(A) Qualifying courses
Methods and Themes in the History of Science and Technology
(Convenor: Professor Pietro Corsi)
The course in Methods and Themes in the History of Science and Technology is compulsory for students planning to write a Masters dissertation in this field, and for all Probationer Research Students who do not possess an appropriate Masters degree. It is based on an orientation meeting, nine two-hour classes, and associated discussions of written and other work. It provides an introduction to some of the main traditions in the gathering, manipulation, and application of natural knowledge. Although it involves some study of the medieval and early modern periods, the emphasis is on science in the industrial age and the interactions between science and technological practice. Students are expected to acquire a general knowledge of the main currents in the history of science and technology, but they do so from a perspective informed by intensive reading in the methodologies of relevant areas of historical and social science writing. The aim is to strike a balance between the acquisition of a necessary basic knowledge and an appreciation of the tools and approaches that historians of science and technology have utilised. All those attending the course are required to attend a cycle of eight one-hour lectures entitled 'Introduction to the history of science and technology'. These are predominantly 'empirical' lectures, providing an introduction to some of the main episodes in the history of science and technology for those students (in fact, the great majority) who have no grounding in the subject.
Methods and Themes in the History of Medicine
(Convenors: Dr Mark Harrison and others)
This course is compulsory for students planning to write a Masters dissertation in the history of medicine and for all Probationer Research Students who do not possess an appropriate Masters degree. It is designed to provide students with an intellectually challenging introduction to key methodologies and historiographic issues in their field. The course covers a wide range of topics (see Handbook) and is taught over ten weeks in the first term. Following the introductory session, students are taught by a one-hour lecture and a one-and-a-half hour class, the following week. In classes, students are required make a number of presentations which form the basis for critical appraisal and discussion. The subject matter of the lecturers and classes reflects the varied and interdisciplinary subject matter of the history of medicine, and classes often focus on concepts derived from other disciplines such as anthropology and sociology. The aim is to provide coverage of near-universal themes such as the relationship between patients and practitioners, while providing an introduction to subjects on which students are likely to write dissertations.
These two series of classes and lectures are the standard qualifying courses in History of Science and Medicine, but - where academically desirable - students may register for one of the qualifying courses in Economic and Social History.
(B) Advanced Papers
- Assessment: Advanced Papers are usually assessed by either a three-hour examination, or by two extended essays in lieu of an examination.
Birth of the clinic, 1750–1850
(Convenor: Professor Laurence Brockliss)
This course explores one of the defining moments in the history of modern medicine, immortalized by Foucault. In particular it looks at the following themes: (1) The original role of the hospital as a shelter for the indigent; (2) The development of the hospital as a site for the study of disease around 1800; (3) The similarities and differences between hospital and private medical practice; and (4) The growing tension after 1820 between the hospital and the laboratory as centres of medical science. For the most part, the course concentrates on the history of the clinic in France, but reference is continually made to contemporary developments in Great Britain, the Austrian Empire, and the Italian peninsula. The most important comparative question addressed concerns the chronology of the development of clinical medicine: was Paris really first? Students, however, also have the chance to examine other comparative themes such as the different attitudes towards the hospital patient in Britain and France and reflect on the emergence in this period of specific national medical cultures.
- Bibliography
Comparative reception of evolutionary biology and eugenics in Britain, France, and Germany, 1850–1950
(Convenor: Professor Paul Weindling)
Historical analysis of Darwinism and Mendelian genetics has uncovered sharply divergent patters of response in different national contexts. This paper will assess and explain these differences in the impact of Darwinism, social darwinism, Mendelian genetics, and eugenics with emphasis on social and cultural factors. Topics for study will include the social organization of the life sciences, professionalization, gender issues, the emergence of ecology, the role of the state and welfare organizations, and the promotion of scientific solutions to social problems.
