Programs in Medical Classics

This paper will illustrate the contrasting worlds of radical medicine and radical natural philosophy in the early nineteenth century and their influence on the public understanding of rational knowledge and professional practice in Britain.  It will cross-examine Charles Babbage’s text on The Decline of Science with Dr. George Birkbeck’s campaign to democratize science through the creation of educational institutions for artisans, the Mechanics Institutes.  The paper will discuss how Birkbeck’s role in the establishment of competitive medical schools in early nineteenth-century London enabled him to construct an alternative strategy to that of Babbage in the pursuit of the Enlightenment goal of the dissemination of useful knowledge.

This subject fits into Dr. Porter’s broader interest in the history of medicine education which she is examining in the development of social medicine as an academic discipline and its influence upon transforming medical curriculum.  The paper will be of special interest to those concerned with early nineteenth-century political radicalism, natural philosophy and medicine but will also appeal broadly to social historians of medical, scientific, as well as British culture.

Printable PDF version of October 2003 announcement

Clinicians and academic researchers are investigating the clinical value of attending to patients’ stories that are either directly about, or contextualize, their experiences of pain. This research cuts across work in psychology, narratology, humanities in medicine, and bioethics, among other specializations.

This talk will consider two complimentary issues: how the experience of pain can be intensified by the patient’s perception that no one recognizes what he or she is living through, and how clinical dialogue can affect the experience of pain. Instead of the conventional “clinician-patient communication” description, Dr. Frank will emphasize dialogue as a relationship based in mutual generosity.

This program will be of interest to clinicians (nursing, medicine, occupational therapy, etc.), medical sociologists and anthropologists, bioethicists, and humanities in medicine scholars.

The November program is co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for the Interdisciplinary Study and Treatment of Pain.

Printable PDF version of November 2003 announcement

A special History of Neuroscience / Medical Classics Lecture in honor of Louise H. Marshall, Ph.D. (1908-2003), Co-Founder of the UCLA Neuroscience History Archives

The December program is co-sponsored by the UCLA Neuroscience History Archives and Center for Culture, History, and Neuroscience and the UCLA Brain Research Institute.

Printable PDF version of December 2003 announcement

Various European countries and Canada are currently conducting or planning randomized clinical trials (RCTs) with heroin users. The aim is to find out whether or not provision of heroin, more so than methadone, improves severe abusers’ physical and psychosocial condition. The first full-fledged RCT with heroin-maintenance was conducted in The Netherlands from 1996 to 2002, and is currently advertised as a success in international scientific and political circuits. However, was the Dutch trial really as smooth and successful as its proponents claim? Dr. Dehue closely studied the vicissitudes of the Dutch trial as part of a larger historical and philosophical research project on the assumptions of RCTs. Whereas she does not contest the benefits of heroin-maintenance, she challenges the international status of RCTs with heroin-maintenance as the royal way to neutral results.

The January program is co-sponsored by the UCLA Neuroscience History Archives.

Printable PDF version of January 2004 announcement

Hal Cook has for some years been working on the history of medicine and natural history during the Dutch Golden Age, rounding off his story with a fresh look at the famous medical and botanical (and chemical) professor of Leiden, Herman Boerhaave. Boerhaave became the most famous medical professor of early 18th-century Europe. Yet there have been quite different views about his contributions, even among his students: was he a materialist, a mechanist, an iatrochemist, a vitalist, a Hippocratic, a Calvinist? This presentation takes another look at Boerhaave’s teachings, not in light of what came after, but in light of the controversies of his own world, so that we can see afresh the intellectual and clinical problems facing him, and how he dealt with them or finessed them.

The February program is co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of History.

Printable PDF version of February 2004 announcement

Between 1880 and 1920, American neurologists talked at great length and with extraordinary intensity—in court, at conferences, and in the pages of medical journals—about the criminal responsibility of defendants with seizures. This paper, part of a larger medical and social history of epilepsy, attempts to explain why.

The April program is co-sponsored by the UCLA Neuroscience History Archives.

Printable PDF version of April 2004 announcement

This lecture explores the importance of African American doctoring within the charged social relations of nineteenth-century southern slave society. Complementing as well as challenging biomedical interpretations of slave health, Dr. Fett emphasizes the importance of spirituality to African American healing traditions and the critical role of enslaved women as health providers in antebellum plantation communities.

Dr. Fett’s talk is based on her book, Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations (University of North Carolina Press), which was co-recipient of the Organization of American Historians’ James A. Rawley Prize for 2003. The prize is awarded annually for a book dealing with the history of race relations in the United States.

Printable PDF version of May 2004 announcement