1. Introduction. What is biomedicine vs medicine?  What is science and how is it linked to medicine? We will distribute the student’s assignments

2. Vitamins and the dynamics of molecularization

3. Molecular therapeutics from human blood: Edwin Cohn’s Wartime enterprise

4. Max Perutz and three-dimensional structure of hemoglobin - understanding the  

    molecular basis of its activity.

5. Lipoprotein’s trajectory: between the laboratory and the clinic

6. History of the early oral contraceptive pill clinical trials, 1950-1959

7. The social construction of coronary heart disease risk factors: Framingham Heart

    Study

8. Genre and Science in ‘The double helice’

9. History of coagulation: the science of haemostasis

10. Insulin: from discovery to therapeutics

11. Histories of penicillin

12. Cancer from a research perspective vs. from a clinician perspective

13. Pharmaceutical industry and medical research in XX century.

14. Brief presentation of final papers by the students.

Bibliography

Collingwood, R. G., The idea of history, (Oxford, The Clarendon Press Oxford, 1993)

Parts IV and V.

Position the History of Science, Eds. Kostas, G., and Renn, J., (The Netherlands, Springer, 2010)

Kragh, Helge, An Introduction to the Historiography of Science (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987)

Löwy, Ilana, Historiography of biomedicine: ‘Bio’, ‘Medicine’ and In Between, Isis, 102:1, 116-122, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/658661

Kuhn, Thomas S., The structure of scientific revolutions, (London, The University Chicago Press, 1996, 3^rd ed.)

Canguilhem, Georges, The normal and the pathological, (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 2007, 5^th ed.)

Bachelard, Gaston, Le nouvel esprit scientifique, (Paris, Quadrige, 2006, 7^ème ed.)

Foucault, Michel, Naissace de la clinique, (Paris, Quadrige, 2003) or The birth of the clinic: an archaelogy of medical perception, (New York, Vintage Books edition, 1994)

Cambridge illustrated history of medicine, Ed. Roy Porter, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Alberto Cambrosio et Peter Keating, ‘Qu’est-ce que la biomédecine? repères sócio-historiques’, M/S:médecine sciences, 19:12, 2003, 1280-1287, http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/007405ar

Science in the Twentieh Century, ed. J. Kridge & D. Pestre, (Amsterdam, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997)

Teaching method

Theoretical-practical classes.

We will use original research papers, historical accounts as well as reference articles regarding the concepts referred at ‘Contents’.  Forty or fifty minutes of theoretical exposition followed by the presentation of students assignments.

For this purpose students will be grouped in three elements, being mandatory each student intervene in the presentation.

The course will require about 4-5h of weekly study. Any question will be answered by e-mail and two Thursdays afternoons will be scheduled so that students drop by (14:30-16:30).

Evaluation method

It will be distributed throughout the semester without final examination.

Presentation of the paper and participation on its discussion: 50%

Paper 12-15 pp. in length – a research essay pursuing a topic either from class themes or from the interest of the student (within history of biomedicine): 50%

A paper will be prepared by each student and discussed orally at the date indicated for examination of the optional disciplines.

Courses

• Integrated Master Degree in Medicine