HIST 2601H Public Health and Medicine in History
Instructor Dr. Shay Sweeney
Email NA
Campus: Oshawa-Conlin
Course Time: Monday 2:10-5:00 PM
Office: TBA
Office Hour: Monday 5:10-6:10 PM
Course Description
The purpose of this course is to introduce the history of public health and medicine in the 19th and
20th centuries. During this period a series of “discoveries” in medicine and science led to new
regimes of knowledge predicated on microbes and germs. The results of this revolution in the way
humans understood sickness and disease have been mixed. On one hand, humanity (at least those
with means) have been ransomed from a multitude of infections and illnesses that plagued previous
generations. On the other, political and social developments leveraged this rise in medical esteem
against vulnerable segments of the population. Here we will examine the origins and results of this
process and that ways in which it changed the meanings and experience of health, disease, illness,
and suffering.
Required Texts: (Read the Book Review Assignment Before Purchasing)
Alison Bashford – Imperial Hygiene: A Critical History of Colonialism, Nationalism, and Public
Health
Esyllt Wynne Jones – Influenza 1918: Disease, Death, and Struggle in Winnipeg
All weekly readings are available online through the library.
Leaning Outcomes/Objectives/Expectations:
I have structured this course to provide a variety of “ways in” to the history of public health and
medicine. By the end of this course a successful student should:
1. Understand how medical discoveries, politics, and health are interconnected.
2. Understand that health and medicine extend beyond the doctor’s office or hospital ward,
and see new avenues for their own study.
3. Have gained confidence in acquiring appropriate academic resources, framed a research
question, and pursued it.
Evaluation & Deadlines
Seminar Participation – Ongoing, 20%
Essay Proposal – 23 January, 5%
Book Review – 30 January, 20%
Lecture Quiz – 13 February, 10%
Research Essay – 20 March, 25%
Final Exam – TBD, 20%
Late Policy: All assignments must be submitted in hard copy during the class period. Papers must
be in 12 pt. Times New Roman font. Chicago style foot/end notes must be used, no exceptions.
(http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html) Late assignments will lose 3%
per day for up to one week. At which point they will not be accepted, except in the case of valid,
extenuating circumstances such as illness. Late assignments may receive reduced commentary.
Seminar Participation (20%)
Each seminar has required readings outlined below. They must be read prior to attending class.
The quality and thoughtfulness of contributions made during the discussion will determine this
portion of the grade.
Essay Proposal (5%) 23 January
This is a three-page assignment. The first page should indicate the proposed research topic, main
questions, timeframe, geographic focus, and if possible a hypothesis.
The second and third pages should include a list of four peer-reviewed secondary sources that
relate to your topic. Each should have an accompanying paragraph providing a general sense of
what the piece argues and how it related to your field. Finally, your proposal should include one
primary source along with a paragraph describing its appropriateness to your project.
I strongly encourage everyone to get in touch with me prior to submitting the proposal. I am happy
to point students in the right direction towards topics or sources.
Book Review 30 January (15%)
Students with student numbers ending in 0, 2, 4, 6, or 8 will write on Alison Bashford – Imperial
Hygiene: A Critical History of Colonialism, Nationalism, and Public Health
Students with student numbers ending in 1, 3, 5, 7, or 9 will write on Esyllt Wynne Jones –
Influenza 1918: Disease, Death, and Struggle in Winnipeg
Other than which book you will be reviewing, the assignment is the same.
Read your assigned book and prepare a five-page paper that addresses the following questions:
1) What is the author’s main argument?
2) How is this argument pursued? What supporting evidence and facts are relied upon?
3) In what ways could this monograph have been more convincing?
4) Is it successful overall?
Mid-Term Exam (15%) 13 February
This will be a mixture of identification, short answer, and long answer questions. It will cover all
material to this point.
Research Paper (25%) 20 March
Based upon the results of your research proposal you will write a 6-8 page essay. It must have at
least six secondary sources and one primary source.
Final Exam (25%) TBA, During Exam Period.
This will follow the same format as the mid-term, and will include material from the entire course.
University Policies
Academic Integrity:
Academic dishonesty, which includes plagiarism and cheating, is an extremely serious academic
offence and carries penalties varying from a 0 grade on an assignment to expulsion from the
University. Definitions, penalties, and procedures for dealing with plagiarism and cheating are set
out in Trent University’s Academic Integrity Policy. You have a responsibility to educate yourself
– unfamiliarity with the policy is not an excuse. You are strongly encouraged to visit Trent’s
Academic Integrity website to learn more: www.trentu.ca/academicintegrity.
Access to Instruction:
It is Trent University's intent to create an inclusive learning environment. If a student has a
disability and/or health consideration and feels that he/she may need accommodations to succeed
in this course, the student should contact the Disability Services Office (BH Suite 132, 748
[email protected]). For Trent University in Oshawa Disability Services office
contact 905-435-5100. Complete text can be found under Access to Instruction in the Academic
calendar.
Week 1 – 9 January – Introduction – The Body and Medicine in the Early-Modern World
Seminar Topic: Doctors and Sickness in Early-Modern England
Patrick Wallis, “Plagues, Morality and the Place of Medicine in Early Modern England,” English
Historical Review (2006): 1-24.
