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1. IntroductionVitalism (from the Latin vita, “life”) was a tendency within medicine and philosophy of the 18th century that postulated the existence of a life force ( vis vitalis) that controlled and sustained life. The driving force of vitalism was the theory of the soul advanced in opposition to Cartesian mechanism by Georg Ernst Stahl (Animism) [9. 293–310]; [7]; [8]. This view focused primarily on the energizing, life-sustaining forces of each individual organ ( vita propria) and of the body as a whole.The vitalism proposed by the French medics Théophile de Bordeu a…

1. From the bath-house to the thermal spring The decline of the medieval urban bathing culture and the souring of its reputation probably came about primarily because of the rapid spread of syphilis from the late 15th century In many places, this led to the closure of town bath-houses (Bathkeeper), which were held to be dangerous reservoirs of infection (Illness). As this was happening, however, rising timber prices stimulated by increasing construction in towns and the growth of mining, which consumed …

1. ConceptEpidemiology (from the Greek  epídemos, “spread among the people”, and   lógos, “doctrine”) describes the occurrence, causes, and distribution of health-related conditions, events, and risks in populations, and seeks ways of using this information to restore and promote health and to avert illness by prevention. Epidemiological knowledge is generally applied to keep health problems under control in the population. The first work on epidemiology in the scientific sense took place in the 17th century.Wolfgang Uwe Eckart 2. Demographic epidemiology …

1. Definition Therapeutic concepts are remedial theories in medicine that derive approaches to treatment based on a particular understanding of illness. These then follow theories and rules that are relatable in practice. For the early modern period, a fundamental distinction can be drawn between magical and rational therapeutic concepts (see below, 2.). The basis for the rational concept of academic medicine was the ancients’ threefold subdivision of therapy (dietetic, surgical, pharmaceutical). …

1. Basics In the course of the 17th century, the hospital of the ancient religious and charitable type was transformed into an institution devoted entirely to caring for the sick [4]; [6]. Special forms of the old hospitals decreased in number (leprosaria, pox houses) and new forms appeared (academic infirmaries, lying-in hospitals). In the 18th and 19th centuries, large municipal infirmaries sprang up in the cities, general infirmaries in the towns, and finally pavilion infirmaries in decentralized, multi-functional form. (see 3. below).Wolfgang Uwe Eckart2. Architectural …

1. Definition and background In the 16th and 17th centuries, medical codes in the form of government decrees, edicts, and ordinances primarily regulated the behavior of the various medical occupational groups and their representatives (Medic) towards each other, defined criteria for training and certification, and also occasionally included hygienic instructions (for avoiding epidemics) and pharmaceutical advice. They were an expression of territorially defined government care (including city and town governments) for the health of subjects and citizens [1]. The transi…

1. Terminological history Hygíeia (or Hygeía, Latin Salus) in Greek mythology was the daughter of Asclepius and the goddess of health. The word “hygiene” derives from her name. During the early modern period, the sense of the term hygíeia expanded. Zedler’s  Universallexikon defines it as “health, good condition of the body, consisting in a good temperament (mixture of humors), evident from the fact that the individual can well do what is required of him, feels nothing untoward in himself, eats and drinks well, sleeps well, urinates and makes stool properly” ( guter Zustand des L…

1. Definition and originsFrom the 19th century on, “health insurance” referred to a solidarity-based community healthcare system for journeymen and laborers that would take care of people who had fallen on hard times due to illness, and of their families. Thus, health insurance can be seen as an expression of social-paternalistic efforts on the part of factory owners and entrepreneurs. The phrase “health insurance” first appeared in today’s sense in the second half of the 18th century (e.g. Kranken-Casse zu Paris für fremde evang. Sattlergesellen, (“Health insurance in Pa…

1. General The term  medic (German Medizinalperson) here encompasses all the early modern non-academic medical practitioners who practiced their healing arts for the “common man” [16] in fixed locations or as itinerants. Medics ( Medizinalpersonen) “are individuals whose occupations focus on the ailing body and the recovery of the sick, including physicians, barber surgeons, obstetricians, midwives, apothecaries, and orderlies” [1]. In an extended sense, the term also included so-called Pfuscher (amateur practitioners), Storger (“mountebanks”),  Landfahrer (“dri…

1. Diseases and plaguesThe correct identification of early modern plagues and epidemics in terms of modern pathology is highly problematical. Even evidence of symptom correlation is open to doubt. This is true of the plethora of pestilential fevers, but no less true in the case of illnesses that are apparently identifiable without difficulty, but behind which may lurk in principle any infection with epidemic propensity. The learned world of the 15th and 16th centuries certainly knew of the ominous …

1. Concept Until the mid-17th century, the early modern concept of illness was still primarily shaped by classical humoralism and dietetics. The ideas of humoral physiology were gradually replaced by other concepts of illness, which from the 18th to the early 19th century were based on mechanistic, animistic, and vitalist notions of human life in health and illness. Around the middle of the 19th century, thanks to the development of scientific physiology, cellular pathology, and bacteri…

1. Concept and terms The German term for accident,  Unfall (Middle High German unval, ungeval; compare chance; French  accident) means an unforeseen event or misadventure, generally relating to personal injury or material damage, and also military defeats as well as the special life and death circumstances of “famous men,” as for instance in the 1570 German translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s De casibus virorum illustrium (orig. 1356-1373) by Hieronymus Ziegler as merckliche und erschröckliche unfahl . verderben unnd Sterben großmächtiger Kayser (“noteworthy and shockin…

