Part II Paper 3: Modern Medicine and Life Sciences

Paper manager: Rosanna Dent (Michaelmas); Nick Hopwood (Lent & Easter)

Overview

Lectures are held in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

Michaelmas Term

  • Science in the Making of Modern Medicine
    Salim Al-Gailani (8)
    Mon 12noon (weeks 1–4), Tue 2pm (weeks 1–4)
  • Medicine, Race and Ethnicity
    Rosanna Dent (4)
    Mon 12noon (weeks 5–6), Tue 2pm (weeks 5–6)
  • Biology: Lab and Field
    Staffan Müller-Wille (4)
    Mon 12noon (weeks 7–8), Tue 2pm (weeks 7–8)

Lent Term

  • Science and Medicine since World War I
    Nick Hopwood (8)
    Mon 12noon (weeks 1–4), Tue 2pm (weeks 1–4)
  • Disciplining Life: Biology in the Twentieth Century
    Miles Kempton (4)
    Mon 12noon (weeks 5–6), Tue 2pm (weeks 5–6)
  • Histories of International and Global Health
    Rosanna Dent (4)
    Mon 12noon (weeks 7–8), Tue 2pm (weeks 7–8)

Introduction

What is life and how can we intervene in it? These questions have guided much of medicine, biology and their interaction since 1750. This paper explores the making of the large enterprises that today seek to control organic matter, bodies, populations and ecosystems. The 19th century witnessed the creation of new medical institutions, professionals and practices. In the 20th century, biomedicine built upon this legacy to become a major object of economic, political and ethical concern. Biology was made a distinct science of life with roles in classifying and manipulating humans and other organisms in laboratories and clinics, cities and field sites.

Aims and learning outcomes

  • to familiarise students with fundamental issues in historical writing on medicine and the life sciences since 1750;
  • to provide students with an understanding of the principal changes that created modern medical and biological institutions, professionals, practices and concepts;
  • to prompt assessments of the roles of social, cultural, institutional and national dimensions of medicine, the life sciences and their interrelations;
  • to equip students with the critical tools to evaluate historical and contemporary developments in medicine and the life sciences.

Lectures

Science in the Making of Modern Medicine

Salim Al-Gailani (8 lectures, Michaelmas Term)

This course outlines the roles of the sciences in the making of modern medicine from the French Revolution to World War I. We explore the creation in the long 19th century of new institutions, especially hospitals and laboratories, and of new ways of understanding and treating disease, including through pathological anatomy, germ theories, vaccines and x-rays. We investigate how relations between doctors, individual patients and general publics changed, and explore the role of medicine in managing the health of populations.

Medicine, Race and Ethnicity

Rosanna Dent (4 lectures, Michaelmas Term)

This course investigates scientific and medical constructions of race and ethnicity in the 19th and 20th centuries. Lectures and readings will address the development of racial categories and their implications for biomedical research and therapies, the role of race in medicine under conditions of slavery and colonialism, and the lasting social and political implications of these historical processes.

Biology: Lab and Field

Staffan Müller-Wille (4 lectures, Michaelmas Term)

Natural history in the 18th and 19th centuries was a science of classification, which studied life at the level of the organism. The growth of a set of research fields – which in the early 20th century would receive the designation 'biology' – brought with it a focus on new scales. Biologists in the field, building on the legacy of 19th-century exploration, sought to understand, predict and manipulate large-scale – eventually global – environmental processes. Biologists in the lab, spurred by the discovery of regularities in inheritance, developed a fascination with cells and molecules and sought to understand the substructure of life. These lectures trace the intersections of the large and the small in the emergence of biology and discuss their conceptual and practical ramifications.

Science and Medicine since World War I

Nick Hopwood (8 lectures, Lent Term)

Although our medicine had in its essential features been made by World War I, only in the 20th century did it become a major economic and political concern, and a profession with far-reaching authority in the management and even definition of human life. Highlighting the turning points of World War II and the crisis of the 1970s, this course explores the roles of science in medicine and of medicine in science. We cover the invention of medical research and the 'biomedical complex', insulin and penicillin, the oral contraceptive pill and in vitro fertilisation, as well as critiques of medical science.

Disciplining Life: Biology in the Twentieth Century

Miles Kempton (4 lectures, Lent Term)

This course charts transformations that reshaped biological research in the 20th century. Across scales ranging from molecules and organisms to populations and ecosystems, biologists invented new ways of investigating and intervening in living processes. The lectures examine how experimental systems and model organisms were forged across diverse settings, including laboratories, field stations, zoos and farms, and colonial and postcolonial contexts. Particular attention is given to the decades surrounding World War II, when the scale and power of the biosciences expanded. We consider how these innovations changed relations among science, government, industry and everyday life, while provoking ethical, political and environmental critiques.

Histories of International and Global Health

Rosanna Dent (4 lectures, Lent Term)

This course introduces the histories of current approaches to global health. Beginning with colonial origins in tropical medicine, topics include the rise of international health organisations, the tensions of developmentalist and decolonising approaches, and the reconfiguration of global health in the wake of HIV/AIDS. We will examine the contradictions and productive potential of humanitarianism, biosecurity, solidarity-based community health and targeted technological interventions.

Preliminary reading

Resources for this paper