Course Description
This course is a fascinating exercise in which we will explore, on the one hand, the development of medical ideas, concepts and thought as well as shifting patterns of medical practices and therapeutic treatments in global history. On the other hand, we will focus on the transmissions, interactions and exchanges of healing traditions, medical theories, pharmaceutical knowledge and related religious worldviews, and this over a space stretching from Europe, Africa, the Americas, and across Asia, from China and India to Southeast and West Asia. Taking as a case study the construction of medical identities in East and West, we will reflect on the close relationship between medical thought and the prevailing political, social, economic and cultural manifolds that shaped the condition humane. Likewise, we will unfold the all-encompassing and cross-cultural parallelisms showing that civilizations are not discrete and unalterable units but have been subjected time and again to external influences and impacts. Following this interdisciplinary and comparative theoretical framework, with due attention paid to primary sources in Eastern and Western languages, this course aims at promoting an awareness of the historical forces that have molded, and continue to shape, medicine in the world, thus helping us to reach a deeper understanding of the origin and developments that define the world's modernities.
Intended Learning Outcomes
CILO-1: Identify and describe foundational information about the history of health, disease and medicine in East and West: from Europe, Africa, the Americas, and across Asia, from China and India to Southeast and West Asia.
CILO-2: Interpret the interrelationships between medicine on the one hand and the political, social, economic and cultural environment on the other hand.
CILO-3: Explain from a cross-cultural point of view civilizations and cultures are not discrete and unalterable units but have been subjected time and again to external influences and impacts.
CILO-4: Appraise the historical forces that have molded, and continue to shape, medicine in the world and that help us to reach a deeper understanding of what defines modernity with a true interdisciplinary and comparative approach.
CILO-5: Evaluate the basic principles, concepts, theories, and language of modern medical discourses critically from a historical perspective.
CILO-6: Acquire basic research and writing skills in field of history of medicine.