Medicine is a profession deeply rooted in a sense of history. For centuries physicians have acted as historians—of their patients and of their own skills and ideals. As an art, medicine is ancient and ageless, easing the burdens of illness and expanding the boundaries of human caring. As a science, modern medicine has further —and dramatically—extended the power and promise of timeless healing practices.
Today, scholars in wide-ranging fields engage questions related to medicine, including changing notions of the body, experiences of illness, social stigma, cross-cultural understandings of disease, and epidemiology. The Center for the History of Medicine at Indiana University offers courses, lectures, and related events to members of the University community. It is concerned with the full range of traditional and modern medicine, disease, and illness: exploring the new and the known in the past and bringing to the public recent research on the fascinating people, events, idea and images which define medical issues from antiquity to the present.
Spring 2008 Workshop:
Between Anatomy and Therapy: Chymical Analysis and 17th-Century Medicine
