Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Disease, Wellness & Healthcare

How do you know if you're sick? And if you are, what do you do? Every human society has a system for identifying states of health and illness, methods for treating disease, and techniques for maintaining health. This interdisciplinary course broadly surveys various systems of health and healing across cultures and different ideas about the nature and cause of illness. After tracing the development of scientific medicine to the present day, you will learn about various Western & non-Western medical systems and the cross-cultural issues that arise when they encounter the spread of scientific medicine in the modern era. You will then develop a critical perspective of the healthcare sector using the United States and Spain as case studies.

Studying in Seville gives you the opportunity to investigate first hand at several institutions in the history of modern healthcare and medical science, including the Caridad Hospital, the Hospital of Los Venerables, and the Santa Isabel clinic. At each of these institutions, you will have the opportunity to examine how society had/has an impact on providing healthcare and the historical significance and legacies, and how these legacies shape contemporary thinking.