Syllabi: Medicine and Literature: The Human Perspective

INSTITUTION: University of Arizona College of Medicine

COURSE DIRECTORS: Helle Mathiasen, PhD (email: mathiase@email.arizona.edu), Joseph S. Alpert, MD (email: jalpert@email.arizona.edu)

ENROLLMENT: 4th year medical students; elective

SEMESTER: Spring 2001

Tuesdays, Thursdays, 4:30-6:30 PM
Thursdays, 12:30p to 1:30 p.m.

COURSE OUTLINE:

March 6         Introduction: Rationale for the Course: An Overview of the History of Medicine

March 8         The Impaired Physician or the Mad Scientist?
                                    R.L. Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

March 13       Addiction: Not just a Romantic Disease:
                                    Poetry HANDOUT including Shakespeare, Keats, Coleridge, Heine, Baudelaire, Sexton

March 15       Diphtheria in Russia and the United States:
                                    Fiction HANDOUT including stories by Anton Chekhov, Mikhail Bulgakov, and William Carlos Williams

March 20       A Historical Perspective on Mental Illness:
                                    The Madness of King George (film); director Nicholas Hytner, starring Helen Mirren, Nigel Hawthorne

March 22       CANCELLED

March 27       The Ethics of Animal and Human Experimentation:
                                    Ariyoshi, The Doctor's Wife

March 29       Nazi Science and Ethics, An Oxymoron:
                                    HANDOUT including texts by Nat Hentoff, Robert L. Berger, Hippocrates, The Nuremberg Code

April 3           How Did He Do It?
                                    Physician-Writer William Carlos Williams,The Doctor Stories

April 5           Geriatrics in Literature:
                                    Tillie Olsen, Tell Me A Riddle

April 10         An Existential Choice, The Physician and the Plague:
                                    Albert Camus, The Plague

April 12         The Plague continued

Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Bantam)
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (Bantam)
Sawako Ariyoshi, The Doctor's Wife (Kodansha)
William Carlos Williams, The Doctor Stories (New Directions)
Tillie Olsen, Tell Me A Riddle (Rutgers)
Albert Camus. The Plague (Vintage)

These texts are available to purchase in the College of Medicine Bookstore and are available in the College of Medicine Library.

Class attendance
Participation in class discussion
One in-class presentation including handout and discussion questions