1. Concept and scopeThe term “quack,” short for “quacksalver” (Early New Dutch quacksalver, German  Quacksalber, composed of quacken, “to cry,” “to quack [like a duck],” and  salver/Salber, from the OHG salbari, “physician,” or Latin  salvare, “to heal”; French charlatan, Italian  ciarlatano), generally referred to someone pretending to be a healer and practicing without authority, or sometimes to certified healers who advertised their skills or remedies stridently (Latin circumforaneus, “around the marketplace”) [2]. First attested in English in the 1630s, Quacksalber i…

1. DefinitionIn the first centuries of the early modern period, surgery (German Wundarznei) was the manual or operative treatment of illness, in the narrower sense the treatment of wounds. The German word is attested in the 14th century (MHG  wunt-arzâtîe; also  wundartzat, wontarzte). The Strasbourg guild laws of 1461 speak of all “artzote und artzotinne, wundeartzot, scherer und bader” (“male and female doctors, surgeons, barbers, and barber surgeons” [1]. From the late Middle Ages on, synonyms included German  Chirurgie and  chirurgus (from Latin  chirurgia, Greek  chei…

1. Ramazzini and his precursors Early modern occupational medicine began with the seminal treatise of the Italian physician Bernardino Ramazzini,  De morbis artificium diatriba (Modena 1700; “Investigation of the Diseases of Artisans and Craftsmen”), clearly comparable in its significance for early industrial hygiene to Morgagni’s De sedibus et causis morborum (Bologna 1761; “On the Seats and Causes of Diseases”) for pathological anatomy. In it Ramazzini described in details the various illnesses of the most important occupational groups of…

1. BegriffDer Begriff U. (franz. vermine, engl. vermin) ist seit dem 12. Jh. bezeugt, wobei sich das ahdt. Stammwort zebar zu nhdt. ziefer (»Tier«) wandelte. Möglicherweise bezeichnete der Stamm im engeren Sinne das Opfertier, sodass das doppelte Peiorativ-Präfix un- und ge- auf nicht zur Opferung geeignete Tiere verweisen dürfte. Synonyme waren u. a. »Geschmeiß« (von mhdt. smeiszen und smîszen; mlat. cacare, »mit Kot beschmutzen«), das Martin Luther auch antijüd. sinnbildlich verwendete (»die Jüden mit jrem geschmeis und lere«; s. u. 5.) oder »Gezüchte«, das seit Konrad von …

1. DefinitionDer Terminus M. geht auf die von der Annales-Schule beeinflusste franz. Medizingeschichtsschreibung zurück [4]. Erstmals wurde der Begriff von dem franz. Historiker Jean-Pierre Goubert definiert [9. 170]. Er verstand unter M. einen Vorgang von langer Dauer, der in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jh.s einsetzte und in dessen Verlauf es den Ärzten gelang, ihr mediz. Angebot mit Hilfe des Staates breiten Bevölkerungs-Schichten zu oktroyieren. Es handelt sich also um einen Prozess der Erweiterung des mediz. Marktes, bei dem eine Berufsgruppe…

1. Begriff und Lehre 1.1. AllgemeinP. bezeichnet zum einen die naturkundliche, hermetisch-chemische, mediz., philosophische und theologische Lehre des Arztes und Naturforschers Theophrast von Hohenheim (genannt Paracelsus, 1493–1541) [2], zum anderen deren Rezeption durch eine fachlich heterogene Autorengruppe vom Ende des 16. bis ins frühe 18. Jh. (s. u. 2. und 3.) – überwiegend alchemisch orientierte Ärzte und Anhänger des häretischen Protestantismus, die Paracelsus mythisierend als »neuen Hippokrates« oder als Elias artista überhöhten. Ihre Lehre wurde von de…

1. WortgeschichteDas Wort O. (von griech. órganon/lat. organum, »Werkzeug«, »Musikinstrument«) erscheint in lat. Form erstmals in Texten des HochMA. Bis zur zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jh.s sind allerdings nur zwei Nachweise des Ausdrucks bekannt, der eine aus dem 11. Jh. in alchemistischem, der andere aus dem 12. Jh. in kirchenmusikal. Kontext [7. 320]. Als Ableitung von »organisch« und »Organ«, die schon seit der Antike zur Bezeichnung der lebendigen gegliederten Körper und ihrer Teile dienten, rückte der Ausdruck O. seit Ende des 17. Jh.s in den Kontext der sich…

1. Medizin 1.1. Blut in der HumoralpathologieUnter B. wurde bis ins frühe 18. Jh. der feuchte, wohltemperierte »Safft« verstanden, der »sich in den B.-Adern aufhält, und nach [der Ärzte] Meynung aus vier besondern Feuchtigkeiten, nemlich Schleim, gelber und schwarzer Galle und dem eigentlich sogenanntem B.« bestehe [1. 207]. Die Säfte mit den ihnen eigenen Qualitäten (Blut: warm, feucht; gelbe Galle: warm, trocken; Phlegma/Schleim: kalt, feucht; schwarze Galle: kalt, trocken) entstehen aus Sicht der Humoralpathologie durch Kochung (lat. coctio) aus der Nahrung und sind …