Doctors, Disease and Pandemics: Patients and Practitioners

Module code: HS7312

This module examines disease and the varieties of human response to it in society, from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries, taking a focused ‘case study’ approach. It explores the fundamental ways in which ideas and attitudes regarding disease were different from those of modern biomedicine, as well as the areas of continuity with the present. The module looks at the conditions in which people have lived and the sorts of diseases they have suffered, as well as the ideas and theories they developed and the responses they took, in a range of times and places. Throughout, attention will be paid to the sick person’s point of view and the nature of the patient-practitioner encounter.