Medizin, Gesellschaft, und Geschichte : Jahrbuch des Instituts fur Geschichte der Medizin der Robert Bosch Stiftung最新文献

The article aims to explore the physicians' role at the Nuremberg "Sondersiechenalmosen" in the 15th and 16th centuries. Special attention is given to the question as to how the city's physicians, who claimed expert status superior to other healers and who had special authority to advise the authorities in keeping the city clean and healthy, declared and explained their problems in connection with the "examen leprosorum" on the occasion of the "Sondersiechenschau". From 1394 the city had opened its gates for three days in Holy Week leading up to Easter to offer clerical assistance, food and shelter to foreign lepers. This meant that people were cared for who would not usually have been admitted because they were foreigners as well as being leprous. The physicians' task within that charity was to discriminate between the leprous and foreign beggars, a task which caused serious problems when, in the 16th century, at times two thousand and more foreigners entered the imperial city during Holy Week. When, in 1571, the Nuremberg physician Kammermeister proposed to establish a "Collegium Medicum" in the city of Nuremberg, he described the procedure extensively. The authorities ignored the initial claim to establish a "Collegium Medicum" but requested each academically trained physician of the city to give a personal statement on the physicians' ability to seriously judge the foreigners who claimed to be leprous. Based primarily on these statements, the article hopes to shed some light on the Nuremberg "Sondersiechenalmosen", on the "examen leprosorum", and on the relation between medical judgement and medical authority in general.

The principle of similars (treat likes by likes) is generally considered to be one of the pillars of the homeopathic doctrine established by Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843). Nevertheless, its status and relevance with regard to the practice of homeopathy can be challenged by semantic, conceptual, and epistemological objections. 1. Contrary to its literal meaning, "similia similibus curentur" is commonly used in the sense of "all diseases should be treated by similar drug diseases", thus transgressing its original field of indication. 2. From 1796, when Hahnemann published his first definition of the principle of similars, he gradually raised his claims from merely suggesting a heuristic principle for finding new curative remedies to insisting on having discovered a law of nature and the only true way of healing, in 1807/1808. To substantiate his ambitious tenets, Hahnemann had to introduce a variety of theories which in turn were to become the main battleground in the ensuing controversy about homeopathy. 3. From the perspective of epistemology of science, science can never consist of a final set of absolute truths or the like but must rather be described as a continuous social process that retains a methodological cycle of abduction, deduction, and induction. From the perspective of theory of medicine, however, medicine is to be considered as a practical rather than a cognitive science in its own right. Its first concern ought to be the development of practical directions for treating patients, while the value of competing theories can only be judged from their usefulness in practice. Hence, even though Hahnemann's theories, including his conception of the principle of similars, may be untenable or outdated, the genuine method of homeopathic treatment he founded remains independent of and unaffected by criticism at the level of theory and concepts.

Oliver Auge shows in this article that, in the late Middle Ages, the consequences of invalidity due to fighting and jousts ranged between exclusion and appreciation--a similar pattern to what can be observed in the ancient Roman Republic. As the majority of medieval sources do not provide any information concerning this topic, Auge concludes that affected nobles were either seen as disturbing elements within the society or they even regarded themselves as such. But they met with social approval as soon as they explicitly identified themselves as former participants of wars or jousts that had caused their invalidity or if their performance was above the norm. A remarkable amount of evidence for this phenomenon appeared around the year 1500 leading the author to conclude that the view of disability gradually changed with the transition from Middle Ages to Modernity. Examples like that of Götz of Berlichingen's iron hand or the striking profile of the often portrayed Federico da Montefeltro, on the other hand, show that physical integrity was still the standard.

In 2007 I described a massage method that was developed by the Swedish officer Thure Brandt (1819-1895) and promoted by German physicians, especially Robert Ziegenspeck. But all files about Ziegenspeck seemed to be lost until two of them were rediscovered by chance in 2009. They offer insight into the desperate situation of German gynaecological hospitals in the late 19th century and the consequences for the young reformer Ziegenspeck who wanted to protect women's health against his colleagues' arbitrariness.

