University of Pennsylvania
Graduate Program in Public Health
MPH Degree Program
Course Syllabus – Spring 2011
Title: PUBH 597 - History of Public Health
Course Units: 1.0 c.u.
Course Description: This masters-level seminar examines the health of human populations and
the science of improving it in historical perspective. Special attention is given to the city of
Philadelphia as a living laboratory of public health in the past and present. Lectures, readings,
and discussions cover various societies’ attempts to respond to and prevent disease since the
Enlightenment. Case studies focus on the roots of contemporary public health knowledge and
policy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Topics include responses to epidemics, the
Bacteriological Revolution, racial and economic disparities in health, the development of policy
infrastructures, and behavioral and environmental health. Periodic field trips will be arranged to
public health-related historical sites in Philadelphia and vicinity.
Placement / Room Assignment:
TBA
Course Directors:
David Barnes, PhD
University of Pennsylvania
Jennifer Ibrahim, PhD, MPH
Temple University
Michael Yudell, PhD, MPH
Drexel University
Pre-requisites: None.
Co-requisites: None.
Course Objectives: Students who complete the course will gain practical knowledge in several
important areas of public health practice. The objectives of this course are:
1) To introduce students to the methods, uses, and application of history to public health
practice.
2) To familiarize students with the key themes and debates in the history of public health,
especially in the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
3) To foster a critical appreciation of the historical roots of contemporary issues in public
health policy.
4) To provide students with training in the use of primary sources and qualitative skills in
using historical case studies to illuminate contemporary public health challenges.
Teaching Methods: The course will meet for five full-day sessions over the course of five
weeks as well as a virtual introductory session which will be available online. The in-person
class sessions will meet from 9am-3pm. Several field trips during class sessions are also
required, so be sure to pay special attention to the syllabus to know where the class is meeting
that day.
Course Requirements:
 attendance at all class meetings and participation in all discussions
 completion of assigned readings prior to the class for which they are assigned
 attendance at occasional field trips and presentations to be arranged during class time
 Please submit all assignments electronically

two short papers (a book review and a newspaper op-ed piece)

Book Review – due no later than Friday, April 15th
Please write an academic book review (we will describe in detail what this means) 45 pages in length on one of the following books:
 James Jones, Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
 Keith Wailoo, Dying in the City of Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics
of Race and Health
 Conevery Valencius, The Health of the Country
 Howard Markel, Quarantine!
 William Coleman, Death as a Social Disease
 Eric Klinenberg, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of a Disaster in Chicago
 Laurel Ulrich, A Midwives Tale

Op-Ed Essay (750 words) - due no later than Friday, April 22nd
This assignment will be in the format of an op-ed newspaper essay. The topic will be
to make a recommendation to the Obama administration on public health priorities
drawing from the history studied in this course.

