Biomedicine: Historical Perspective
Code
11113
Academic unit
NOVA Medical School | Faculdade de Ciências Médicas
Department
TRA - Population Health
Credits
3
Teacher in charge
Prof. Doutora Isabel Amaral
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
Course main objectives
This course will be about the discovery and understanding of biomedicine, exploring its uniqueness in the history of science and medicine. Students will gain familiarity with historiographic developments which provide them with a broad outline of the historical context. This way, students become conscious of what is Science and of what is History.
Specific objectives: This course is intended: 1. To understand the concept of biomedicine, from the perspective of the laboratory as an obligatory passageway. 2. To apply the notion of biomedicine to the emergence of molecularization and molecular disease in XX century.
Prerequisites
Subject matter
Syllabus
This UC takes place over 14 weeks, one topic each week.
Besides topics, contents include concepts: molecularization, tacit knowledge, geography of scientific knowledge (intellectual and political migrations), centre of calculation network, prematurity, Big Science.
Topics
1. Introduction. What is biomedicine vs medicine?
2. Vitamins and the dynamics of molecularization
3. Molecular therapeutics from human blood: Edwin Cohns Wartime enterprise
4. Corino de Andrades disease
5. Lipoproteins 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. Fighting infection: Tuberculosis
10. Insulin: from discovery to therapeutics
11. Histories of penicillin
12. Cancer from 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
Bibliography
Collingwood, R. G., The idea of history, (Martino Fire Books, 2014)
IV and V parts.
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: 50th anniversary edition (London, The University of Chicago Press, 2012)
Canguilhem, Georges, The Normal and the pathologic (New York, Zonebooks, 2007)
Bachelard, Gaston, The new scientific spirit, (Beacon Press, 1986)
Foucault, Michel, Naissace de la clinique, (Paris, Quadrige, 2003)
Cambridge illustrated history of medicine, Ed. Roy Porter, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006)
Alberto Cambrosio et Peter Keating, Quest-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
2h theoretical-practical classes every week.
We will use original research papers, historical accounts as well as reference articles regarding the concepts referred on Syllabus. Forty to fifty minutes of theoretical exposition on one of the referred concepts 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.
Evaluation method
Assessment: it will be distributed throughout the semester without final examination. Oral presentation and participation on topic discussion: 50%. Each student has to write a research essay pursuing a topic either from class themes or from his/her interest (within the history of biomedicine) of about 15 pp., corresponding to 50% of the final mark. This paper will be discussed orally on the date indicated for examination of the optional disciplines.
Assessment:
It is done throughout the semester, without final exam.
The essays will be individual and discussed in person on the dates indicated for the examinations of the optional disciplines.
Attendance: 2/3 attendance is required and it is not possible to offer substitution classes. It is important that the student does not miss the class where he/she is due with his/her presentation.
Courses
