The period between 1750 and 1914 has commonly been associated with the rise of modern medicine. In this period anaesthetics and antiseptics were introduced; x-rays and antitoxins were discovered; hospitals and asylums became ‘medicalized’; and medicine and nursing took on an increasingly professional structure. This module explores how there was more to the rise of “modern” medicine than heroic discoveries, great men and women, and scientific progress. It examines the nature of medicine, health and disease through a study of medicine’s impact on patients, communities, society and disease, and places the transitions in medicine within the wider context of nineteenth-century British history.

• demonstrate a broad and systematic knowledge of the social history of medicine between 1750 and 1919 and an understanding of  the pertinent historical and historiographical ideas;
• identify the different trends in medicine and different medical traditions, and their impact on patients, doctors, society, and the state;
• understand how medicine was perceived, and how it reflected and contributed to social values in the period under examination;
• assess how such concepts as gender, professionalization, institutionalization, internationalism, social construction of disease, have shaped medicine;
• integrate the history of medicine into British history in the period 1750 to 1919
• demonstrate an understanding of a range of concepts/perspectives/debates within the appropriate secondary literature;
• analyse key themes and issues in the social history of medicine in the light of those ideas/contexts/frameworks.

A programme of lectures which will introduce students to the main factual and conceptual issues to be discussed and analysed during the module. Seminars related to lectures, in which key issues and topics are analysed and discussed further.

Intellectual Skills:

• identify the nature and scope of the issues raised the social history of medicine between 1750 and 1919;
• summarise and appraise the relative merits and demerits of alternative views and interpretations of the social history of medicine in Britain between 1750 and 1919 and evaluate their significance
• identify problems, assess evidence, and reach conclusions consistent with them on the social history of medicine;
• devise and sustain arguments about the social history of medicine using ideas or techniques including concepts of professionalization, gender, and institutionalization;
• present, accurately, succinctly and lucidly, and in written or oral form their arguments in accordance with appropriate scholarly conventions

Discipline Specific (including practical) Skills:

• express their ideas and assessments on topics on the social history of medicine;
• discuss in a critical and informed manner the social history of medicine in a comparative perspective;
• identify strengths, weaknesses, problems, and or peculiarities of alternative historical/historiographical interpretations;
• demonstrate an understanding of some of the primary sources and an appreciation of  how social historians of medicine have approached them.

Transferable Skills:

• communicate ideas and arguments effectively, whether in speech or in writing, in an accurate, succinct and lucid manner.
• formulate and justify their own arguments and conclusions about a range of issues.
• demonstrate an ability to modify as well as to defend their own position.
• posses a range of information technology resources to assist with information retrieval.
• organise their own study methods and workload.
• work as part of a team in seminar or tutorial discussions.

Summative assessment takes the form of one 3,000 – 4,000 word essay (excluding empirical appendices and references).

The module will cover a wide range of topics relating to the social history of medicine in Britain between 1750 and 1919. Topics include:

• Social history of medicine: dead or not dead?
• Coughs, Sneezes and Diseases
• Patients and medical history from below
• Medical Markets, Quackery and Self-Help
• Enlightenment medicine
• Anatomy & Bodysnatching
• Surgery
• Institutionalization of Medicine
• Professionalizing Medicine – theory and practice
• Professionalizing Nursing
• Science, Technology and Medicine

Please see Background Reading List for an indicative list.

Keir Waddington, An Introduction to the Social History of Medicine (2011)

Deborah Brunton (ed.), Medicine Transformed (2004)

W. F. Bynum, Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century (1994)

Conrad et al, Western Medical Tradition (1995)

Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic (1994)

Anne Hardy, Health and Medicine in Britain since 1860 (2000)

Andrew Wear (ed.), Medicine in Society (1992)