Course: Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 with Frank Snowden Dnatube
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Lec 1 - Introduction to the Course - Epi ...
""Lec 1 - Introduction to the Course" Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) Epidemics, or high-impact infectious diseases, have had an historical impact equal to that of wars, revolutions and economic crises. This course looks at the various ways in which these diseases have affected societies in Europe and North America from 1600 to the present. Contrary to optimistic...
Lec 2- Classical Views of Disease: Hippo ...
"Lec 2- Classical Views of Disease: Hippocrates, Galen, and Humoralism"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) The form of medicine that arose in fifth-century Greece, associated with the name of Hippocrates and later popularized by Galen, marked a major innovation in the treatment of disease. Unlike supernatural theories of disease, Hippocrates' method involved seeking the causes...
Lec 3 -Plague (I): Pestilence as Disease
"Lec 3 -Plague (I): Pestilence as Disease"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) The bubonic plague is the measure by which succeeding epidemics have long been measured. Its extreme virulence, horrible symptoms, and indiscriminate victim profile all contributed to making plague the archetypical worst-case scenario. For these same reasons, the plague is also an ideal test case for...
Lec 4 - Plague (II): Responses and Measures
"Lec 4 - Plague (II): Responses and MeasuresEpidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) Community responses to the bubonic plague ranged from the flight of a privileged few to widespread panic and the persecution of foreigners and other stigmatized social groups. The suspicion of willful human agency in spreading the disease, identified with the work of poisoners, was a major source...
Lec 5 - Plague (III): Illustrations and ...
"Lec 5 - Plague (III): Illustrations and Conclusions"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) One of the major cultural consequences of the second plague pandemic was its effect on attitudes towards death and the "art of dying." As a result both of its extreme virulence and the strictness of the measures imposed to combat it, plague significantly disrupted traditional customs of...
Lec 6 - Smallpox (I): 'The Speckled Monster'
"Lec 6 - Smallpox (I): 'The Speckled Monster'"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) In the eighteenth century, smallpox succeeded plague as the most feared disease. The two maladies, however, are very different. While plague is a bacterial disease, smallpox is viral. Plague is spread by rats and fleas, smallpox is transmitted by contact and airborne inhalation. Unlike plague,...
Lec 7 -Smallpox (II): Jenner, Vaccinatio ...
"Lec 7 -Smallpox (II): Jenner, Vaccination, and Eradication"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) It is not known for certain when smallpox first appeared in Europe; however, the disease reached its highpoint in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when it persisted as an endemic disease while periodically erupting as an epidemic. European literature testifies to the...
Lec 8 - Nineteenth-Century Medicine: The ...
"Lec 8 - Nineteenth-Century Medicine: The Paris School of Medicine"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) In the decades immediately following the French Revolution, Paris was at the center of a series of major developments in medical science, sometimes described as the transition from medieval to modern medicine. Although the innovations associated with the Paris School were in...
Lec 9 - Asiatic Cholera (I): Personal Re ...
"Lec 9 - Asiatic Cholera (I): Personal Reflections"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) Professor Snowden describes the historical detective work that went into the research and writing of Naples in the Time of Cholera, his study of the 1884 and 1911 epidemics of Asiatic cholera that struck Italy. The latter epidemic is of particular interest, because the official...
Lec 10 -Asiatic Cholera (II): Five Pandemics
"Lec 10 -Asiatic Cholera (II): Five Pandemics"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) Asiatic cholera was the most dreaded disease of the nineteenth century. While its demographic impact could not compare to that of the bubonic plague, it nonetheless held a tremendous purchase on the European social imagination. One reason for the intense fear provoked by the disease was its...
Lec 11- The Sanitary Movement and the 'F ...
"Lec 11- The Sanitary Movement and the 'Filth Theory of Disease'Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) The sanitary movement was an approach to public health first developed in England in the 1830s and '40s. With increasing industrialization and urbanization, the removal of filth from towns and cities became a major focus in the struggle against infectious diseases. As pioneered...
Lec 12 -Syphilis: From the
"Lec 12 -Syphilis: From the "Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) There is a longstanding debate over the origins of syphilis, in which arguments over how the disease arrived in Europe have historically been linked to racist and xenophobic ideologies as well as to scientific and historical research. Whatever its provenance, the major syphilis epidemic of the late sixteenth and...
Lec 13 - Contagionism versus Anticontagi ...
"Lec 13 - Contagionism versus Anticontagionsim"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) The debate between contagionists and anticontagionists over the transmission of infectious diseases played a major role in nineteenth-century medical discourse. On the one side were those who believed that diseases could be spread by infected material, perhaps including people and inanimate...
Lec 14 -Tropical Medicine as a Discipline
"Lec 14 -Tropical Medicine as a Discipline"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) The sub-discipline of tropical medicine furnishes a clear example of the socially constructed character of medical knowledge. Tropical diseases first enter medical discourse as a unique conceptual field and topic for specialization at the end of the 19th century, and the heyday of tropical medicine...
