Adventures in Nosology: The Nature and Meaning of Disease

3 units

What is a disease and how do you diagnose one? What are medicines and how, when, and for what purpose should they be used? These questions reflect universal human concerns, but the answers given to these questions have varied enormously in different times and places. The course will consider the nature of health, illness, disease and its treatment, beginning with a detailed examination of the traditional ethnomedical system of the Hausa people of northern Nigeria. Using this West African medical system as a baseline for comparison, the course will then explore the nature of nosology (the classification of diseases) and the underlying logic of different therapeutic systems in different times and cultures, including our own. The course will draw on ethnography, the history of medicine, bioethics, and human biology to understand how these questions are asked and answered in different societies, times and places.