What Does Your Doctor Know? Exploring the History of Physician Education from Early Greek Theory to the Practice of Duke Medicine.

Gray's anatomy

Healing the sick, the wounded, and the suffering has always been a central human concern.   Medical knowledge was passed down through the ages first orally and then in written form, through informal apprenticeships and formal university education.  Certain core subjects like anatomy have been taught for over five hundred years, though the means of teaching has changed over time from oral tradition to physical autopsy to moving image recordings to virtual digital reconstruction

How does the training a medical student receives today compare to the training a student would have received in a much earlier time, say in Padua, Italy, in 1543, or at the University of Pennsylvania in 1813? This exhibition highlights the transformation of physician education over time, from the days of ancient Greece through the establishment and evolution of Duke’s Medical School. All of the materials in this exhibit are drawn from the Duke University Medical Center Archives and from the History of Medicine Collections in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.