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HIS-265 The Black Death and Beyond: How Disease

This course is a global history of medicine and disease, from antiquity to the present. It investigates the manifold ways in which plague, smallpox, typhus, syphilis, typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis, scurvy, malaria, influenza, COVID and other diseases have shaped human history, from the Paleolithic era, to ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, the medieval Christian and Islamic worlds, the Age of Exploration, the Industrial Revolution and beyond. It also explores how civilization and human activity (agriculture, urbanization, trade, imperialism, war, migration, medical and technological progress etc.) have, in turn, influenced the origins and course of diseases, and generated history's greatest epidemics and pandemics.

Credits

3

Prerequisite

ENG-101

Department

  • Social Science

Course Rotation Schedule

  • Spring: In Person
For more detailed course information view the Course Outline

HIS 265: The Black Death and Beyond: How Disease

Department

Social Science

Course Description

This course is a global history of medicine and disease, from antiquity to the present. It investigates the manifold ways in which plague, smallpox, typhus, syphilis, typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis, scurvy, malaria, influenza, COVID and other diseases have shaped human history, from the Paleolithic era, to ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, the medieval Christian and Islamic worlds, the Age of Exploration, the Industrial Revolution and beyond. It also explores how civilization and human activity (agriculture, urbanization, trade, imperialism, war, migration, medical and technological progress etc.) have, in turn, influenced the origins and course of diseases, and generated history's greatest epidemics and pandemics.

Credit Hours

3

Contact Hours

Lecture3
Lab0
Other0

Grading Scheme

Letter

Prerequisites

ENG-101

SUNY General Education Course

  • World Languages

Capstone Course

Yes

Course Learning Outcomes

  1. Explain the ways in which medical theories and practices reflect the distinctive features of Western civilization; its history, institutions, geography, economy, religions, society, and/or culture.
  2. Connect developments in Western medicine to those of other regions of the world.
  3. Analyze some of the major events and themes of Western and/or global medical history.

