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1. DefinitionThe term psychiatry (from Greek  psychḗ, “soul,” “mind,” and  iatrós, “physician”) was coined in 1808 as a Greek neologism by Johann Christian Reil, a physician in Halle (originally Psychiaterie [4]; [5]; [12]), in the sense of the art or science of healing the soul or mind. Until well into the 19th century, the term also included a broad spectrum of neurological illnesses such as epilepsy and St. Vitus’ dance ( Huntington’s chorea).The history of psychiatry can be divided into three major periods from its beginnings to the early 20 century [14]; [6]. (1) For the pe…

1. Concept Until the mid-17th century, the concept of health in the early modern period was still dominated by the ancient doctrine of the humors (humoralism and physiology) and dietetics. In the second half of the 17th century, as humoral physiology lost ground, other ideas of health took its place from the 18th to the early 19th centuries, drawing primarily on mechanistic (iatromechanical), animistic, and vitalistic views of human life in health and illness (Animism; Vitalism). Against the backd…

1. Definition The word “tuberculosis” (from the Latin  tuberculum, “protuberance”; - osis, “functional disorder”) first occurs in medical titles of the early 19th century alongside the Greek/Latin phthisis. The more usual terms were “(pulmonary) consumption” in English and  Schwindsucht  (shrinkage sickness) or  Lungenauszehrung (lung consumption) in German [15]: “phthisis heist zu teutsch die schwintsucht und kumpt von einem geschwer oder von einer feulnis der lungen und sie ist ein todtenliche sucht unnd ir ist auch muelich zu helffen” (“Phthisis is called in German  schw…

1. DefinitionHomeopathy is a concept of illness and therapy developed by the German physician Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843) based on the ideas of vitalism, though its therapeutic conclusions differ radically from the notions of illness in vitalism and earlier ideas. According Hahnemann’s theory, the holistic physical phenomenon of illness is a “disorder” of the vital force caused by pathogenic stimuli. The physician encourages the vital force in its resistance not – as in conventional medicine (allopathy) – by means of antagonists ( contraria contrariis; “o…

1. BasicsIatrophysics (from Greek  iatrós, “Arzt”; physis, “inanimate nature”) was a 17th and 18th-century theory and practice of medicine that interpreted all phenomena of health and illness as dependent on the internal physical structure of the body, its external form, and mechanical alterability [5]. With reductionistic simplification, it attempted to apply the findings of the new experimental natural sciences to the realm of life, where everything must also be explicable physically, reconstructible mechanically (iatromechanics), …

1. Definition Anatomical (or Solid) pathology denotes the systematic search for the causes of illness (Greek pathología, i.e. the doctrine of the origin, course and symptoms of diseases) and is based on pathological anatomic changes of specific organs or tissues  (Latin solida, “solid constituents”). It is in opposition to humoral doctrine (Humoralism), which treats the non-fluid morphological substratum of the organism merely as the venue of processes based on humoral physiology.Wolfgang Uwe Eckart 2. Beginnings It was not until the 17th century that medical interest …

1. Introduction Health and illness in the early modern period up to the mid-17th century were essentially understood, both by academics and the general public, in terms of the ancient theory of humors (humoral physiology/pathology, from Latin humores, “fluids”) and dietetics, and this view survived much longer in popular and alternative medicine. Only as the ideas of humoral physiology were superseded in the second half of the 17th century did other concepts of health emerge in their stead. During the 18th and early 19th centuri…

1. Definition The term cholera is found in Hebrew as chaul rah (“fierce sickness”). It is etymologically unclear whether the name of the disease comes from the Greek choládes (“intestines”) and refers to intestinal illness, or from the Greek words for “bile” ( chólos) and "river" ( rhóos) (“river of bile”), relating to the doctrine of the four humors, or whether in reference to profuse diarrhea it is related to  cholédra (“gutter," “drainpipe”). Unlike the cholera nostras that had long been known in Europe (so-called “English cholera” in England;  Gallenruhr or “bile flux” in the …

1. Medieval rootsSince the high Middle Ages, besides independent physicians ( medicus) there were also physicians employed by secular and ecclesiastical princes, monasteries, and urban administrations who served their employers directly. They were given the Latin title  physicus (informed about nature). The distinction, sometimes still vague, between the general medical duties of a  medicus and the special duties of a  physicus (similar to Latin  physica and  medicina for medicine) was probably first clarified in the Old Empire by the medical ordinance …

1. Definition The most infallible and timeless subjective markers and symptoms in general are the sudden, unexpected, and even unnatural perceived increase in temperature in the body, accompanied by sweating, paradoxical-seeming fits of shivering, debility, and, often, aches and pains. Texts on fever from European Antiquity define fever as significant, even when there was no distinguishing criterion in the governing theory of disease of the time to allow for further differentiation.In the 15th and 16th centuries, the conception of fever originating with Hippocrat…

