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History of Medicine

Fall 2006

 

Graduate students will have an assignment in addition to the writing project being prepared by all students in the course.  Below is a list of 14 chapters in the history of medicine, arranged chronologically.  Each student is to choose 5 chapters (all topics must be covered, but no duplication), and will prepare a thorough and careful annotated bibliography of resources on the Web that would be useful to a reader.

 

Chapters in the History of Medicine

1.     Paleopathology and Primitive Man – health in prehistory

2.     Ancient Middle East – supernaturalism and medicine

3.     India and Asia – rise of the non-western medical traditions

4.     Greece – supernaturalism and the emerging naturalistic medicine

5.     Rome and Byzantium

6.     Medieval Europe

7.     Non-European Medicine, 700-1500 CE

8.     Early Modern Europe – technological and theoretical change

9.     Early Modern Europe – health, disease, trauma, and society

10. 19th Century Medicine – dramatic change for societies and for individuals

11. 19th Century Medicine – spread and development of European medicine

12. 20th Century Medicine – professionalization and specialization of the new medicine

13. 20th Century Medicine – new social and economic context of medicine

14. Brave New Century – dilemmas in the 21st century

15. Additional topic (to make 15) – a thorough search of the Library of Congress and National Archive collections.

 

The Annotated Bibliography

 

In terms of basic assumptions, put your bibliography into this context – pretend you are writing a history of medicine textbook and the editor has insisted that you include several web resources for each of your chapters that future students could use for their own research.   Further, these resources must include primary sources and visuals.   Which ones would you include?

 

Now…

 

Having chosen the 5 chapters, each student is to prepare a thorough annotated bibliography of web resources for as many topics as possible for the chosen chapters.

 

·        Principally, you are to find primary sources (in full text), document collections, photographs and other art collections, etc.

·        Look broadly, not just history of medicine, but try searches on such areas as anthropology, economics, health care issues, history (general), geography, political science, history of science, medical organizations (ex. WHO, or CDC)

·        Stay away from:

1.     K-12 resources.  Examples: “How to teach a unit on Europe’s Black Death to 11th grade history students”, or “Mrs. Smith’s 6th grade class assembles a list of web resources on the history of medicine”.  If you find one like that, do check out their links (they may have found a good one), but don’t use Mrs. Smith’s website as one of your entries.

2.     University library holdings – often these appear on searches, but only indicate what resources are available in their own library, not of any use unless you happen to be standing at their circulation desk!  Exception!: if they have digital holdings that can be used online and off-site, these can be included.

·        You can use non-US sites, as long as they are in English and are completely available for online users.

·        Keep your chapters separate, ie a separate bibliography for each chapter.

·        The Final Product – You are to turn in a hard copy of your annotations, and an additional disk copy listing of the sources.  Please use either Word or WordPerfect for your work.

Finally, work together!  If you find a source that might be good for one of your co-workers, tell them about it!  They may well return the favor!

 

 

 

 

What to include in your annotation…

 

·        Obviously, the correct, complete address. (Triple-check this!)

·        Authorship of the site – who owns (is responsible for content) and operates it

·        Scope and depth of site, topics covered

·        Download time and ease of use

·        Use of graphics

·        Links to other useful sites

·        Types of resources available (ex. Full text documents)

 

(These are the barest minimum for an entry.  Try to expand your annotation to the point that somebody reading it would know if this was a site worth exploring for research in their history of medicine topic.)

 

 

If anybody is interested, at the end of the semester I will make xerox copies of all the bibliographies if you want them.

 

 

A Sample Search

 

1.  Go to Google.com and run a search on “History of medicine document collections”.

2.     Try the one called “History of the Health Sciences World Wide Web Links” at www.mla.hhss.org/histlink.htm.  This site lists links to various collections including educational programs, biographies, databases, bibliographies etc.

3.     Then explore those links, for example “Databases”.

4.     Now explore these links, for example, “Finding aids for archival collections”.  This site has a discussion of the scope and depth of a number of archival holdings in the US on various historical topics.

5.     Now look at some of these sites to see if any of them are useful.

a.     In the “California online resources”, none of the links are active – not a heckuva lot of use, though you might go back to Google and search them out there, for example, the California Historical Society.  So, not a total loss.

b.    Library of Congress does not work either, but the University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive does.  Try a search for “medicine”, or “illness”, “wars”, etc.

c.     I got a hit on “medicine” – looked at “Features from the series “Currents: Medicine”, but it was a dead end.

d.    Go back to the main page, try “Online Resources and Collections”, go to “Film Collections”.  But none of these materials seem to be of use to an off-site user.

e.     Therefore, the UCBAMPFA site is not going to be a resource you would want to include in your annotated bibliography.

 

6.     Go back, pick another link, and keep looking.

 

 

What about length?????

 

This is the inevitable and invariable question.  I am not setting a specific number (though you should have at least 5 absolutely primo sites for each chapter).  Rather, your grade will depend heavily on how many high-quality sites you list and how thoroughly you analize each of them.  Remember, you are graduate students and are expected to be beyond the undergraduate mentality of “how little can I get away with”.

 

 

~~~~Happy hunting!!~~~~