
Lecture Description
Professor Snowden describes the final exam, and takes questions from students.
Course Index
- Introduction to the Course
- Classical Views of Disease: Hippocrates, Galen, and Humoralism
- Plague (I): Pestilence as Disease
- Plague (II): Responses and Measures
- Plague (III): Illustrations and Conclusions
- Smallpox (I): 'The Speckled Monster'
- Smallpox (II): Jenner, Vaccination, and Eradication
- Nineteenth-Century Medicine: The Paris School of Medicine
- Asiatic Cholera (I): Personal Reflections
- Asiatic Cholera (II): Five Pandemics
- The Sanitary Movement and the 'Filth Theory of Disease'
- Syphilis: From the "Great Pox" to the Modern Version
- Contagionism versus Anticontagionsim
- The Germ Theory of Disease
- Tropical Medicine as a Discipline
- Malaria (I): The Case of Italy
- Malaria (II): The Global Challenge
- Tuberculosis (I): The Era of Consumption
- Tuberculosis (II): After Robert Koch
- Pandemic Influenza
- The Tuskegee Experiment
- AIDS (I)
- AIDS (II)
- Poliomyelitis: Problems of Eradication
- SARS, Avian Inluenza, and Swine Flu: Lessons and Prospects
- Final Q&A
Course Description
This course consists of an international analysis of the impact of epidemic diseases on western society and culture from the bubonic plague to HIV/AIDS and the recent experience of SARS and swine flu. Leading themes include: infectious disease and its impact on society; the development of public health measures; the role of medical ethics; the genre of plague literature; the social reactions of mass hysteria and violence; the rise of the germ theory of disease; the development of tropical medicine; a comparison of the social, cultural, and historical impact of major infectious diseases; and the issue of emerging and re-emerging diseases.
Course Structure:
This Yale College course, taught on campus twice per week for 50 minutes, was recorded for Open Yale Courses in Spring 2010.