Bullitt History of Medicine Club: On the Importance of History to Medicine

On the Importance of History to Medicine, with Chinese Medicine as Exemplary Case

We call our ancestors’ ideas about health and healing “theories” and our own ideas in use today “facts.” How might we understand the art and science of healing differently if we allowed ourselves to engage in a thought experiment of treating today’s medical science as a theory? This talk explores this provocation with the history of Chinese medicine as a case study.

Speaker: Dr. Nicole Elizabeth Barnes
Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor, History, Duke University

Download Dr. Barnes’ award-winning, open-access book, “Intimate Communities: Wartime Healthcare and the Birth of Modern China, 1937-1945” (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018).

Formed in 1953, the Bullitt History of Medicine Club is a student organization within the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Medicine. The club promotes the understanding and appreciation of the historical foundations upon which current medical knowledge and practice is constructed, by encouraging social and intellectual exchanges between faculty members, medical students, and members of the community. For more information and a schedule of upcoming lectures, visit the Bullitt History of Medicine Club website: go.unc.edu/BullittClub