as organ transplantation, plastic surgery, and in vitro fertilization, with attention to gender, race, religion, and cultural representations of the body—male and female, living and dead, animal and human.
[HSHM 724u, Methods and Literature in the History of Science and Medicine.]
HSHM 725a, History of Disease and Public Health in Western Societies.Naomi Rogers. T 9.30–11.20
An exploration of recent approaches to understanding the history of disease and public health in Western societies. Topics in this reading seminar, which focuses on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, include bodies and cities; contested definitions of disease, contagion, and pollution; illness, healing, and popular culture; medicine and empire; health care, the state, and charity; health education; and industrial disease and health policy. Also HIST 942a.
[HSHM 912a, Reading Seminar in the History of Disease and Public Health in America.]
[HSHM 913b, Reading Seminar in the History of Life Sciences.]
HSHM 914a or b, Research Tutorial I.
By arrangement with faculty.
HSHM 915a or b, Research Tutorial II.
By arrangement with faculty.
[HSHM 919b, Research Seminar in the History of Medicine and Science.]
HSHM 920a or b, Independent Reading.
By arrangement with faculty.
HSHM 930a or b, Independent Research.
By arrangement with faculty.
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