On completing this course students should

• Distinguish between allopathic, traditional, and alternative medicines and be able to state benefits and limitations of each
• Have a basic understanding of the history of medicine
• Understand religious dimensions of various spiritual healing practices and examine how these might influence patients to make medical decisions
• Understand what is meant by an integrative approach to religion, medicine, and healing
• Understand the reasons for the growing importance of humanities training in medical schools and medical environments
• Understand the shift in the philosophical baseline from vitalism to mechanism in The Enlightenment, and the implications of that shift on relationships among religion, medicine and the state.
• Be able to analyze  the tension between mechanism and vitalism as applied to a variety of ideas and narratives.