Medical School Selective Courses

Selective courses consists of five or six weekly two-hour sessions commencing with student-led discussions of assigned articles followed by examination and discussion of archival materials. Prior to the beginning of the course, reading assignments are provided on the student on-line portal.  After the final session, students have several days to compose short essays summarizing all of the materials.

“Introduction to the History of Medicine”
(M04 577H)

Week I:  Ancient Medicine:  Hippocrates and Galen
Week II:  The Beginnings of Modern Medicine:  Andreas Vesalius and William Harvey
Week III:  Great Developments in Internal Medicine:  Rene Laennec and Ignac Semmelweis
Week IV:  The Rise of Pathology:  Giovanni Morgagni and Rudolf Virchow
Week V:  The Development of Modern Surgery:  The Discovery of General Anesthesia and Joseph Lister
Week VI:  Medical Science in America:  William S. Halsted, Helen Taussig and Alfred Blalock

“Major Epidemics in the History of Medicine”
(M04 579H)

Week I:  The Black Death:  Bubonic Plague
Week II:  Smallpox and Vaccination
Week III:  Insect-Carried Diseases:  Malaria and Yellow Fever
Week IV:  Tuberculosis and Syphilis
Week V:  Modern Epidemics:  Influenza and AIDS

“Medical Discovery and Progress from War”
(M04 590H)

Week I:  The Early Frontier, 1800-1850:  William Beaumont, the First American Medical Researcher
Week II:  Scurvy, the Discovery of Vitamins and the Development of Controlled Clinical Trials
Week III:  The Spanish-American War:  Walter Reed and Yellow Fever; The First World War:  Neurosurgery and Neurology of Cerebral Trauma
Week IV:  The Second World War:  Antibiotics and Blood Transfusion
Week V:  From Shell Shock to PTSD:  The History of Psychotraumatology