Plagues, Pox, and Pandemics: The History of Death and Disease

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This unit provides students with a valuable historical perspective on pandemics, plagues, emerging medical techniques and changing perceptions in which to locate current and emerging health issues. The topics include historical methodologies and sources; Egyptian, Greek and Roman medicine; the Black Death in fourteenth-century England; the spread of infectious disease in the New World; medical practitioners in medieval and early modern Europe; witchcraft, mental health and religious healing; public health and infectious disease challenges in the Victorian age; warfare and disease; health care, ideology and totalitarian regimes, including Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; psychiatry and mental health care; modern pandemics such as the 1918-19 flu and COVID-19.