Using the UI Libraries: the Infohawk catalog and on-line biblographical indices

Selected internet sites and open access bibliographic indices

Rare books, manuscripts and archives

Advice and ideas for research paper topics

The History of Medicine in Western Society

Paper Topics

A good research paper has a clear focus and argument. What happened in the past (the "story") is important, but so is why people believed what they believed and why change occured. Drama helps: controversies and disagreements show how physicians and scientists appealed to different kinds of evidence. Social movements involving health issues reveal the economic and political interests with positions on why people get sick and who is responsible for ill health and treatment. Tracking a discovery or invention shows how innovation is a complex process. Finding out why people maintained traditions and "wrong" therapies can be as interesting as why people embraced "right" ideas and treatments.

To develop a project:

• concentrate on a specific time and place. A research paper is not an encyclopedia article that narrates the history of an idea, disease or therapy from the dawn of time to the present. Such papers cannot help but be superficial!
• do background reading. Be sure to read any sections of the textbook and other course materials that have something to do with your project. By all means, read encylopedia articles to get an overview -- just do not use them as significant sources of in-depth information.
• use reputable secondary sources, books and articles published by academic (peer reviewed) presses and organizations.
• find the primary sources. This is not always possible, given language skills and the availability of archival and obscure or rare materials. But a great deal is accessible, given persistance.

Examples of paper topics that previous students have developed:

• Midwives in Iowa
• The Decline of the Galenic System
• Asylums for the Insane in the 19th century
• Breast Cancer: Diagnosis and Therapy in the 19th century
• History of Asthma Therapy
• The Introduction of Heroin into Medical Therapeutics
• Physicians and the Nazis
• Discovery of Cystic Fibrosis
• Nazi Experiments
• Veneral Diseases and Victorian Prostitutes
• Chiropractic Hospitals
• Influenza in 1919
• Tuberculosis, 1880 to 1920
• Reconstructive Surgery in WWI
• Blood Transfusion in WWI
• Industrial Revolution and Public Health in London
• Air Ambulances: Vietnam to Civilian Rescue
• Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
• Anatomy & Art in the Renaissance

Still looking for an idea? How about one of these?

• The origins of chemotherapy for cancer
• Invisible harm: discovery of the effects of radiation on human health
• History of shock treatments for the mentally ill
• Resistance to the germ theory in the nineteenth century
• Resistance to vaccination in the 19th and early 20th centuries
• Physicians' resistance to randomized clinical trials
• Claude Bernard and human experimentation in the 19th century
• Harvey Cushing and neurosurgery
• DDT: public good to environmental hazard
• Rickets, childbirth and children in Victorian cities
• Venereal diseases and public health
• Standardizing death -- how did the government's demand for consistent reporting affect what was considered legitmate causes of death?
• Bovine tuberculosis, animal control and public health
• Debates over bacterial or viral causes for cancer
• Iatrogenic illnesses – conditions caused by medical care (e.g. hospital infections)
• Discovery of/responses to diseases/conditions:
  • hypertension
  • pellegra
  • sickle cell anemia
  • hepatitis B or hepatitis C
  • “the bends”
  • chewing tobacco and oral cancer
  • brucellosis
  • swine flu
• Development of specific therapies/treatments/devices:
  • ultrasound
  • electro cardiograms
  • hypodermic injections
  • blood banks
  • sperm banks
  • supplemental oxygen
  • medical uses of cocaine
  • sterile surgical gloves