Programs in Medical Classics

UCLA Programs in Medical Classics is a series of presentations designed to enhance an appreciation of the links among famous medical writings, clinical practice, basic research, and humanistic scholarship. Six times a year these meetings bring together a convivial group of individuals of scholarly tastes—both from the community and from UCLA faculty, students, and staff—for a lecture and an opportunity to discuss and examine texts and topics that embody the history of medicine, as well as the relations of medicine to broader cultural settings.

Program for Fall 2004

19 October 2004

The Myth of the Malaria-Tolerant Native: Medical Knowledge and Agricultural Development in South Africa in the 1920s and ’30s
Randall Packard, Ph.D.
William H. Welch Professor of the History of Medicine and Director of the Institute of the History of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University

Introduction by E. Richard Stiehm, M.D.
Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Immunology, Allergy and Rheumatology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Colonial medical researchers in South Africa produced new knowledge about the epidemiology of malaria during the first decades of the 20th century. This knowledge was used to develop public health measures designed to protect Europeans from the disease. Yet it also served other purposes. Of particular interest to colonial officials was the observation that Africans living in the malarious lowveld regions of the east Transvaal and Natal exhibited a tolerance to the disease. While the knowledge was based on observations of specific populations, it was translated by employers of labor, municipal officials, and health officials into a general association between geographical residence and resistance to malaria, which ignored important spatial and temporal variations. Dr. Packard’s lecture explores both the reasons for the indiscriminant use of the label "malaria-tolerant worker" and its consequences for the health of Africans living and working in the lowveld.

The October program is co-sponsored by the UCLA School of Public Health.

Printable PDF version of October 2004 announcement

Tuesday, 7 December 2004

Patterns of Human Illness: A Continually Changing Landscape
Joseph K. Perloff, M.D.
Streisand/American Heart Association Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics, Emeritus; and Founding Director, Ahmanson/UCLA Adult Congenital Heart Disease Center, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Introduction by Michael Henry Heim, Ph.D.
Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, UCLA

From medical students to mature physicians, human disease is generally looked upon as a relatively constant, unchanging body of information. The tables of contents of textbooks seemingly bear this out, but only in the short term. A comparison between William Osler’s Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892) and the 20th edition of Russell L. Cecil’s Textbook of Medicine (1996)—the span of a century—reveals a startling contrast that Dr. Perloff will explore in his lecture.

Printable PDF version of December 2004 announcement

Program for Winter-Spring 2005:

History of Recent Advances in Therapeutics

CME Credit is available for this four-lecture series:
UCLA Office of Continuing Medical Education

Tuesday, 8 February 2005

The EEG in America and the Development of Clinical Neuroscience
David Millett, M.D., Ph.D.
Department of Neurology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Introduction by Russell A. Johnson, M.A., M.L.S.
Archivist, UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, and Neuroscience History Archives, UCLA Brain Research Institute

During the mid-1930s, four different laboratories in North America began to study the electroencephalogram (EEG), a new technique that recorded the electrical activity of the human brain. This phenomenon of electrical brain waves had been recently discovered by an obscure German neuropsychiatrist searching for physical evidence of psychic energy, but was largely ignored in Europe and Britain. Within a few short years, however, investigators in Boston, New York, Providence, and Iowa City transformed the EEG into a powerful tool that reshaped clinical neurology, neurophysiology, and psychology. Indeed, the EEG was the first objective measurement of brain function, and by 1940 the EEG had been used for the diagnosis, prognosis, and surgical treatment of the epilepsies; staging of sleep; localization of brain tumors for surgical resection; and was used to explore psychological phenom-ena as diverse as stuttering, psychosis, and hypnosis. Furthermore, the EEG was critical for the development of clinical neuroscience by demonstrating that action currents, the fundamental physiological event in the nervous system widely studied in peripheral nerve preparations, were just as applicable to higher brain function and correlated with different states of consciousness. This lecture will explore some of the pioneers of the EEG in America and their remarkable contributions to the study of brain function.

Printable PDF version of February 2005 announcement

Tuesday, 8 March 2005

The Life and Times of Hormone Replacement Therapy: Medicine, Gender, and Aging in America
Elizabeth Siegel Watkins, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of the Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine, University of California, San Francisco

Introduction by Janet Pregler, M.D.
Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; and Director, Iris Cantor-UCLA Women's Health Center

Medical and pharmaceutical interventions in the health of older women have been based on the reductionist premise that female aging is determined by the ovaries’ decreased production of estrogen. The uses of estrogen have changed over time—not only because of scientific and clinical developments, but with prevailing cultural conceptions of aging, the roles of men and women in society, and the status of science and medicine. Dr. Watkins’ work investigates the roles of the multiple actors engaged in these social and medical constructions, as they negotiated the blurred boundaries between normal and pathologized aging.

Printable PDF version of March 2005 announcement

Tuesday, 12 April 2005

George Huntington and “On Chorea”: East Hampton and the Making of a Genetic Disease
Alice Wexler, Ph.D.
Independent Scholar

Introduction by Marie-Françoise Chesselet, M.D., Ph.D.
Charles F. Markham Professor of Neurology, and Chair of Neurobiology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Dr. Wexler’s lecture will focus on George Huntington's 1872 paper, “On Chorea”, which gave what is still considered to be a classic account of the disease, including an accurate description of the hereditary pattern (later recognized as dominant inheritance.)  She will discuss the context for that paper in the Huntington medical family; the town of East Hampton; the importance of cattle breeding and horse raising in the town and the possible contribution of these activities to George Huntington’s genetics insights; his writing of the paper; and then how it entered into medical discourse after publication.

Printable PDF version of April 2005 announcement

Tuesday, 17 May 2005

Genetic Individuality in Medicine: From Garrod to Pharmacogenetics and Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms
Nathaniel Comfort, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of the History of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University

Introduction by Edward R.B. McCabe, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor and Executive Chair of Pediatrics, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; and Physician-in-Chief, Mattel Children's Hospital

The problem of individuality dates back to the Greek Rationalists. Dr. Comfort’s talk traces the problem in modern genetic medicine, from the work of Archibald Garrod to present-day research in pharmacogenetics, single nucleotide polymorphisms, and other examples. He argues that geneticists today are still wrestling with the essential tension between Rationalist/Individualist approaches and Empiricist/Categorical approaches to disease.

Printable PDF version of May 2005 announcement

Programs are held at the UCLA Faculty Center at 6:00 pm. An optional dinner with the speakers, at $22.00 per person, will take place in the Faculty Center about 7:30 pm. An advance reservation is required for dinner; please call the History & Special Collections Division of the Louise Darling Biomedical Library at (310) 825-6940 to make a reservation.

An abridged form of a classic text related to the evening’s lecture will be distributed by snailmail to those persons who request it in advance. To request this related text (the lecture itself is not recorded or transcribed) or more information, please send Teresa Johnson an e-mail, including your name and address, with the words “Medical Classics Program: [MONTH] Reading” in the subject line; or call the History & Special Collections Division at (310) 825-6940.