[Biography, social context, and the body in an experimental system: evidence as result of an integrated methodology exemplified by the hypertension research of Thure von Uexküll].

Abstract

The Wiesbaden congress of internal medicine in 1949 played host to a heated debate on issues of method, epistemology, and evidence in psychosomatic medicine. Paul Martini, specialist in internal medicine and protagonist of methodically conducted clinical trials, criticized the methodology of knowledge production in psychosomatic medicine and disputed the validity of its claims. Starting from this controversy, the contribution reconstructs the formation and implementation of an experimental system on the origins of hypertension in which Thure von Uexküll, specialist in internal medicine as well as in psychosomatics, aimed to integrate somatic variables as well as the subjectivity, the biography, and the social relations of the patient. In this experimental system, the interpretations of patients had a privileged status. For Uexküll, empirical evidence, traceability, and reproducibility were seen as basic criteria for relevant and valid knowledge-requirements formulated by Martini in 1949.