From laennec to lobotomy: Teaching medical history at academic medical centers

Although clinicians without a sense of history may not be condemned to repe at the past, the historical record offers many informative lessons. For one thing, history demonstrates the changing nature of scientific knowledge; c urrent understandings of health and disease may prove as ephemeral as earli er discarded theories. In addition, history reminds us that social and cult ural factors influence how physicians diagnose and treat various medical co nditions. When attempting to leach the history of medicine at academic medi cal centers, instructors should be innovative as opposed to comprehensive. Students and residents are likely to find recent historical issues to be mo re relevant, particularly when such material can be integrated into the exi sting curriculum. Provocative topics include depictions of medicine in old Hollywood films, the contributions made by famous physicians at one's own i nstitution, and historical debates over controversial events, such as the T uskegee syphilis study and the use of lobotomy in mental institutions in th e 1950s.