- Bibliography
Disease, medicine, and colonial expansion
(Convenor: Dr Mark Harrison)
The course explores some of the main themes that have arisen from historical scholarship on medicine and colonial expansion in the period before 1900. The course begins by examining the epidemiological impact of the Spanish and Portuguese colonial conquests of the 1500s and ends with an examination of plague in British India. The geographical area covered includes Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Pacific Islands, but it does not cover Africa after the 1880s. The latter is examined in other advanced papers.
- Bibliography
Electrotherapy. A case study in nineteenth- and twentieth-century science, technology, and medicine
(Convenor: Dr John Senior)
The aim of this course is to examine the manifold uses of electrotherapy and the strategies of its legitimization throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In its heyday in the late Victorian era, electrotherapy was utilised for a myriad of neurological and psychiatric disorders. By exploiting the prestige of science and the numinous quality of technology, medical electricians translated the protean forces of nature into an emblem of medical modernity. Later on, however, the spread of urban networks of power and the introduction of electrical appliances into the home had lent an aura of mundanity to the specialty. Throughout the course there will be an opportunity to discuss the social meaning of electricity and its diverse and often incompatible associations with all aspects of society – ‘quackery’, popular entertainment, industry, communications and even capital punishment. Attention will be given to contemporary literature and film, historical artefacts and patient records as well as new scholarship.
- Bibliography
Health, medicine, and social conditions in early modern England
(Convenor: Dr Margaret Pelling)
This course will examine the different ways in which health and disease emerge as major preoccupations within early modern society. A context is provided by the effects of successive crises in public health which particularly affected towns. Recent work has established the existence of a numerous and varied body of medical practitioners, reflecting the demands of sufferers of all classes for a wide range of healers. The occupation of medicine will be analysed to reflect on the relationships between disease and social policy; the reorganization of medicine in response to both internal and external pressures; and the close connexions between medicine and a wide range of other occupations in the context of poverty as well as new opportunities and economic change. Finally, attention will be given to literary and other sources illustrating the effect of disease crises on self-presentation and social obligations, and the role of medical practitioners in supplying personal services demanded by the individual to ensure survival and a role within society.
- Bibliography
International health and welfare organizations in the twentieth century
(Convenor: Professor Paul Weindling)
This course is concerned with how international organizations co-ordinated efforts to prevent disease and monitored standards of living, particularly in Europe. It will study the founding and activities of such bodies as the League of Nations Health Organization, the International Labour Office, and the League of Red Cross Societies in the context of post-war problems of political stabilization, and of epidemic diseases, malnutrition and refugees. National rivalries and social tensions will be considered while examining the interaction of administrative elites with governments, trade unions, and employers, and with other organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation. Problems to be discussed included the applicability of analyses of Rockefeller-supported medicine as an agent of international capitalism; the professionalization of, and gender distinctions in, welfare work; standard of living controversies during the Depression; and the concepts and organizational structures of social medicine.
- Bibliography
Knowledge, science, and empire
(Convenor: Dr Roy Macleod)
That ‘trade follows the flag’ is conventional wisdom; but what part have science and medicine played in the history of Western expansion? What, in turn, have been the consequences of Western science for the post-imperial world. No Australian, surrounded by the ubiquity of Cook and Banks, La Pérouse and Bougainville, and the eponymy of Botany Bay – no Canadian familiar with the history of maritime trade, Arctic exploration, no scholar concerned with the history of modern Africa, India and China – can be indifferent to the role of science in national development and international policy. The legacies of European expansion shape the world we know today, and in their history, the methods, values and practices of science are prominent features. This course will examine the diffusion, transmission, adaptation, and assimilation of Western science and medicine since the 16th century. Seminars will consider issues emerging in the colonial/imperial experience of Iberia, Britain, France, Germany, and the United States. Discussions will explore colonial and post-colonial origins and ambitions, the nature of exploration and discovery, the dynamics of race and disease, the role of collecting and representation, and the emergence of ‘techno-scientific politics’ that continue to dominate conversations in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.
