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1. Concept The term addiction (from the Latin addictus, “dedicated/devoted [to a thing]”) was originally a neutral equivalent to “penchant” or “inclination,” before acquiring its modern sense of inner compulsion in the context of opium in the 19th century. The German equivalent, Sucht (from the Gothic  saühts, etymologically related to the English “sick”) is found in glossaries dating back to around the 8th century, and lexicographic evidence shows it to have two fundamental senses up to the 19th century. Originally, it referred to outward…

1. DefinitionToday physiology (from Greek  phýsis and lógos, “theory of nature,” “nature study”) is a subdiscipline of biology and medicine: the theory of the physical, biochemical, and information-processing functions of living beings [6]. This meaning contrasts with its meaning in Greek antiquity (Greek  physiológos, “expert in natural philosophy”). At the beginning of the early modern period, physiology was understood very broadly in the sense of physical science (William Gilbert’s famous  De magnete [“On the Magnet”; 1600] had the subtitle A New Physiology of …

1. Definition Insanity (Latin insania) is a term in the history of medicine and culture that has undergone dramatic changes in meaning since the end of the Middle Ages [6]. In the early modern period, it covered a broad spectrum of possible pathologies, from depressive melancholia (or melancholy) and low spirits to impaired reason and changes in one’s ability to form judgments - a spectrum that was seen as an entire complex of related illnesses in the 19th century. This shift in meaning took place against the backdrop of…

1. Definition and traditions Dentistry, also called stomatology (from the Greek  stóma, “mouth”), is the branch of medicine dealing with conditions of the oral cavity, including the jaw and teeth, while odontology (Latin odontologia, from Greek  odús, odont-, “tooth”) is concerned with the anatomy and physiology of the vertebrate dental system, including the human [1]; [2]; [9]; [4]; [8]; [7].Medieval dentistry continued to owe much to ancient ideas of dental anatomy and humoral tooth ailments. Extractions were done by the bathkeeper or barber-surgeon (Surgery), if the usual  m…

1. Definition, names, and originSyphilis is a chronic illness that is usually transmitted by sexual intercourse. The modern name goes back to the Italian physician and poet Girolamo Fracastoro and his didactic poem  Syphilidis sive morbi Gallici libri tres (“Three Books on Syphilis or the French Disease”; printed in Verona 1530 and Rome 1531, but probably written in 1521). Independently of references to Fracastoro, this name appeared occasionally in the 18th century but did not prevail until the 19th century. Earlier terms include  morbus Gallicus, mal Frantzos, Spanish pox, ma…

1. IntroductionThe old authorities of university medicine were thrown out in the 17th century, and the era of empirical, experimental medicine began. William Harvey shook the foundations of the ancient doctrine of the humors (Humoralism) with his experimental research and description of the circulation of the blood, and new concepts of medical thought and action - post-Paracelsian iatrochemistry and Cartesian iatrophysics (iatromechanics) - usurped its traditional place. Chemical and mechanist thinking based on experimental findings now gained influence in medicine.W…

An anatomical theater was the site of public anatomical dissection in the early centuries of the modern period. The concept goes back to Alessandro Benedetti (1445-1525), an Italian physician and professor of surgery and anatomy in Padua [5]. He was probably the first to have a separate wooden structure built for anatomical dissections at the University of Padua (ca. 1490). Benedetti’s successful and influental major work,  Anatomice, sive Historia corporis humani (Venice 1502: “Anatomy, or, History of the Human Body”), probably contributed to the spread of the id…

1. ConceptNaturopathy in the strict sense took shape in the German-speaking world in the early 19th century, inspired by Rousseau’s demand “back to nature” (Rousseauism). It vehemently opposed allopathic school medicine, its dangerous drugs, and its excessive use of bleeding and voiding therapies, and promoted instead a turn to natural methods of healing and living. To begin with, the focus was entirely on hydrotherapy (Baths, therapeutic) and vegetarianism. This core was expanded over the course…

1. Definition There were already medical faculties (from the Latin  facultas medica; “medical faculty,” “medical power,” figuratively “medical corporation”) at medieval universities. Within the corporation of the university, they formed an autonomous venue of medical training that awarded medical degrees, that is, essentially the title of licentiate (Latin  licentia doctorandi; “licence to teach”) or a medical doctorate (Latin  doctor medicinae), following the passing of an examination. Later, they also acted as regulatory authorities for medical qual…

1. Concept The Natural History School (German: Naturhistorische Schule) was a tendency of the first half of the 19th century in clinical medicine, distinguished by its strictly empirical procedures and rejecting on principle the use of general theories of illness (e.g. humoralism, vitalism, Broussaiism, Brunonianism, homeopathy, etc.; cf. Therapeutic concepts). It was therefore in conscious opposition to schools of medical thought based on natural philosophy (e.g. that of Schelling). Instead, it advocat…

1. Concept The term gynecology is modern, and reflects the late establishment of the specialty at 19th-century medical faculties (Medicine, faculty of). It first emerged in competition with the older and more general term gynaikeía (Greek “women's matters”), only in the early 18th century in the treatise by the Dresden city physician Martin Schurig,  Gynaecologia (Dresden-Leipzig 1730). The term first appears in the title of a German-language textbook only in 1820, with Carl Gustav Carus’ Lehrbuch der Gynaekologie (“Textbook of Gynecology”). During the 16th and 17th ce…

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 …