image courtsey of WHO

After languishing for more than two decades, UCSF's medical history program has been renewed for the 21st century as the History of Health Sciences. The Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine will reintroduce the graduate program this fall.

"We're aiming to become the center of health sciences history on the West Coast," says Dorothy Porter, who was named chair of the Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine last year.

The renewed graduate program, approved by the UCSF Graduate Council last month, will train students to examine the history of health sciences, including medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, alternative healing, and biomedical research. The program will enroll approximately four new PhD students every other year, for a planned cohort of a total of 12 students.

The program will partner with UC Berkeley through course and seminar offerings, committee service, and teaching and research assistantships for students.

Students must complete 14 courses during the first 2 years of study, including 2 required courses on the History of Health Sciences and 1 on Research Methods in the first year. Electives can be chosen from offerings at UCSF in history of health sciences, medical anthropology, sociology, and global health sciences, and at UC Berkeley in the history department.

Since the history of health sciences is an interdisciplinary field, students come from a wide variety of academic backgrounds, including the sciences, medicine, history, and even public health and engineering, according to Elizabeth Watkins, who heads up the program.

Watkins, author of On the Pill, a history of the birth control pill, relates her own interest in medical history from from the time she taught high school science in Concord, Massachusetts.

"Teaching the history of science got me interested in the popularization of science, how people outside the system get their information," says Watkins, who is presently working on a history of hormone replacement therapy in America, entitled The Estrogen Elixir.

Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine