Elke Hausmann is a Salaried GP in Derby.
How many GPs have learnt about the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries during their vocational training and know about its history as the cradle of our profession? I certainly didn’t. It was only by chance that I came across the programme for their History of Medicine course 2023/24 (linked to an optional postgraduate diploma examination) and I was instantly hooked. Who knew that this Society until this day has the right to confer academic degrees? I wasn’t particularly interested in another degree, but I was really interested in learning more.
If you haven’t had the chance to study in the hallowed halls of Oxford or Cambridge with their ‘Potter-esque’ dining halls and portraits of illustrious men on their walls, this is your chance to experience similar.
The course consisted of 15 Saturdays between October and June, in a blended format, which means that some days were in person at the amazing Apothecaries Hall at Blackfriars, London and some via Zoom, from the comfort of your own home. If you haven’t had the chance to study in the hallowed halls of Oxford or Cambridge with their ‘Potter-esque’ dining halls and portraits of illustrious men on their walls, this is your chance to experience similar. Even if you are not able to get to London at all, you can catch up with the live days on their learning platform afterwards, where videos of the lectures are being made available.I managed two days in person, which gave me the chance to see the Hall and meet my fellow students, but we had students from Australia and the US who never made it in the flesh.
What I missed out on were the days that included museum visits. Some like the Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret at Guy’s Hospital are open to the public, but others like the Gordon (pathology) Museum on the Guy’s Hospital Campus at King’s College are not. The good thing is that if you want to catch up with them the year after, you still some options to join in if you manage to get to London then.
In my group, not all of us were GPs (though quite a few), not all of us had a medical background (we had a recent English literature graduate), and most of us were a bit older and there for interest more than professional advancement. Quite a few, however, did have ideas about what they will do with their Diploma – for example getting into medical education. The cost of the course amounts to a bargain compared to what most universities charge now, though you have to pay extra for the examinations, which not all of us will do. The examination in history is currently an open book exam, a dissertation and a test lecture.
We had lecturers who are experts in their field based at different universities, also from the Science Museum and the Imperial War museum, amongst others. If you want to indulge your childhood interest in Egyptian mummies, Professor Rosalie David from Manchester University has spent her working life studying them, making use of new technology as it became available (eg MRI), giving fascinating insights into the illnesses and treatments those ancient remains revealed). If you want to know more about the history of the different instruments we use on a daily basis (first and foremost the stethoscope), if you are interested in the history of a particular medical speciality (my favourites were the lectures on psychiatry which raises so many questions beyond medicine about our fundamental humanity), are interested in other medical traditions like Chinese medicine or Ayurveda, or the topical issue of plagues (which included a talk about how to build up a museum collection that represents the Covid pandemic experience), there is truly something for everyone here.
The humanities (particularly history) tell us about our place in the world, where we fit in as doctors, how we might have worked differently in a different time when people knew different things.
If this sounds like a pitch, it is. At a time when the humanities are being cut from academia, devalued in society and education seen purely as a financial investment that should reap financial rewards, the idea of learning for fun seems inherently radical. Medicine has always been as much an art as a science, and while we learn a lot of the science in our traditional medical education, the art side can be neglected. The humanities (particularly history) tell us about our place in the world, where we fit in as doctors, how we might have worked differently in a different time when people knew different things. It opens up possibilities of thinking about how we could do things differently in the here and now. What you learn will affect you as a person and as a doctor, and it can only be for the better.
Featured course: Society of Apothecaries’ course in the history of medicine, https://www.apothecaries.org/the-history-of-medicine/ [accessed 15/6/24]
Featured image: The dance of death: the apothecary. Coloured aquatint after T. Rowlandson, 1816.. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark
Great piece! I’ve been to several of those places and they are indeed fascinating and as a historian of medicine I can’t disagree with your enthusiasm. I did chafe when you seemed to equate education in the humanities with “learning for fun” since as you note humanities education can provide a lot of valuable skills too. So your final bit is very much appreciated! See some of the work by Jacalyn Duffin (a PhD history and MD hematology) on the useful connections especially between what we do as historians and what clinicians do. Humanities should be part of medical ed. Good history takes the examples of where we have been to help us reflect on where we are.
Thanks Dan! Maybe ‘learning for fun’ was a bit flippant, maybe I should have said ‘learning out of intellectual curiosity and for enjoyment (as well as for personal and professional development)’ – that’s what I meant anyway ; )
What can visitors expect to see at the Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret at Guy’s Hospital?