1. Medicine in America: Comparative Perspectives HI 31L Roberta Bivins

2. The history of medicine and the history of America Why a medical perspective on the American past? –Health and the body are enduring and immediate concerns across historical periods and peoples of America; –Allows approaches to both natural and built environments; –Offers a unique perspective on social and cultural trends and beliefs: shows how they filtered into and influenced PRACTICE and daily life; –Shows interplay between cultural, political, economic and social spheres.

3. And what is this ‘comparative’ thing about? Why a comparative perspective on medicine in the US? –US medicine has over the course of the 20 th century taken a very distinctive form: by looking at medical practices and healthcare systems in other cultures, we can address the reasons why US health care has taken the form we see today. Where else will we look? –Britain –Japan, Australia, Canada and elsewhere in the Americas.

4. What kind of history is this? Social Political Economic Cultural

5. Approaches to the history of medicine Through case studies Through individual accounts Through politics Through professionalization Through technologies, images and artefacts Through media representations

6. (Some) Themes in the module

7. Gender in/ Gender and Medicine

8. Medicine, Healthcare & Race

9. Professions and Professionalisation

10. War, Medicine and the State

11. Medicine and Immigration

12. Institutional History

13. Medical Education

14. Medicine and the Body Politic

15. Diseases

16. Medicine and Technology