The following is encouragement for people who are lazy and don't want to do the extreme amount of reading that has been mentioned before, as well as putting hard workers' minds at ease if they are concerned that they might not be able to fit all of the reading into their tight schedules.

This course is amazingly interesting. However, as said before, there is a lot of reading to go with this course. Generally, there's about 40 pages of pdfs to read, and around 30-60 pages from the textbook. There's two essays, a midterm and a final. 20% of your grade also comes from discussion sections in which you must participate.

To be completely honest, it is entirely possible to get a good grade without doing very much reading at all. The two essays focus on very specific topics allowing you to do only the reading on those topics. Furthermore, the midterm and final both give a substantial number of options for each question. That is, instead of giving you only a single question to answer, they give you 3 or 4 different questions and ask you to answer only one. However, in exchange for not reading, you MUST go to all lectures and actually pay attention, otherwise, you simply will not have the material mastered for the exams.

I added this class late, completely missing the first two weeks of lecture, and never ended up doing the readings or learning the material for those two weeks. I kinda picked up some important points during the midterm review, but that was about it. However, from then on, I attended every lecture and took good notes while skipping all of the readings. In addition, I never participated in discussion section (If you're shy about talking up like I am, get Konstantin Thanaskis for your TA. He won't call on you if you're kinda just bleh.....). When the essays came, I did the precise readings required for them, and even then I really skimmed it for info and used my lecture knowledge. During the midterm, I picked questions that I knew how to do. If you look at all of the questions I answered, they are all from week 3-6 (which are the most important weeks. if you're not going to learn anything else, master these 4 weeks).

I did a total of 20-30 pages of pdf readings out of the several hundred for the entire course, 10-20 pages from the textbook out of the several hundred for the course, and did not participate in discussion section worth 20% of the grade. My final grade? B+. If I could put this little work in and got a B+, you can get an A.

The exams are all essay format, so that can be a gift and a curse. If you know nothing, then you are screwed, so you have to basically do a majority of the reading from the articles. There is a lot of reading, but take the course if you are interested in the subject matter, it puts medicine in a new perspective because of the approach from the standpoint of scientific innovations shaping medical discoveries. The class requires active participation in discussions, so you really do have to at least skim some of the reading every week in order not to look like a fool, but I definitely recommend reading the assigned articles before exams. For the final, look at things in the big picture. This was the first history class i took at UCLA, and it was interesting in that you could be creative in the way you approach the exams since they were free response, but it was somewhat time consuming, and the final took the full 3 hours. The professor is a genius, he knows so much about medicine, and he is also a very friendly guy to talk to.

I had History of Medicine with him. Let me start off by saying that this class has A TON of reading! I'm not exaggerating! Prof. Frank is an incredible lecturer though! You really get the most out of his lectures! The class is interesting as well but he assigns a good 6-8 hours of reading a week! It's not impossible to get an A...you need to understand the main themes mostly. As a GE, this class isn't that easy, but it's do-able for all us science majors.

Prof. Frank was great! I loved his class! His is such a caring man. His office hours were great as well, just to discuss the material, which is helpful in understanding the class as a whole. A lot of focus is put on understanding overall themes of the course, so make sure you keep that in mind throughout the course. This class has a lot of reading, just a warning for those south campus majors (which is myself) and a good deal of writing (a 4 and 8 page paper on top of a midterm and a final). I wouldn't recommend this class to someone that doesn't want to do any work, but it is definately do-able to get an A. I would recommend to keep a short bit of notes on all the articles you have to read, so you don't have to try to remember all of them later, and have to do a lot of reviewing. Keep in mind all the themes he presents on the first day of class and use that as a guideline to thinking about the purpose of the articles.

I enjoyed the class and would take it again!

My favorite class I have taken here at UCLA thus far, HANDS DOWN. I knew I was interested in medicine before this class\363but I didn't know just how much I would end up liking history itself. Dr. Frank is full of knowledge, and you can really tell through his vivid lectures. He seems like wonderful professor I wish I could get to know more about. The readings were excellently selected, and gave me a chance to really learn and digest the material. I thought the work load was okay\363even though I am a science major I was never much of a math/equation person ever, so I was relieved with this class' variety of essay topics. I'm now doing the minor\363I hope to take another class with Dr. Frank in the future.