Themes from History of Science HIST 145

Explore development in biology and medicine around of the turn

of the twentieth century, namely new understandings of disease

causation and germ theory

Grapple with how those in positions of power took these new

biological theories and practices and used them as instruments

of violence and control over human populations

Ideas about disease were changing in the late nineteenth

century. Biologists and medical practitioners asked: What is

disease? What caused diseases and epidemics? How do you

establish the factors that cause disease?

The laboratory as a site for studying infectious disease.

Challenge our conception of the laboratory as an interior,

sanitized site for study and appreciate how the industrial and

colonial world became laboratories in their own right