A lot of physicians practised homoeopathy and dedicated their lives to the method of Samuel Hahnemann, but most of them seem to have been forgotten. By tracing the life of one of them it can be shown how one can learn more about those people and find documents that shed some light on their lives and actions. Carl von Bönninghausen was the son of the famous lay homoeopath Clemens Maria Franz von Bönninghausen. Due to the fact that he married the adoptive daughter of Mélanie Hahnemann some aspects of his life were already known. But he himself had never been the focus of research. Firstly, his life is described with the help of newly found documents. Secondly, notices accidentally found in patient journals show how Carl started as a homoeopath.

The article deals with a group of people who were deprived of their eyesight by private acts of force or by executions of lawful sentences. In early medieval texts blinding is frequently mentioned in connection with popes, kings, princes or bishops. However, since the High Middle Ages these dignitaries were increasingly spared the loss of their eyes. It may be said that on the whole, from the eighth to the twelfth century, blinding was overwhelmingly used to dispose of political adversaries, but did then rapidly turn into a criminal punishment. In the earliest 'Landfriedensordnungen' of the late eleventh century, the loss of the perpetrator's eyes crops up as punishment for breach of the peace, while later it was applied to a variety of more or less serious offences. The destiny of the blinded in the early Middle Ages is only highlighted by sketches of a few individual cases; for the High and late Middle Ages--apart from a few notable exceptions--it is only possible to reflect on the general situation of blind people in society, since the sources usually do not differentiate between those having lost their sight through human violence or due to other causes.

Hospices for terminally ill and dying patients have so far been considered an 'invention' of the late 19th century. Based on the analysis of admission journals and other archival sources, this paper presents the hospital 'Hundertsuppe' in Nuremberg as an institution which already exhibited most characteristics of a modern hospice 100 years before that. Established, in 1770, as a hospital for chronic diseases, it served almost from the start primarily as an institution for fatally ill, poor patients, who could spend the last months, weeks or days of their life in relative comfort, with nursing and spiritual and medical care. This primary function was explicitly accepted by those in charge of the hospital. It is evidenced by an extraordinarily high mortality of almost 70%, with almost two-thirds of the patients staying for less than 3 months and 'consumption' being the foremost cause of death. In conclusion, the 'Hundertsuppe' is discussed as an exemplary case of an institution for the dying which arose due to the insufficient care for incurable and dying patients in the new 'curative' hospitals; the first English hospices in the late 19th century and the influential St. Christopher's Hospice in the 1960s, commonly attributed to charismatic individual founding figures like Howard Barrett and Cicely Saunders, are shown to have originated from similar contexts.

The paper provides an introduction into a current field of research on medieval culture and social life. Inspired by 'disability studies' and a 'history of disability', various historical disciplines have recently begun to cooperate in order to analyse how impaired/disabled people managed to survive and participate in social networks. However, the categories 'disability' and 'impairment' seem to be problematic with regard to medieval attitudes and behaviour. The paper highlights different strategies for coping with prolonged disease, physical defects and deformities. It argues that the topics war and fighting as well as punishment were chosen for the present focus on disability/impairment because they refer to widespread experiences and practices of different strata of medieval society.

In 1529, Sudor anglicus, the 'English Sweating Sickness', spread from England to Germany reaching the city of Augsburg. Its exact nature is unclear: the symptoms were profuse sweating, uncontrollable thirst, and headaches, with death occurring within hours of infection. Those who survived the first twenty-four hours returned to health. According to one source the fever arrived in Autumn 1529 and in September there were 800 deaths; another source gives November as the onset with 600 deaths. While these death rates were in fact relatively low compared with the plague, for instance, people were particularly frightened by the sudden appearance of an unknown fever and the speed of death. Augsburg was aware that the 'English Sweating Sickness' was spreading in Germany. What is remarkable was the quick reaction of the printing trade. Two related types of handbooks so on appeared; whichwill serve as the subject of this paper. Firstly, handbooks dealing with the fever as a medical issue, and secondly, those dealing with the fever as an issue of theology. An illustrative example of each handbook is discussed here. Authored at speed and quickly published, they reflect the urgent response to the outbreak. What is demonstrated is the need to attend both to body and soul, that the 'English Sweating Sickness' was a challenge not just to physicians but also to theologians. The printing trade seized the opportunity to meet both needs.