History 204/204W
History of International and Global Health
Spring 2014
Prof. Theodore Brown
Office Hours: Monday 11:00 – 1:00 and by appointment
368 Rush Rhees (x52051)
Email: Theodore_Brown@urmc.rochester.edu
Amanda Decker (Teaching Assistant)
Office Hours: by appointment
Email: adecker3@u.rochester.edu
This course examines the initiation, evolution, and transformation of international and global health activities and
policies over the course of several centuries. It concentrates on developments in the nineteenth, twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries, but it also considers earlier events such as pandemic plague and cholera, the exchange of
diseases between the Old World and the New, the development of tropical medicine, and the role of health problems
and initiatives in European and American colonialism. A major focus is the evolution of cooperative efforts in
international health under governmental, non-governmental, and trans-governmental auspices. Particular attention is
given to the historical role of international conferences, conventions and treaties, the work of the International Red
Cross and the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Health Division, and the creation and functioning of the Pan
American Health Organization, the Office International d’Hygiene Publique, the League of Nations Health
Organization, and the World Health Organization. For the later twentieth century, attention will be directed to the
World Bank, the Gates Foundation, and other major current players in “global health.”
Course requirements for History 204 are a midterm exam, a final exam, and an 8-page research paper. Each will
contribute to one-third of the final grade. It would be wise to begin discussions (via email or face-to-face) about
your term paper as early in the course as possible.
The following books are to be purchased:
Sheldon Watts, Epidemics and History: Disease, Power and Imperialism [EAH]
Randall M. Packard, The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria [MTD]
Other readings are available on electronic reserve via Blackboard.
Schedule of Lectures
Jan 16
Jan 21
Jan 23
Jan 28
Jan 30
Feb 4
Feb 6
Feb 11
Feb 13
Feb 18
Feb 25
Feb 27
Introduction and Orientation
Global Ecology of Disease
Global Role of Medicine
International AIDS Posters
Plague -- I
Plague -- II
Smallpox -- I
Smallpox -- II
Cholera -- I
Cholera -- II
Medicine and Colonialism -- I
Medicine and Colonialism -- II
2
Mar 4
Mar 6
Mar 18
Mar 20
Mar 25
Mar 27
Apr 1
Apr 3
Apr 8
Apr 10
Apr 15
Apr 17
Apr 22
Apr 24
Apr 29
Medicine and Colonialism -- III
Nineteenth Century Internationalism in Public Health
Pan American Sanitary Bureau
Midterm
International Red Cross -- I
International Red Cross -- II
Rockefeller Foundation -- I
Rockefeller Foundation -- II
League of Nations Health Organization -- I
League of Nations Health Organization -- II
World Health Organization -- I
World Health Organization -- II
World Health Organization -- III
New “Global” Players in International Health – I
New “Global” Players in International Health -- II
Readings
1/21
Kenneth Kiple, “The Ecology of Disease”
1/23
Stephen Kunitz, “Medicine, Mortality, and Morbidity”
1/30
Ann Carmichael, “Bubonic Plague”
Katharine Park, “Black Death”
Sheldon Watts, EAH, pp. 1-15
2/4
Sheldon Watts, EAH, pp. 15-39
2/6
Alfred Crosby, “Smallpox”
Sheldon Watts, EAH, pp. 84-102
2/11
Sheldon Watts, EAH, pp. 102-121
2/13
Reinhard Speck, “Cholera”
Sheldon Watts, EAH, pp. 167-186
2/18
Sheldon Watts, EAH, pp. 186-212
2/25
David Arnold, “Medicine and Colonialism”
David Arnold, “Occidental Therapeutics and Oriental Bodies”
2/27
Michael Worboys, “Tropical Diseases”
3/4
Donald Cooper and Kenneth Kiple, “Yellow Fever”
3/6
Milton Roemer, “Internationalism in Medicine and Public Health”
David Fidler, “The Globalization of Public Health”
3/18
Marcos Cueto, The Value of Health: A History of the Pan American Health Organization,
pp. 11-56
3/25
John Hutchinson, Champions of Charity: War and the Rise of the Red Cross, pp. 11-56
3/27
John Hutchinson, Champions of Charity: War and the Rise of the Red Cross, pp. 346-355
John Hutchinson, “’Custodians of the Sacred Fire’: The ICRC and the Postwar Reorganization
3
of the International Red Cross”
4/1
John Farley, To Cast Out Disease: A History of the International Health Division of the
Rockefeller Foundation (1913-1951), pp. 1-23
John Farley, “The International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation: The Russell
Years, 1920-1934”
Marcos Cueto, “The Cycles of Eradication: The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin American
Public Health, 1918-1940”
4/3
Paul Weindling, “American Foundations and the Internationalizing of Public Health”
Randall Packard, MTD, pp. 67-110
4/8
Marta Balinska, “Assistance and Not Mere Relief: The Epidemic Commission of the
League of Nations, 1920-1923”
Lenore Manderson, “Wireless Wars in the Eastern Arena: Epidemiological Surveillance,
Disease Prevention and the Work of the Eastern Bureau of the League of Nations Health
Organization”
Randall Packard, MTD, pp. 111-149
4/10
Paul Weindling, “Social Medicine at the League of Nations Health Organization and the
International Labor Office Compared”
Iris Borowy, “International Social Medicine Between the Wars: Positioning a Volatile Concept”
Iris Borowy, “Maneuvering for Space: International Health Work of the League of Nations During
World War II”
4/15
Norman Howard-Jones, “The World Health Organization in Historical Perspective”
Raymond Fosdick, “Public Health as an International Problem”
Thomas Parran and Frank Boudreau, “The World Health Organization: Cornerstone of Peace”
Frank Boudreau, “International Health: Our Stake in World Health”
4/17
Randall Packard, MTD, pp. 150-176
Donald Henderson, “Smallpox Eradication – A Cold War Victory”
“Declaration of Alma Ata”
4/22
Theodore Brown et al., “The World Health Organization and the Transition From
‘International’ to ‘Global’ Public Health”
4/24
Randall Packard, MTD, pp. 177-251
4/29
Theodore Brown and Marcos Cueto, “The World Health Organization and the World of Global
Health”
Term Paper Due: Tuesday, April 15