WEEK 8

Greetings Medical Historians

I trust that your destinies have been beautifully resolved during or after The Match.

We will stick to our syllabus and have no class meeting Tuesday, March 24.  Here is your assignment for the following Tuesday, March 31 .  This is an essay question.  I want you to answer in depth.  Use your own judgment as to length, etc. 

A well-known historian of medicine has theorized that during the nineteenth century a revolution took place in medical therapeutics you may agree or disagree.

Make your case as strong as possible (I hope you understand that this is actually a test of the spoken word...on which my whole life depends).  You may begin with Benjamin Rush, the hero of the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793… Thomas Jefferson in the executive mansion in  1800.  William Beaumont in the war of 1812 and  Alexis St. Martin and human experimentation…The American Civil War … Post Civil War reforms in medicine and medical education…advances in scientific medicine…and William Osler who is our bridge from the nineteenth to the twentieth century.  Touch on all of these if you can. 

Please have this essay in your little hands when you come to class on Tuesday, March 31.

Cynthia  Pitcock, PhD