Topic Outline

  1. 1. Why medical history?
  2. 2. Disease and early human history
  3.     a. Origins of human disease
  4.     b. Disease and medical practices in hunter-gatherer communities
  5.     c. Disease and the agricultural (Neolithic) revolution
  6. 3. Medicine, disease, and surgery in ancient Near Eastern civilization: Egypt and
  7.    Mesopotamia
  8. 4. Ancient Greek medicine
  9.     a. Bronze Age medicine
  10.     b. Hippocrates, humanism, and humors: the fifth-century B.C.E. medical revolution
  11.     c. Dysentery (enteric fever)
  12.         i. Origins, nature, course, prevention, and treatment
  13.         ii. Impact on the Persian Wars
  14.     d. Typhoid fever (Salmonella Typhi)
  15.         i. Origins, nature, course, prevention, and treatment
  16.         ii. The "Plague of Athens" and the Peloponnesian War
  17. 5. Medicine in the Hellenistic era
  18.     a. Medicine in the "first great age of science": Herophilus, Erasistratus, and
  19.        the birth of anatomy
  20.     b. Disease in the age of Alexander the Great
  21.     c. Malaria
  22.         i. Origins, nature, course, prevention, and treatment
  23.         ii. Historical impact: from ancient Egypt to the Vietnam War
  24.         iii. Malaria in the world today
  25.         iv. West Nile virus and yellow fever
  26. 6. Ancient Roman medicine
  27.     a. Galenic medicine: anatomy, surgery, and the preventive doctrine
  28.     b. Celsus and pharmacology
  29.     c. Soranus: obstetrics and gynecology
  30.     d. Dioscorides and drug therapy
  31.     e. Roman public health: waste management, sanitation, and hygiene
  32.     f. Medical explanations for the fall of Rome
  33.         i. Lead poisoning and population decline
  34.         ii. Birth of the pandemic age
  35.         iii. Plague (Yersinia pestis): bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic etiology,
  36.              course, and treatment
  37.         iv. The Antonine and Aurelian plagues, 2nd–3rd centuries C.E.
  38.         v. Byzantine medicine and Justinian's plague, 6th century C.E.
  39. 7. Medieval medicine, 500–1500 C.E.
  40.     a. Medicine in the age of faith and superstition
  41.     b. Pagan influences on medieval medicine
  42.     c. Ergotism and scrofula
  43.     d. Urban squalor and disease
  44.     e. Medicine and the 12th-century Renaissance
  45.     f. Medicine and the Crusades
  46.     g. Islamic medicine: Rhazes, Avicenna, Averroes, and Albucasis
  47.     h. Leprosy: etiology, perceptions, treatments, and historical impact
  48.     i. The Black Death, 1347–51
  49.         i. Pandemic preconditions in the 14th century
  50.         ii. Origins and interpretations
  51.         iii. Historical impact (Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe)
  52. 8. Medicine in the age of the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution, 16th–17th
  53.    centuries
  54.     a. Background to the 16th–17th-century medical revolution
  55.     b. Vesalius, Harvey, and Mayow and the rebirth of anatomy
  56.     c. Surgery in the gunpowder age: da Vigo, Paré, and von Gersdorff
  57.     d. Van Leeuwenhoek, Hooke, and the microscopic revolution
  58.     e. Paracelsus: acrimonies and pathological anatomy
  59.     f. Drug therapy and the rise of modern chemistry
  60.     g. Fracastorius: contagionism and the "individualization of disease"
  61. 9. Disease and the global implications of the "Columbian Exchange"
  62.     a. The Columbian Exchange I: syphilis (Treponema pallidum)
  63.         i. Nature, causation, symptoms, and treatment
  64.         ii. North American origin theory and impact on Native American populations
  65.         iii. Impact of the "Great Pox" in the Old World
  66.         iv. Prevention, detection, and treatment: prophylactics, Wassermann,
  67.             Ehrlich's "magic bullet," and the antibiotic era
  68.     b. The Columbian Exchange II: smallpox (Variola major and Variola minor)
  69.         i. Nature, causation, symptoms, and treatment
  70.         ii. Old World origins and impact
  71.         iii. Armageddon: smallpox in the "New World"
  72.             (1) Smallpox and colonial American history
  73.             (2) Cortés and the Aztecs
  74.             (3) Pizarro and the Inca
  75.         iv. Smallpox and the global slave trade
  76.         v. Smallpox in the Pacific
  77.         vi. Conquest of smallpox: from variolation to vaccination
  78.         vii. Global eradication of smallpox
  79.         viii. Smallpox and bioterrorism
  80. 10. Scurvy: scourge of the sea
  81.     a. Nature, causes, symptoms, and treatment
  82.     b. Historical impact
  83.         i. Scurvy and the "Age of Sail"
  84.         ii. Lind and treatment
  85. 11. Typhus (Rickettsia prowazekii): Napoleonic scourge
  86.     a. Epidemic typhus: etiology, spread, and treatment
  87.     b. Historical impact
  88.         i. Role in the Columbian Exchange
  89.         ii. Thirty Years' War, 1618–48
  90.         iii. Role in the Napoleonic Wars and the Russian fiasco of 1812
  91.         iv. Typhus in the "Age of Sail"
  92.         v. Typhus and the Irish Famine, 1845–52
  93.         vi. Louse-borne illness in WWI
  94.         vii. Typhus in WWII and the Holocaust
  95.     c. Conquest of typhus
  96. 12. Diseases of the Industrial Revolution: cholera (Vibrio cholerae)
  97.     a. Nature, causes, symptoms, and treatment
  98.     b. Impact: global endemicity and pandemicity
  99.         i. Cholera, imperialism, and the Industrial Revolution
  100.         ii. Global pandemics of 1829–37, 1846–60, and 1881–96
  101.         iii. John Snow's "Ghost Map"
  102.         iv. Role in the American Civil War
  103.         v. Public Health Acts of 1848 and 1875
  104.         vi. Bazalgette, von Pettenkofer, and modern sanitation
  105.         vii. Koch's bacillus
  106.         viii. Cholera in the Third World
  107. 13. Diseases of the Industrial Revolution: tuberculosis
  108.     (TB, Mycobacterium tuberculosis)
  109.     a. Nature, causes, symptoms, and treatment
  110.     b. Prehistoric origins
  111.     c. TB and the "Columbian Exchange"
  112.     d. Impact in the industrial age
  113.     e. The "White Death" in literature, art, and culture
  114.     f. Treatment: Laennec, tuberculin, X-ray and radiology, BCG, and streptomycin
  115.     g. The challenge of TB in the 21st century: demographic movement and congestion,
  116.        comorbidity, and antibiotic resistance
  117. 14. The Victorian medical revolution
  118.     a. Virchow, Pasteur, Koch, and the bacteriological revolution
  119.     b. Surgical revolution: Lister, Semmelweis, antisepsis, and anesthesia
  120.     c. Pasteur, Koch, and the bacteriological revolution
  121.     d. Edwin Chadwick, sanitary reform, and public health
  122.     e. Florence Nightingale and the emergence of modern nursing
  123. 15. Medicine in the age of total war: WWI
  124.     a. Tetanus, dysentery, and other medical challenges of trench warfare
  125.     b. Casualty evacuation, imaging, triage, and transfusion
  126.     c. Shell shock (PTSD) and modern psychiatry
  127.     d. Reconstructive and plastic surgery
  128.     e. Chemical warfare
  129.     f. "Khaki fever": VD in the trenches
  130.     g. Endocrinology
  131.     h. Tropical medicine: Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East
  132. 16. Influenza: the "viral pirate" and the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918
  133.     a. Nature, causes, symptoms, and treatment
  134.     b. Influenza through the ages: from medieval "sweating sickness" to the
  135.        "Russian grippe" of 1889–90
  136.     c. The "Spanish flu" pandemic of 1918–19: origins and impact
  137.     d. "Fateful alliance": the flu pandemic of 1918 and the First World War
  138.     e. Influenza pandemics of 1957, 1968, 1977, and 2009
  139. 17. Medical developments in the Second World War era
  140.     a. The antibiotic revolution: sulfa drugs and penicillin
  141.     b. Battlefield treatment: plasma, burn treatment, and thoracic surgery
  142.     c. Vascular surgery, defibrillation, and the pacemaker
  143.     d. Chemotherapy and cancer treatment
  144.     e. DDT and insect-borne diseases
  145.     f. Diabetes treatment: insulin and dialysis
  146. 18. Post-WWII medical triumphs
  147.     a. Imaging: CT, EKG, MRI, and ultrasound
  148.     b. DNA and the genetics revolution
  149.     c. Artificial heart and organ transplantation
  150.     d. Robotic surgery
  151.     e. Immunology
  152.     f. Conquest of polio
  153.     g. HIV/AIDS pandemic
  154.     h. Ebola
  155.     i. Swine flu and bird flu
  156.     j. SARS and COVID