Teacher
Guide with Suggested Assignments
This site
is designed to allow students to explore differences in the understanding
of illness, and its diagnosis and medical treatment over time. It is our
hope that by presenting symptom descriptions and demonstrating how they
have been understood and treated differently in varying time periods that
students will get a better understanding of medicine's relationship to
a particular cultural worldview. Please see the "about this site"
page for more details on central topics explored in the site.
The structure
of this site is intended to allow students to explore these ideas freely.
There is no one right way to navigate through the content. Students should
be encouraged to start at whatever point strikes their interest and navigate
the site as they please. One approach is to start by reading the cultural
worldview essays, or it is also possible to leap straight into particular
symptom descriptions and how they have been treated in different eras.
There are
a number of ways you may wish to incorporate this site into your teaching.
In particular, we believe that it will be helpful for prompting classroom
discussion and as a research aid. For any course that deals with medicine
in a comparative context, this site offers a way for students to get exposed
to the relationships between medicine and culture, and how these relationships
influence the experience, diagnosis, and treatment of illness. Before
a class discussion, have the students review the site. Suggest that they
find three surprising ideas included within the site to bring up in discussion.
They need not learn everything on the site, just get exposed to the idea
that neither illness nor medical practice is constant over time. Ask them
to consider questions such as the following: What is constant about medicine
(if anything) and what changes over time? How is medicine related to culture?
What can we learn about our own medical practices by studying other cultures
and time periods?
The site
can also be used as a point of departure for performing research. One
approach is to have students develop similar cultural overview essays
on different cultures in a particular time period (such as Colonial America,
Medieval Europe, or Islamic medicine during the Crusades). Alternatively,
students can use the existing worldviews to evaluate other symptom categories
to see how they have changed across time. A third option is to use primary
source material included on the site to lead to further research. What
other topics of interest are suggested by the primary sources? What are
other interpretations are possible? How might the primary sources be used
differently?
Finally,
just as the site is designed to be flexible for students, you should enjoy
this same liberty. Please use this site as you see fit!
Possible
assignments:
- Explore
the site, and identify three things that struck you as compelling, surprising,
or controversial. Email these questions ahead of time and be prepared
to discuss them in class.
- Explore
the site and ask yourself the following questions: What is constant
about medicine (if anything) and what changes over time? How is medicine
related to culture? What can we learn about our own medical practices
by studying other cultures and time periods?
- Using
this site as a model, develop a cultural overview essay on how medicine
was understood by a particular culture in a particular time period.
For example, what did the understanding and treatment of illness look
like in Colonial America, Medieval Europe, or Islamic medicine during
the Crusades?
- Choose
your own set of symptom descriptions and research how they were understood
and treated within the cultures explored in the site. Explore what changes
and what stays the same over time.
- Pick a
primary source (or set of primary sources) as a point of departure for
further research. Examine one or more of the following questions: What
other topics of interest are suggested by the primary sources? What
are other interpretations are possible? How might the primary sources
be used differently?
- In a class
discussion, examine how cultural values emerged in the clinical interactions
connected to each symptom description. What consistencies were there
over time and between cultures? Do these consistencies reveal something
essential about medicine? Are the differences far more important?