Exploring Illness
Across
Time and Place

c u l t u r e s

 

s y m p t o m s

Fevers and Chills


An Injured Limb


Swollen Sores

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?
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