OSPFLOR 82F: Healing, Belief, and Science: Medicine Before Modernity

Instructor: Weber, Domizia

What is medicine? How have ideas about health, disease, and the human body changed over time? How did medicine evolve from a discipline grounded largely in philosophy and inherited authority to one increasingly shaped by observation, experimentation, and scientific inquiry? And how have cultural, religious, and political forces influenced the ways societies understand and respond to illness? 

This course surveys the history of medicine and science from classical antiquity to 1500. Topics range from the social and economic consequences of the Black Death of 1348 in Western Europe to the influence of medieval Arabic and Islamic traditions on the development of Western medicine.

Units: 3 | Grading Basis: Letter Grade | Component: Seminar 
Category: Elective

*All courses are subject to change.