- Bibliography
Medicine and modern warfare
(Convenor: Dr Mark Harrison)
This course examines the relationship between war and medicine from the late seventeenth century to the late twentieth century. During this period medicine became increasingly important in the management of the armed forces and in preparing a civilian population for major conflicts. The seminars will look in detail at medicine’s role in the conservation of manpower and the preservation of morale. The topics will include hygiene and discipline, warfare and desire, military psychology, and war and civilian health services.
- Bibliography
Political economy of health and medicine in Africa
(Convenor: Dr Sloan Mahone)
This course challenges students to critique the social and ethical dimensions of economic and political policies and strategies, using public health as the organizing framework for both historical and contemporary case studies in Africa. The course will begin with an introduction to the historiography of health and medicine in Africa and will continue with readings from a variety of disciplines and a wide range of primary and secondary sources related to key themes and ways of thinking about public health and medicine. Seminars will offer not only examples that are well documented case studies in medical history and bioethics, such as the Colonial response to sleeping sickness in the Belgian Congo, but also those practices that, although widespread and devastating, have remained largely hidden from view such as the promotion of dangerous skin lightening creams or the market-driven epidemic of ‘commerciogenic malnutrition’ caused by the aggressive marketing of baby formula in developing countries. The course will conclude with seminars analysing the impact of the global AIDS pandemic, particularly in Africa, where the complex relations of governments, scientific research bodies, health workers, and the pharmaceutical industry are discussed.
- Bibliography
The scholarly medical traditions: Islamic and Chinese medicine
(Convenors: Dr Elizabeth Hsu and Dr Emilie Savage-Smith)
The course explores, in a comparative manner, two aspects of the ‘scholarly medical traditions’ – that is, medical systems based on learned treatises written in a wide range of languages, including Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, Mongolian, Thai, and Vietnamese. Some of these traditions are better known by their modern names of Yunani Tibb, Ayurveda, Siddha medicine, zhongyi, kanpo, sowa rigpa, and so forth. It is the Islamic and Chinese aspects of these traditions that will be the focus of this course. With regard to ideas of etiology and therapeutics, conceptions of bodily fluids and structures, and ecological influences, there are continuities between Islamic and Chinese medicine, but there are also radical differences. Islamic medicine grew out of Galenic medicine, as Greek medical texts were translated into Syriac and Arabic in the 9th century and major urban centres such as Baghdad arose; while Chinese medicine traces its beginnings to the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), when the Chinese empire was for the first time unified. Both medical traditions came to have a long history, marked by adherence to the classical texts but also by innovation. Though there were cultural and commercial exchanges between these two cultures, yet to date little consideration has been given to comparing the two medical systems. This seminar will compare and contrast specific genres of literature in these two scholarly medical traditions. The two introductory seminars will provide, in separate sessions, a synopsis of the history and basic tenets of the two traditions. The following six seminars will explore three distinct themes: (1) theoretical treatises on the body, (2) the materia medica and recipe literature, and (3) case histories. For each topic, one session will approach it from the viewpoint of Chinese medicine and one session from that of Arabic/Islamic medicine. The two seminar conveners, one a specialist in Chinese medicine and the other in medieval Islamic medicine, will be present throughout the entire seminar series.
- Bibliography
Science, technology, and instrumentation to 1800
Mathematical instruments to 1600: ancient and medieval astronomical instruments, including the armillary sphere, astrolabe, torquetum, quadrant, etc; the mathematical arts in the Renaissance and the rapid development of instrumentation from the later fifteenth century; the expanded domain of mathematical practice in astronomy, navigation, surveying, drawing, calculations, etc.
Instruments of the seventeenth century: the new categories of optical and natural philosophical instruments and their conceptual and methodological implications; the telescope, including its application to measuring instruments, the microscope, the thermometer, the air-pump, the barometer and magnetic instruments; the role of instrumentation for experiment and mecahnical philosophy.