Final Group Project – due no later than Monday, May 1st
This assignment will ask small groups to develop a proposal for restoration and
commemoration of an important site in the history of public health in Philadelphia or
the Delaware Valley
Academic Integrity: Students are expected to adhere to the University’s Code of Academic
Integrity. Care should be taken to avoid academic integrity violations, including: plagiarism,
fabrication of information, and multiple submissions. Students who engage in any of these
actions will be referred to the Office of Academic Integrity, which investigates and decides on
sanctions in cases of academic dishonesty.
See link for more information: http://www.upenn.edu/academicintegrity/index.html
MPH Academic Standing Policy/Academic Probation: According to University policy, a
graduate student must maintain a ‘B’ average or better to be considered in good academic
standing. A student who does not meet the University policy of a ‘B’ /3.0 average will be
reviewed by the MPH Program Director, the Associate Director and the Academic Progressions
Committee. A student may be put on academic probation for a period of 1 semester to improve
his/her overall average may be put on academic probation for a period of 1 semester to improve
his/her overall average.
Any course in which the student receives a grade below a B- will not be applied toward
the Master of Public Health degree. The record of any student who receives an unsatisfactory
grade (less than a ‘B-‘) in a course or who does not meet the University policy of a ‘B’ /3.0
average will be reviewed by the MPH Program Director, the Associate Director and the
Academic Progressions Committee. A student may be put on academic probation for a period of
1 semester to improve his/her overall average
Students may continue to take other courses during the probation period and the student
must make arrangements with the course director to remediate any grades lower than a B-. These
arrangements must be approved by the MPH Program Director with input from the Academic
Progressions Committee as needed. Any student who is on academic probation for a period
greater than 1 semester will be referred to the Academic Progressions Committee for review and
recommendation. This committee is authorized to dismiss the student or allow the student to
remain in the program on a probationary basis. A return to good academic standing is contingent
on receiving an acceptable grade (B or higher) in all remaining courses.
The MPH grading policy is at the discretion of the individual course instructors.
Please find below the generally used grading scale for the MPH Program.
A+ 97-100
B+ 87-89
C+ 77-79
A
93-96
B
83-86
C
73-76
A- 90-92
B- 80-82
C- 70-72
F
Please note that an A+ carries the same weight (4.0) as an A.
0-69
Incomplete Grade: It is expected that a matriculated Master of Public Health student shall
complete the work of a course during the semester in which that course is taken. A student who
fails to complete a course within the prescribed period shall receive at the instructor’s discretion
either a grade of I (incomplete) or F (failure). If the incomplete is given, the instructor may
permit an extension of time up to one year for the completion of the course. In such cases, any
course which is still incomplete after one calendar year from its official ending must remain as
incomplete on the student’s record and shall not be credited toward the MPH degree. Students
who receive two or more incompletes within a semester may not register for the subsequent
semester(s) without the permission of the Department.
For additional information on academic policies, please refer to the corresponding sections in the
Student Handbook.
Course Outline / Assignments:
Class Date Class Topics
1
TBA Online Virtual Meeting
Calamity and Response
Topics:
 What is Public Health?
 Why Study the History of
Public Health?
 Yellow Fever Epidemic in
Philadelphia
 Quarantine and Prevention in
the Nineteenth Century
2
4/1
At the American Philosophical
Society
105 South 5th Street, Philadelphia,
PA 19106-3386
www.amphilsoc.org
Reformers, Experts, and Scientists
in the Nineteenth Century
Topics:
 Cholera and Other Epidemics
 The Early Public Health
Movement
 Sanitary Reforms
Readings
 Virginia Berridge. “History in Public
Health: Who Needs It?” The Lancet
356 (2000): 1923-1925.
 Gabriel Scally and Justin Womack.
“The Importance of the Past in Public
Health,” Journal of Epidemiology
and Community Health (2004)
58:751-755.
 Charles Rosenberg, Explaining
Epidemics, pp. 9-31, 293-318.
 J.H. Powell, Bring Out Your Dead:
The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in
Philadelphia in 1793 (all)
 "Politics, Parties, and Pestilence:
Epidemic Yellow Fever in
Philadelphia and the Rise of the First
Party System," Sickness and Health
in America, 2d ed. (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press,
1985), edited by Judith Leavitt and
Ronald Numbers, pp. 356-371.
Recommended:
 Charles Rosenberg, “Anticipated
Consequences: Historians, History,
and Health Policy,” in History &
Health Policy in the United States:
Putting the Past Back In (New
Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University
Press, 2006) pp.13-31.
 Public Health: The Development of a
Discipline, vol. 1, pp. 170-185, 534565
 J.H. Warner and J. Tighe, eds., Major
Problems in the History of American
Medicine and Public Health, pp. 161164, 178-180, 213-215
 Christopher Hamlin, "Could You
Starve to Death in England in 1839?"
American Journal of Public Health
85: 856-866 (1995)
 Charles Rosenberg, The Cholera
Years, pp. 1-39, 101-150, 192-212,
226-234

The Bacteriological
Revolution
Field Trip: Yellow Fever Walking
Tour of Old City




3
4/8
David Barnes, “Historical
Perspectives on the Etiology of
Tuberculosis,” Microbes and
Infection 2 (2000): 431-440.
Judith Walzer Leavitt, “’Typhoid
Mary’ Strikes Back: Bacteriological
Theory and Practice in 20th-Century
Public Health,” Isis 83 (1992): 608629.
Samuel Roberts. “’Where Our
Melanotic Citizens Predominate:’
Locating African Americans and
Finding the ‘Lung Block’ in
Tuberculosis Research in Baltimore,
Maryland, 1880-1920,” Forecast
9:89-112.
Nancy Tomes, The Gospel of Germs:
Men, Women, the Microbe in
American Life (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1998), pp.157-236.
Recommended:
 Public Health: The Development of a
Discipline, vol. 1, pp. 128-142, 145165, 193-204
 William Coleman, Death Is a Social
Disease, Introduction, chapters 6, 8,
10
 Rudolf Virchow, Collected Essays on
Public Health and Epidemiology, vol.
1, pp. 14-16
 William Coleman, “Epidemiological
Method in the 1860s: Yellow Fever
at Saint-Nazaire,” Bulletin of the
History of Medicine
At the Fairmount Waterworks
 Gretchan Condran and Rose Cheney,
640 Waterworks Drive, Philadelphia
“Mortality Trends in Philadelphia,”
Pennsylvania 19130
Demography. 19(1982) 97-123.
http://www.fairmountwaterworks.org/  Amy Fairchild and Gerald Oppenheimer,
“Public Health Nihilism versus Pragmatism:
Confronting Infectious Disease in
History, Politics, and the Control of
the Industrializing City
Tuberculosis,” American Journal of Public
Health. (1998) 88:1105-1117.
Topics:
 James Colgrove. “The McKeown
 The McKeown Thesis
Thesis: A Historical Controversy and
 Vaccination
Its Enduring Influence,” (2002)

