History and Ethics of Medicine
Minor Subject 107 in Part II Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS)
Paper manager: Vanessa Heggie
Lectures are held in Mill Lane Lecture Room 4.
| Michaelmas Term | |
|---|---|
| History of Medicine Karin Ekholm, Vanessa Heggie | Mon 4pm (weeks 1–8) |
| Medical Ethics Stephen John, Tim Lewens | Tue 4pm (weeks 3–8) |
| Lent Term | |
| History of Medicine continued | Mon 4pm (weeks 1–4) |
| Medical Ethics continued | Tue 4pm (weeks 1–6) |
Medicine is constantly in the headlines. The news raises challenging questions about how medicine should be practised and how we got where we are today. Medical ethics and history of medicine are the academic disciplines that engage with these issues. The two subjects combine to yield a rounded picture of the status and significance of medicine.
Lectures
History of Medicine
Karin Ekholm, Vanessa Heggie (12 lectures, Michaelmas & Lent Terms)
The history of medicine lectures will introduce the strange medical world of premodern Europe and make strange the more familiar modern medicine of the twenty-first century. This course explores how the theory and practice of medicine has changed our concepts not just of disease and health, but also of state, society and personal identity, and it will show how the modern medicine we recognise today was constructed through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Medical Ethics
Stephen John, Tim Lewens (12 lectures, Michaelmas & Lent Terms)
This course begins with a four-lecture introduction to ethical reasoning and argumentation, focusing on central issues at the beginning and end of life such as abortion, euthanasia and informed consent. The next four lectures focus on a series of issues in reproductive ethics including treatment and enhancement, and the nature of reproductive autonomy. The final four lectures introduce students to the key controversies concerning the relationship between political philosophy, the delivery of healthcare and the pursuit of public health, both at national and global levels.
Preliminary reading
- Buchanan, Brock, Daniels and Wikler, From Chance to Choice: Genetic and Justice (Cambridge, 2000)
- Bynum, WF, Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1994)
- Harris, J (ed), Bioethics (Oxford, 2001)
- Kuhse, H & P Singer (eds), Bioethics: An Anthology (Blackwell, 2001)
- Lawrence, Christopher, Medicine in the Making of Modern Britain (Routledge, 1994)
- O'Neill, Onora, Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics (Cambridge, 2002)
- Porter, Roy, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (Fontana, 1997), chs 8–22
- Siraisi, Nancy, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine (Chicago, 1990)