Instrumentation, 1700-1850: the rise of fashionable natural philosophy in England, France, and the Netherlands; the growth of new instrument markets and new traditions of making and marketing; electricity, optics, and experimental practice; the evolution of the microscope and telescope and their changing roles in amateur and professional practices; the development of mathematical instruments through agencies of the state, such as national observatories, longitude commissions, and national surveys; the rise to dominance of London mathematical makers and the subsequent challenges from makers in Paris and in centres in Germany.
- Bibliography
Social studies of science and technology
(Convenor: Professor Steve Woolgar)
This course introduces some main themes and issues in Social Studies of Science and Technology (also called Science and Technology Studies – STS), an important, influential and often controversial interdisciplinary field. It is provocative in challenging accepted views about science and technology, one consequence of which is to raise profound questions about the very basis for scholarship and research. Many of its arguments have impacted on work in social science, history, and philosophy. Some of the analytic perspectives covered include relativism and social constructivism, social shaping, actor network theory and reflexivity. It covers substantive areas such as the genesis and reception of scientific knowledge and the sociology of technology, especially the social dynamics of information and communication (including Internet and mobile) technologies. This latter will include consideration of the effects of the new technologies on questions of identity, trust, privacy, representation and social organisation.
- Bibliography
Technology and twentieth-century development in the tropics
(Convenor: Dr Emma Reisz)
This course explores the use of technology and science in the attempt to improve the standard of living of many of the world’s poorest people. Focusing on the economic, epidemiological, and environmental regions which came to be known as ‘the tropics’, this course places technology in both its economic and cultural historical contexts. Areas of technology considered will include agriculture, health, the environment, and communications. Industrialized societies were able to harness ever greater productivity benefits, many of them resulting from technology. However, much of the world’s population remained excluded from the transformation in the human capacity to ensure material security. The intersection of two historical themes will be addressed in this course: the idea of the tropics as a distinctive category in need of assistance from technology; and the limited contribution of technology to the alleviation of tropical rural poverty in a century when the gap between the world’s richest societies and its poorest widened dramatically.
- Bibliography
Transmission and understanding in the sciences
(Convenor: Professor Robert Fox)
This advanced paper treats aspects of communication in science during the ‘long’ nineteenth century from the 1780s to the first world war. A core aim is the questioning of notions of communication based on the straightforward passage of scientific knowledge, in a more or less simplified form, from an authoritative seat of expertise to a passive receiver. Most of the sources that are used point to complexities that render this ‘diffusionist’ model unsustainable. The commonly used categories of ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ are among those that have had to be rethought in the recent literature in the light of perspectives borrowed from the social sciences. Similarly, sociologically informed studies of the rhetorical devices and visual representations used in popular literature and lectures have led to new levels of understanding of the intricate processes at work in the transmission and appropriation of science in circles that can broadly be described as ‘amateur’. With regard to ‘professional’ science, the rethinking is less advanced. But the form and function of textbooks are beginning to be studied within the context of work on the history of the book, while the SciPer project, based at the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds, already offers guidelines for analysis and a growing body of source material. - With the intention of promoting a comparative as well an multi-disciplinary approach, sources relevant to a number of European countries, mainly France and Germany, as well as Britain, are used. But all the required reading is in English.
- Bibliography
Western medicine in colonial Africa c.1900–1965
(Convenor: Dr John Manton)
This course will examine the role of western medicine in mediating relations between Africans and Europeans during the colonial period. It explores the impact of a wide range of medical interventions, by government agencies, Christian missionaries, and international organisations, at hospitals, dispensaries, leprosaria, asylums, and laboratories. Participants will consider the shifting and varying interactions between clinical practice, epidemiology, and medical research in forming colonial medical bureaucracies in East, Central and Southern British colonial Africa, and in British and French colonial West Africa. The significance of epidemics in framing discourses of public health and colonial development will also be scrutinised. Ideologies of cure and prevention, often framed in Christian terms, will be explored for their relevance in day-to-day medical practice, and the local significance of clinical and sanitary interventions will be examined, in terms of impact on burdens of disease, provision of opportunities for employment, and role in the reproduction of family and community life.
- Bibliography
