Centenary History Experience
On 5 June, the eve of the centenary of UCT’s Faculty of Health Sciences, the CCA hosted a public lecture and a tour of the Old Medical School – the first Medical School building in Africa and now home to the CCA.
On 5 June, the eve of the centenary of UCT’s Faculty of Health Sciences, the CCA hosted a public lecture and a tour of the Old Medical School – the first Medical School building in Africa and now home to the CCA.
The tour of the Old Medical School building was led by Professor Howard Phillips (Dept of Historical Studies, UCT) and Emeritus Professor David Dent (Dept of Surgery, UCT). The tour was followed by a centenary address by Professor Phillips in the old Physiology Lecture Theatre inside the building. The title of his address was: ‘A Precarious Venture: The Beginning of Medical Education in sub-Saharan Africa’.
The lecture inaugurated a series of lectures on Medicine and the Humanities to be launched in the second semester. Medical humanities is is a growing interdisciplinary field of medicine which includes the humanities (literature, philosophy, history, anthropology, psychology, sociology) and the arts (theatre, music and visual arts). Medical humanities draws on the creative strengths of these diverse disciplines in pursuit of intellectual synergies and their application to medical pedagogy and practice.