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The 1949 congress of internal medicine saw a heated and widely perceived controversy on epistemological issues of psychosomatic medicine. This article begins by outlining the place and significance of the congress in post-war history and tracing the course of the debate. The positions of the proponents of psychosomatic medicine, Viktor von Weizsäcker and Alexander Mitscherlich, are reconstructed, as well as those of the internist Paul Martini, who offered fundamental criticisms on the basis of his methodology of clinical research. In a second step, the respective different understandings of causality, evidence, and subjectivity are elaborated and contextualized. A special focus is on Martini's explicit use of these terms as well as his further research initiatives. Finally, I argue that "1949" can be analyzed as the culmination of an ongoing controversy about scientific evidence in clinical medicine that spanned several decades with its participants and levels of reference.

This paper examines the shifts in Alexander Mitscherlich's epistemological position in the 1940s, 50s and 60s via his plea for psychosomatic medicine. These shifts illustrate the post-war controversy among psychiatrists, physicians, and psychotherapists about what constitutes valid and practically relevant knowledge. The subjectivity of patients is key to Mitscherlich's concept of disease. This informs his continuous criticism of the use of statistical methods to validate individual diagnoses and hypotheses. This paper shows that Mitscherlich's criticism of a science-based medical methodology is highly adaptable, even though, in spite of many theoretical changes and adaptations, the main thrust of his approach remains consistent.

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.

Before 1933 commentaries on laws were exclusively juristic texts, written and read only by legal professionals. Beginning in 1934, scholars from different disciplines, especially medical scientists, began writing juristic commentaries. The essay examines the reasons for this development and explores how it changed the genre, using the example of the most important commentary on the Blutschutz- and Ehegesundheitsgesetz, which resulted from the collaboration of two medical professionals and a legal professional. The article argues that the recruitment of non-juristic authors and the corresponding methodological changes were caused by a debate on a possible "reform" of juristic commentaries which took place in law journals. From the perspective of the National Socialist regime, the genre in its traditional form was not compatible with the Third Reich's philosophy of law.In this new genre, commentaries not only referred to legal problems, but also dealt with issues from other disciplines, such as medical questions. The essay modifies Mitchell G. Ash's theoretical approach regarding the "entanglement" of jurisprudence and other disciplines. Law and other sciences became, according to Ash, "resources for one another": Legal scholars could claim that legal decisions were based on scientific facts and therefore "unquestionable." The affected disciplines also gained greater importance as a result of this process in which their findings becoming legally relevant. This transformation also enabled them to acquire resources for new research projects.Moreover, the essay examines the connection between this development and the change of audience within German courts. Not only did the authors of the commentaries change, but also the recipients: Many laws passed after 1933 introduced new courts using lay judges, professionals with a non-law background. These "experts" came from multiple fields connecting them to the new law, such as medical professionals.

This article investigates the question of how forensic toxicologists established the credibility of chemical analytical methods in poisoning lawsuits in the nineteenth century. After encountering the problem of laypersons in court, forensic toxicologists attempted to find strategies to make their evidence compelling to an untrained audience. Three of these strategies are discussed here: redundancy, standard methods, and intuitive comprehensibility. Whereas redundancy was not very practical and legally prescribed standard methods were not very popular with most forensic toxicologists, intuitive comprehensibility proved effective and popular. This strategy relied on employing methods which did not require chemical knowledge to be understandable. The methods aimed to generate a visual aid and to be obvious in their results. Two forms of this strategy are discussed here: the presentation of the actual material and explicit comparison. I argue that this shift towards presenting forensic toxicology expertise as evident represents an important step in the history of forensic expertise.