Ph.D. and M.D-Ph.D

Yale University offers an interdepartmental Program in the History of Medicine and Science leading to the M.A., Ph.D., J.D./Ph.D., or M.D./Ph.D degrees. The Program's full-time faculty are members of the Department of History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and of the Section of History of Medicine in the School of Medicine. The Program also benefits from the active participation of other History faculty members as well as faculty of other departments. The Program offers opportunities for students to pursue degrees in concentrations that span the full range of the history of science and history of medicine, from antiquity to modern times. The broad interests of its faculty provide special opportunities to cross the boundaries between these two fields, with emphasis on the biomedical sciences and their connections both with medical practices and the physical sciences.

The Yale Program aims to sustain an integrative, eclectic response to methodological issues that have been intensely debated in recent years. It equips students with a critical appreciation of the diverse approaches now practiced in the history of science and medicine. It offers training in the close reading of texts, instruments, artifacts, and analysis of ideas and practices, and instruction in social, cultural, political and economic modes of interpretation. The Program fosters consideration of the interplay between science and technology as well as between biomedical knowledge and the clinic. It urges students to enrich their professional preparation by drawing on other disciplines including cultural studies, philosophy, and the contemporary natural and social sciences. In all, historiographic pluralism is a hallmark of the Yale Program. Special advantages offered by the program include library resources that are among the best in North America. The historical medical library contains renowned collections and rare works in the history of medicine and related sciences. The university library system as a whole has exceptional depth in original sources for the history of all the major sciences.