Eric Howard Christianson pursued undergraduate studies at the University of New Mexico and the University of Southern California. Before receiving his doctorate in 1976 from USC, he worked as a diving technologist for the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History and spent a year studying for a Diploma in the History of Medicine at St. Catherine's College, Cambridge University. He teaches courses for undergraduates and graduate students in U.S. history, and post-1700 history of science, health, technology, and environment.

His current research interests include a monograph on Transylvania University's Medical Department, 1799-1859, an historical study of the dietary prodromes for Coronary Heart Disease in the region, and continuing work on environmental knowledge and behavior in the Kentucky River Drainage Basin.

• Section Editor for Science and Technology and contributor to John E. Kleber, ed.,The Kentucky Encyclopedia (Kentucky, 1992)
• "Medicine: The Colonial Era," in Paul S. Boyer, ed., The Oxford Companion to United States History (Oxford, 2001),
• "Medicine in New England," in Ronald L. Numbers, ed., Medicine in the New World: New Spain, New France, and New England (Tennessee, 1987),
• "The Search for Diagnostic and Therapeutic Authority in the Early American Healer's Encounter with 'The Animals which inhabit the Human Stomach and Intestines,'" in John Scarborough, ed., Folklore and Folk Medicines (American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, 1987)

And in among other publications his work appears are Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Journal of Environmental Education, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Environment and Behavior, Clinics in Plastic Surgery, Journal of Experimental and Laboratory Medicine, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Human Organization, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society.