Lec 15 - The Germ Theory of Disease
"Lec 15 - The Germ Theory of Disease"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) Although the development of the germ theory of disease in the latter half of the nineteenth century marks a major revolution in medical science, comparable to the discoveries of Galileo in astronomy or Darwin in biology, it cannot be reduced to the heroic efforts of a single researcher or group of...
Lec 16 - Malaria (I): The Case of Italy
"Lec 16 - Malaria (I): The Case of ItalyEpidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) Of all the diseases studied in this course, malaria has been responsible for the most human suffering. It has evolved alongside humans, and impacted human biology as well as civilization. In the former case, this impact is evident in genetic diseases like sickle-cell anemia which, while increasing...
Lec 17- Malaria (II): The Global Challenge
"Lec 17- Malaria (II): The Global Challenge"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) In the last decade of the nineteenth century, malariology emerged as the most prestigious and intellectually exciting field in the new discipline of tropical medicine. The disease's complexity and resistance to conventional public health strategies posed a major challenge to doctors and scientists....
Lec 18- Tuberculosis (I): The Era of Con ...
"Lec 18- Tuberculosis (I): The Era of ConsumptionEpidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) An ancient disease, tuberculosis experienced a major upsurge in Western Europe in the nineteenth century, corresponding with increasing industrialization and urbanization. Poor air quality and cramped living conditions increased susceptibility to the disease. Tuberculosis also had a...
Lec 19- Tuberculosis (II): After Robert Koch
"Lec 19- Tuberculosis (II): After Robert Koch"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) The cultural transition from the romantic era of consumption to the era of tuberculosis derived not only from the germ theory of disease and the triumph of contagionism over anticontagionism, but also from political considerations. Worries over population decline and growing working-class...
Lec 20- Pandemic Influenza
"Lec 20- Pandemic InfluenzaEpidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) Reliable records of influenza, dating back to the 1700s, suggest a pattern of one major pandemic every century. Among the pandemics for which there is solid documentary evidence, the outbreak of 1918-1920 is by far the greatest. The so-called Spanish Lady caused somewhere between 25 and 100 million deaths...
Lec 21- The Tuskegee Experiment
"Lec 21- The Tuskegee ExperimentEpidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, carried out in Macon, Alabama, from 1932 to 1972, is a notorious episode in the checkered history of medical experimentation. In one of the most economically disadvantaged parts of the U.S., researchers deceived a group of 399 black male syphilitics into participating in a study...
Lec 22 - AIDS (I)
"Lec 22 - AIDS (I)"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) The global AIDS pandemic furnishes a case study for many of the themes addressed throughout the course. While in the developed West the disease largely afflicts concentrated high-risk groups such as intravenous drug users and the sexually promiscuous, in Southern Africa it is much more a generalized disease of poverty. In...
Lec 23- AIDS (II)
"Lec 23- AIDS (II)"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) Dr. Margaret Craven discusses HIV/AIDS from the perspective of a front-line clinician. AIDS is unprecedented in both the speed with which it spread across the globe and in the mobilization of efforts to control it. It is a disease of modernity. Along with the relative ease and velocity of modern transportation methods,...
Lec 24 -Poliomyelitis: Problems of Eradi ...
"Lec 24 -Poliomyelitis: Problems of Eradication"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, the largest public health campaign ever launched, began in 1988 with the ambition of achieving its goal by the year 2000. In the decade since this deadline was missed, the initiative has suffered a number of setbacks, notably in the tropical world. Four...
Lec 25 -SARS, Avian Inluenza, and Swine ...
"Lec 25 -SARS, Avian Inluenza, and Swine Flu: Lessons and Prospects"Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) SARS, avian influenza and swine flu are the first new diseases of the twenty-first century. They are all diseases of globalization, or diseases of modernity, and while relatively limited in their impact, they have offered dress-rehearsals for future epidemics. As information...
Lec Last- Final Q&A
"Lec Last- Final Q&AEpidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (HIST 234) Prof. Snowden describes the final exam, and takes questions from students. 00:00 - Chapter 1. Logistics 05:26 - Chapter 2. What Determines the Historical Significance of an Epidemic? 14:33 - Chapter 3. Diseases of Modernity 20:48 - Chapter 4. Diseases of Poverty 35:47 - Chapter 5. Magic Bullets Complete course...
Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 with Frank Snowden
Source of these courses is Yale
This course consists of an international analysis of the impact of epidemic diseases on western society and culture from the bubonic plague to HIV/AIDS and the recent experience of SARS and swine flu. Leading themes include: infectious disease and its impact on society; the development of public health measures; the role of medical ethics; the genre of plague literature; the social reactions of mass hysteria and violence; the rise of the germ theory of disease.
Yale Website: http://www.dnatube.com/school/yale
COURSE NAME: Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 with Frank Snowden