Readings:
Kassell, Lauren. 2014. “Casebooks in Early Modern England: Medicine, Astrology, and Written Records.†Bulletin of the History of Medicine 88. 4: 595-625.
Cullen, Christopher. 2001. “Yi’an (Case Statements): The Origin of a Genre of Chinese Medical Literature.†In Innovation in Chinese Medicine, edited by Elisabeth Hsu, 297-323. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gillum, R. F. 2013. “From Papyrus to the Electronic Tablet: A Brief History of the Clinical Medical Record with Lesson for the Digital Age.†The American Journal of Medicine 126: 853-857.
Ajlouni, Kamel, and U. Al-Khalidi. 1997. “Medical Records, Patients Outcome, and Peer Review in Eleven-Century Arab Medicine. Annals of Saudi Medicine 17. 3: 326-327.
- 1. In “Casebooks in Early Modern England,†what was a casebook? What was in a casebook? According to the author, how did casebooks being analogous to the three sorts of writing, namely diaries, registers, and testimonies? How does the author argue that casebooks had the nature as artifacts of the medical encounter?What were the epistemic shifts of medical record keeping in English history?
- 2. According to Cullen, what are yi’an? How has yi’an that are used as historical materials correlated with better understanding on history of medicine? What is the limitation? In the article, “Yi’an,†what are the differences between yi’an (of which emerged as a special printed genre in the 16th century) and the medical records before that? (In terms of the format, content, function, and so forth)
- 3. In Gillum’s article and the work by Ajlouni and Al-Khalidi, what are different purposes of medical recording and writing in different cultures and how have they changed over time? (Give three concrete examples) In terms of preservation, how did they keep these medical records (eg. in what form and the preservation technologies, and so on) and in what kind of consideration?








Jermaine Byrant
Nicole Johnson



