This course focuses on the relationship between medicine and society in the modern world. The emphasis is on understanding medicine and medical care as "a complex social process, embedded in the cultural matrix and laden with values." In particular, readings and classes stress the new perspectives that have reoriented the study of "medical history" in the last decades: the emphasis on the patient rather than the doctor; on the enmeshment of medicine in broader historical webs of meaning; the influence of other disciplines, such as anthropology and medical sociology on the history of medicine; the existence of a wide range of practitioners ("fringe," "popular," "quacks," "alternatives"); and finally, the importance of class, race, and gender as categories of historical analysis and as determinants of medical care.