Week 2 – 16 January – Germ Theory, Miasma, and Quarantine
Seminar Topic: From Humours to Microbes
Nancy J. Tomes “American Attitudes toward the Germ Theory of Disease: Phyllis Allen
Richmond Revisited.” Journal of History Medicine and Allied Sciences (1997) 52 1: 17-50.
Judith Walzer Leavitt. “‘Typhoid Mary’ Strikes Back: Bacteriological Theory & Practice in Early
Twentieth-Century Public Health,” Isis 83 4 (1992): 608-629.
Week 3 – 23 January – Urbanization and Sickness
Essay Proposal Due
Seminar Topic: Making Cities Livable
Ken Cruikshank and Nancy B. Bouchier, “Blighted Areas and Obnoxious Industries: Constructing
Environmental Inequality on an Industrial Waterfront, Hamilton, Ontario, 1890-1960,”
Environmental History 9:3 (2004): 464-496.
Werner Troesken, “Typhoid Rates and the Public Acquisition of Private Waterworks, 1880-1920,”
The Journal of Economic History 59:4 (1999): 927-948
Week 4 – 30 January – Cholera and Water
Book Review Due
Seminar Topic: Trial and Error in Medical History
Geoffrey Bilson, “Cholera and Public Health in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Public Health /
Revue Canadienne de Santé Publique 75:4 (1984): 352-355.
John B. Osborne “The Lancaster County Cholera Epidemic of 1854 and the Challenge to the
Miasma theory of Disease,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 133:1 (2009):
5-28.
Laura Ball, “Cholera and the Pump on Broad Street: The Life and Legacy of John Snow,” The
History Teacher 43:1 (2009): 105-119.
Week 5 – 6 February – Surgery and Hospitals
Seminar Topic: Antisepsis and the ‘Triumph’ of Surgery?
Sally Wilde, “The Elephants in the Doctor-Patient Relationship: Patients’ Clinical Interactions and
the Changing Surgical Landscape of the 1890s” Health and History 9:1 (2007): 2-27
J. T. H. Connor, “Listerism Unmasked: Antisepsis and Asepsis in Victorian Anglo-Canada,”
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 49 (1994): 207-239.
Week 6 – 13 February – Eugenics, and Medical and Scientific Racism
Mid-Term Exam
Seminar Topic: Medicine as a means of social engineering.
Jane L. Halliday et al., “Genetics and Public Health: Evolution, or Revolution?” Journal of
Epidemiology and Community Health (1979-) 11:58 (2004): 894-899.
Andrea Patterson, “Germs and Jim Crow: The Impact of Microbiology on Public Health Politics
in Progressive Era American South,” Journal of the History of Biology 42 (2009): 529-559.
Week 7 – 20 February – University Closed: Family Day
Use this time to work on your research essay!
Week 8 – 27 February – Immigration, Scapegoating, and Resistance
Seminar Topic: Is health relative?
Howard Markel and Alexandra Minna Stern, “The Foreignness of Germs: The Persistent
Association of Immigrants and Disease in American Society.” The Milbank Quarterly 4:80 (2002):
757-788
Katherine Arnup, “Victims of Vaccination?: Opposition to Compulsory Immunization in Ontario,
1900-90.” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin canadien d'histoire de la médecine 9,
no. 1 (1992): 159-176.
Week 9 – 6 March – Women, Moral Hygiene, and the Politics of Health Rhetoric
Seminar Topic: Whose Health?
Elizabeth T. Hurren, “Poor Law versus Public Health: Diptheria, Sanitary Reform, and the
‘Crusade’ against Outdoor Relief, 1870-1900.” Social History of Medicine 3:18 (2005): 399-418.
Karin L. Zipf, “In Defense of the Nation: Syphilis, North Carolina’s “Girl Problem,” and World
War I.” The North Carolina Historical Review 3:89 (2012): 276-300.
Week 10 – 13 March – Mental Health as Public Health
Seminar Topic: Where does mental illness fit?
James E. Moran. “The Signal and the noise: the historical epidemiology of insanity in ante-bellum
New Jersey,” History of Psychiatry 14:3 (2003): 281-301.
Edmund McMahon, “Psychiatry at the Frontier: Surveying Aboriginal Mental Health in the Era of
Assimilation,” Health and History 9:2 (2007): 22-47.
Week 11 – 20 March -Public Health and Empire
Research Essay Due
Seminar Topic: What made colonies such a health risk?
Chin Hsien-Yu, “Colonial Medical Police and Postcolonial Medical Surveillance Systems in
Taiwan, 1895-1950s,” Osiris 13 (1999): 326-338.
Juanita De Barros and Sean Stilwell, “Introduction: Public Health and the Imperial Project,”
Caribbean Quarterly 49:4 (2003): 1-11.
Week 12 – 27 March – Doctors and Patients
Seminar Topic: Heroes and Victims?
Robert Woods, "Physician, heal thyself: the health and mortality of Victorian doctors." Social
history of medicine: the journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine/SSHM 9, no. 1
(1996): 1-30.
Roy Porter, “The Patient’s View: Doing Medical History from Below,” Theory and Society 14
(1985): 175-198.
Week 13 – 3 April – Final Exam Overview, Questions, and Wrap-up.