2019/2020

2020/2021

DM270

MED/02 (HISTORY OF MEDICINE)

DEPARTMENT OF INTERNAL MEDICINE AND THERAPEUTICS

MEDICINE AND SURGERY

PERCORSO COMUNE

2°

2nd semester (01/03/2021 - 15/06/2021)

2

16 lesson hours

Italian

WRITTEN TEST

MAZZARELLO PAOLO ANGELO - 2 ECTS

High school historical and scientific notions.

The course of history of medicine will consider some significant turning points of the past of medicine to understand the present, explaining the process of transmission of mainly Western medical knowledge. Particular emphasis will be placed on the evolution of the concept of disease by analyzing in detail some basic conceptual articulations that are found at the origins of contemporary biomedicine.
These conceptual coordinates are proposed in order to provide students with the ability to perceive medicine and health, in all its ramifications, as a "process" historically changeable, to make them critically aware of the special dimension of knowledge and medical practice in the history and in the contemporary age.
In the course it will be given particular prominence in an ongoing confrontation with prejudices, uncritical and automatic intellectual fideistic beliefs that characterize the common perception of contemporary medicine, not so infrequently even among medical doctors.

What is medicine? An introduction. Methodologial aspects: the case of homeopathy. Chinese medicine. Greek medicine: Hippocrates and Galen. Roman medicine. Medieval medicine.
Renaissance: Vesalius, Leonardo Da Vinci. The discovery of blood circulation: William Harvey.
the birth of microscopy. The evolution of the concept of pathology. The microbiological theory of infectious diseases. Vaccination. Antisepsis. The discovery of antibiotics. Recent developments.

Lessons and possible visit to the Historical Museum of the University of Pavia.

Educational material downloadable on the site: https://labstat.wixsite.com/grassi/

Multiple choice and "gap-filling" tests.

NA