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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…

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. Definition Anatomical (or Solid) pathology denotes the systematic search for the causes of illness (Greek pathología, i.e. the doctrine of the or…

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. 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. Natural philosophy 1.1. Distinction from humanDirectly or indirectly, the concept of the animal was frequently contrasted with that of the human in the early modern period …

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. Medicine …

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. 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 19t…

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 humora…

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, mal de Naples, venereal disease , Lues venera, Lustseuche, and Wollustseuche…

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 …

1. TerminologyThe term vermin (French  vermine, German  Ungeziefer) is attested since approximately 1300. The German term goes back to the 12th century, as the OHG root word  zebar became modern German  ziefer (animal). The German root may possibly have meant a sacrificial animal in the narrower sense, so that the double pejorative prefix  un- and  ge- might suggest animals not fit for sacrifice. Synonyms included  Geschmeiß (from MHG  smeiszen and  smîszen; modern Latin  cacare, “smear with dung”), which Martin Luther used figuratively in an anti-Jewish sense ( …

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 of the 1…

1. Definition There were already medical faculties (from the Latin  facultas m…

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 advocated rigorous research and the systematization of nosology by the establishment of a structured system of diseases based on their precise description. Its founder was the physician (clinician) Joh…

1. Terminological historyThe word “organism” (from the Greek  órganon/Latin  organum, “implement”, “instrument [musical or surgical]”) first appeared in its Latin form in texts of the high Middle Ages. However, only two attestations of the term exist from before the mid-17th century, one from an alchemical context in the 11th century, the other from the context of church music in the 12th [7. 320]. The term “organism” as a derivative of “organic” and “organ,” both known since Greco-Roman antiquity as terms denoting the living structure of the body and its…

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…