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1. Europe 1.1. Renaissance 1.1.1. Medical Humanism and ReformationInfluenced by the Renaissance and Humanism, medicine, as part of the  studia humaniora from the 14th century, also undertook a philological and critical turn towards its ancient foundations and sources [1]; [2] (Humanism, medical). Knowledge in medical science was acquired by reading classical works now purged of real or supposed medieval and Arabic “corruptions” (Hippocrates, Celsus, Galen), but also – already – through the application of the principle of autopsía (“self-seeing,” i.e. direct obser…

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. 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. 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…

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. Definition and basicsWhile the influence of iatroastrology, like that of iatromagic, waned after the 17th century, with the appearance of Paracelsus’ works beginning in 1560, the importance of chemistry as a cornerstone of the new concept of life increased (Paracelsism; Chemical sciences). The central assertion that all life processes are essentially chemical solidified into the intellectual system of iatrochemistry (from Greek  iatrós, “physician,” and neo-Latin ( al) chemía, “chemistry”; also called chemiatry and chymiatry) [7]; [3]; [6].The iatrochemistry of the …

1. Concept and theory 1.1. IntroductionParacelsism on the one hand denotes the theories in natural history, hermetic alchemy/chemistry, medicine, philosophy, and theology of the physician and naturalist Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (called Paracelsus, 1493-1541) [2], and on the other the reception of those theories from the late 16th to early 18th centuries (see below, 2. and 3.) by a group of authors in various disciplines, most of them physicians sympathetic to alchemy and followers of heterodox forms of Protestantism…

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 …

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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…

1. DefinitionThe term medicalization goes back to the French medical historiography of the  Annales school [4]. It was first defined by the French historian Jean-Pierre Goubert [9. 170]. He understood medicalization as a long-term process that began in the second half of the 18th century, in the course of which physicians succeeded in imposing their medical services on broad strata of the population with the help of the state. This was a process that expanded the medical marketplace, in which one professional group wa…

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 …