Public health ethics




4
4/15
At the Lazaretto
99 Wanamaker Avenue, Essington,
PA 19029
http://www.lazaretto.org
Immigration, Mobility, and
Pandemics
Topics:
 Race, Inequality, and Health
 Influenza Pandemics Then
and Now
Guest Lecture: Dr. Scott Knowles
AJPH 92:725-9.
Nadja Durbach, "'They Might as Well
Brand Us': Working-Class Resistance
to Compulsory Vaccination in
Victorian England," Soc History of
Med 13: 45-62 (2000)
Jeffrey Baker, “Mercury, Vaccines,
and Autism: One Controversy, Three
Histories,” AJPH 98(2008) pp.244253.
Yudell, M. “Public Health Ethics: An
Update From an Emerging
Field,”Penn Guide to Bioethics
(2009);
Thomas, et al., “A Code of Ethics for
Public Health,” AJPH 92 (2002)
1057-1059
Recommended:
 Thomas McKeown, The Role of
Medicine: Dream, Mirage, or
Nemesis? pp. TBA
 Alan Kraut, Goldberger’s War,
Introduction, chapters 4-8, Epilogue.
 James Colgrove, State of Immunity:
The Politics of Vaccination in
Twentieth Century America
(Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2006 (Intro, Chs. 1 and 2).
 W.E.B. Dubois, “Race Traits and
Tendencies of the American Negro,”
Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science (1897)
9:127-133.
 Vanessa Northington Gamble,
“Under the Shadow of Tuskegee:
African Americans and Health Care,”
American Journal of Public Health.
87(November 1997) 1773-1787.
 Mindy Fullilove, “Abandoning
‘Race’ as a Variable in Public Health
Research: An Idea Whose Time Has
Come,” American Journal of Public
Health. (Sept. 1998) 1297-98.
 Alan H. Goodman, “Why Genes
Don’t Count (for Racial Differences





in Health),” American Journal of
Public Health, (2000) 1699-1702.
Edwin Black. War Against the Weak:
Eugenics and America’s Campaign to
Create a Master Race. (New York:
Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003)
pp.159-182.
C. Hardy, “The Watering of
Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania Heritage
30 (Spr 2004) p.27-35.
Stanley Schultz and Clay McShane,
“To Engineer the Metropolis: Sewers,
Sanitation, and City Planning in Late
19th Century America,” The Journal
of American History 65(1978) 398411.
Alfred W. Crosby, “America’s
Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza
of 1918,” (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2003) pp.17-44, 7090, 311-328.
Howard Markel et al., “NonPharmaceutical Interventions
Implemented by 43 U.S. Cities
during the 1918-1919 Influenza
Pandemic,” Journal of the American
Medical Association 298(2007): 644654.
Recommended Readings
 Richard Doll and A. Bradford Hill,
“A Study in the Aetiology of
Carcinoma of the Lung,” British
Medical Journal. 2(December 13,
1952) 1271-1281.
 William B. Kannel, "Fifty Years of
Framingham Study Contributions to
Understanding Hypertension,"
Journal of Human Hypertension 14
(2000): 83-90.
 Mervyn Susser, “Epidemiology in the
United States After World War II:
The Evolution of Technique,”
Epidemiologic Reviews, 7(1985)147177.
 Robert Aronowitz, Making Sense of
5
4/22
Location TBA

Inequality and Health Disparities

Topics:
 Visual Epidemiology
 Legionnaires’ Disease
 Tobacco, Obesity and
“Emerging Diseases”
 Intellectual and Political
Foundations of Public Health
Today
(Guest lectures from Dr. Carolyn
Cannuscio and Dr. Robert Sharrar)



Illness, pp. 1-18, 111-144 Jacobson v.
Massachusetts (U.S. Supreme Court)
David W. Fraser, “The Challenges
Were Legion,” Lancet Infectious
Disease 5(2005) 237-41.
David M. Morens, Gregory K.
Folkers, and Anthony S. Fauci. July
8, 2004. The Challenge of Emerging
and Re-Emerging Infectious
Diseases. Nature, 430: 242-249.
Bruce G. Link and Jo Phelan. 1995.
Social Conditions as Fundamental
Causes of Disease. Journal of Health
and Social Behavior, 35 (Extra
Issue):80-94
Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette
Century, Introduction, chapters 1-6,
Epilogue
Bayer and Colgrove, Science,
Politics, and Ideology in the
Campaign Against Environmental
Tobacco Smoke. American Journal of
Public Health. 92(2002) 949-954.
Recommended Readings:
 Randall M. Packard et al., eds.,
Emerging Illnesses and Society:
Negotiating the Public Health
Agenda, Ch 1, 4, 13, 14
 Public Health: The Development of a
Discipline, vol. 1, pp. 589-596
 Charles E. Rosenberg, Pathologies of
Progress: The Idea of Civilization as
Risk. Bulletin of the History of
Medicine 72(1998) pp.714-730.
 Walzer Leavitt and Ronald Numbers,
Sickness and Health in America:
Readings in the History of Medicine
and Public Health eds. (Madison,
University of Wisconsin Press, 1997)
pp.426-434.
6
4/29, At the Sheraton Society Hill Hotel,
4/30, 2nd & Walnut Streets
5/1
American Association for the
History of Medicine Annual
Meeting:
 Sign up in advance to attend
four of the conference
sessions designated as relating
to the history of public health.
 Write a brief response paper
synthesizing findings or
insights from the sessions.