Course Schedule and Catalog

Long Title: POISONS: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF DEADLY THINGS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: Poisons aren’t what they seem. Sometimes they look like food. Sometimes they look like drugs. From cinnabar to cinnamon; from dragon blood to goat bezoars, poisons are the result of careful human construction, collection, and creation. They are objects of early chemistry. Far from killing us, poisons have been central to the history of medicine. Physicians in the past and present monitor dosage, drug combination, and drug preparation to mitigate poison toxicity while still maintaining therapeutic potencies of drugs. Knowledge about poisons, in other words, quietly undergirds most of human civilization. Poisons are what keep us alive. Or not.