1. Definition Herbals in the early modern period were printed books about plants. These compendia offered detailed descriptions of plants and herbal remedies with explanations of their medical applications. Works often also included animals, animal products, and minerals that were used in medicine.Wolfgang Uwe Eckart 2. Precursors and development in early centuries Ancient botanical works and herbals served as important sources for reference on medical and herbal knowledge until well into the early modern period (Pharmacy). The main authorities w…

1. ConceptScientific medicine denotes the tendency in medicine of the 18th and 19th centuries to take scientific methods and results from physics and chemistry as its basis and to apply them consistently (see Experimental medicine). Associated with this tendency was the intention, at least, to turn away from holistic or purely philosophical concepts of medicine, especially vitalism, and – in Germany – the Romantic natural philosophy of Schelling, and to stop applying them to medical practice.Wolfgang Uwe Eckart 2. Principles From classical antiquity until the 17th ce…

1. Beginnings in LeidenIn the history of European medicine, the clinical school made its first appearance in the late 17th century at the University of Leiden, which played a pioneering role in the birth of clinical medicine, when for the first time ever instruction was given alongside the sickbed (Greek klíne, “bed, couch”). Previously the faculty of medicine (Medicine, faculty of) had limited itself to theoretical instruction; including a hospital in the teaching was not considered.In the first half of the 17th century in Leiden, Otto van Heurne had already sou…

1. DefinitionPain (from Latin  poena via Old French  peine; German  Schmerz from OHG  smerza/ smerzo and MHG  smerze/ smerz; Greek  álgos; Latin  dolor, acerbitas) is a complex sensory perception; as an acute event, it serves as a warning sign and guidepost, but chronic pain has lost this element. An early modern synonym of  Schmerz is Pein (from OHG  pîna and MHG  pîne/ pîn, from Latin  poena, “penance, punishment”; cf. English  pain), usually associated with punishment, torture, torment, and so on (cf. German  peinliche Befragung, “painful inquiry,” i.e. torture). In an…

1. Theories before Harvey From antiquity into the 17th century, people generally believed that the blood circulated centrifugally in the body, according to the canonical theory of the circulation of the blood of the Greco-Roman physician Galen of  Pergamum. Blood was produced by the liver, passed through the vena cava into the right ventricle, and then passed through the cadiac septum into the left ventricle, whence it was distributed throughout  the body; it was finally dissipated at the periphery …

1. The theory and its background Brunonianism, a medical reform movement, was inspired by the Scottish physician John Brown (1736–1788), who considered life a condition aroused and maintained by internal and external stimuli. The fundamental life force, he maintained, was the biological potential for stimulus or excitation. The critical factor determining the sickness or health of the human body must be considered the individual’s excitability (Latin incitabilitas), the readiness and ability of the organism to respond to stimuli. After c. 1700, a variety of …

1. The concept“Irritability,” from Latin  irritabilis, irritabilitas (see also “sensibility” from Latin  sensibilis, sensibilitas), is a medical description of the condition of the body with regard to its ability to respond to (external) sensory stimuli and to react to them. Abnormalities of irritability and sensibility were considered symptomatic of illness.Around 1700, the Cartesian-mechanistic conception of life came in for increased criticism (Mechanism). Although physical-mechanistic reductionism initially held great attraction as an expl…

1. Starting points for early modern anatomy There was certainly no routine prohibition of dissections of human bodies in medieval anatomy. This was not what we might call an autopsia in the modern sense, i.e. in the sense of personal observation and interpretation of the findings of the dissection as actually found, because the self-contained dogma of humoral pathology (doctrine of humours; see also Humoralism) and of the anatomy and physiology associated with this doctrine offered a model of explanation and action that cou…

1. Medieval forms of public healthAttempts to regulate public health date back to the Middle Ages. These included the influence of monasteries in their immediate environments, efforts on the part of the Orders of Knights, rudimentary regulations in cities aimed at improving hygiene, as well as the establishment of special institutions for care of the sick both inside the city walls (hospitals, apothecaries, smallpox foundations) and outside them (leprosariums; see epidemic). The medical regulations o…

1. Medicine Preservative (from Latin  praeservare, “preserve,” “prevent”) was originally a term from the technical language of medicine, which then was borrowed into other areas. German Präservativ in the sense of condom did not become common until the 19th century (see 3. below).Originally, a preservative was understood to be “a medicine that protects against diseases and forestalls them” (means of protection, Latin  remedium mali imminentis, “remedy against an imminent evil”) [2. 94]. In Krünitz, at the end of the 18th century, preservatives were means of s…