Samuel Suh

Sam Suh is a master’s student in the History of Science and Medicine at Yale University. With a temporal focus on twentieth and twenty-first century America, he is interested in the history of medical education, history of medicinal culture, holism in medicine, and medical humanities. His current project places him at the intersection of US medical education and medical humanities, working to uncover the evolution of holism within the US medical school curriculum from 1950 to the present day. He is also particularly interested in the dichotomy between holism and reductionism in the context of medicinal culture, and how they transformed the views of what it means to be the ‘ideal’ physician. Through Sam’s research, he attempts to understand the overarching question of how to keep the thread of holism intact over the course of medical training and in actual clinical practice. He is a passionate advocate for the incorporation of the humanities into medicine, interested in finding new ways to bridge the gap between both fields.

Before coming to Yale, Sam received his B.A. in Medicine, Science, and the Humanities (MSH) and a B.A. in Spanish from Johns Hopkins University in December 2023. He graduated with highest honors and wrote his senior undergraduate thesis titled, “The Ideal Doctor: The Evolution of Holism in US Medical School Requirements and its Impact on the Views of the ‘Ideal’ Medical Student- a 1950 to Present Day Study.” In this thesis, he traced the evolution of holism through the utilization of archival sources from various medical institutions and materials collected from the Association of American Medical Colleges’ (AAMC) Mary H. Littlemeyer Archives. After his master’s, he hopes to continue his interdisciplinary studies to further his knowledge within the various facets of history of medical education and apply that to the era of US modern medicine.