DISCUSS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PATIENTS AND HEALERS
Research Essay (2000-2300 words) Due date: March 18, 2019
The essay is an opportunity to conduct original and in-depth research on a topic of your choice. Drawing on various sources, including primary and secondary sources construct a convincing argument and support it with compelling evidence.
Here is a list of broadly defined topics for your essay. Please select a topic listed below as the subject matter of your essay. It is important to choose a topic that you find interesting and intriguing. The topics listed below are fairly general. You MUST narrow down the subject matter of your essay to a more specific theme – ideally to a case study – by examining particular events or historical processes that are closely related to the periods covered by the course ( from Antiquity to the 17th century). In choosing the theme of your essay, you should keep in mind that it is advisable to focus on shorter rather than longer historical periods. Writing an essay that covers long historical periods requires a very good command of your sources, and in general is much more difficult. By contrast, writing on specific events and shorter periods allows you to make the argument more specific and informative.
***Focus on one of the periods considered in this course, from Antiquity to the 17th century***
1) Galenic Medicine: Relationship between health, disease, and lifestyle in Galenic medicine
2) Medical practitioners: How medical practitioners supported their claims, established their expertise, and organized their forms of care and cure
3) Translations & Dissemination of Medical Knowledge: Discuss the role of translation in the transmission and dissemination of medical knowledge
4) Medical Identity: Discuss the making of medical identity by reference
5) Patients & Healers: Discuss the relationship between patients and healers
6) Society & Disease: How did societies cope with disease? Please focus on a specific case study.
7) Women & Medicine: Examine women’s place in medicine.
8) Female Body & Medicine: How was the female body portrayed in medicine?
9) Religion & Medicine: Discuss religious attitudes and/or responses to health and disease by reference to any of the periods considered in the course.
10) Places of care and cure 11) Astrology & Medicine: Discuss the place of astrology in the world of Medieval and/or
Renaissance medicine.
12) Alchemy & Medicine: Discuss the place of alchemy in the world of Medieval and/or Renaissance medicine.
13) Visual Sources & Medicine: Discuss how visual sources and printed books encouraged new ways of understanding the human body in the Renaissance
14) Anatomy and the understanding of the human body
