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, historio-graphic 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.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. Research will focus largely on primary works, typically published texts or unpublished manuscript documents, clinical patient records, letters, diaries, and other archival materials. For some theses, students may use films, television, or other visual materials, as well as museum objects and other artifacts or oral interviews.Fields of Study - All subjects and periods in the history of medicine and history of science. Special fields represented include American science and medicine; Asian science and medicine; Arabic science and medicine; disease, therapeutics, psychiatry, drug abuse, and public health; physics; science and national security; science and law, science and religion, life sciences, human genetics, eugenics, molecular biology, biotechnology, microbiology, intellectual property, gender, race, and sciencemedicine; bioethics and medical research.