Search

The movement of a pendulum is often used as a metaphor to represent the history of twentieth century American psychiatry. On this view, American psychiatry evolved by swinging back and forth between two schools of thought in constant competition: somatic accounts of mental illness and psychodynamic ones. I argue that this narrative partly misrepresents the actual development of American psychiatry. I suggest that there were some important exchanges of ideas and practices in the transition from German biological approaches to American psychodynamic approaches. In particular, two kinds of pragmatism played an important role in this transition: Kraepelin's methodological pragmatism, and pragmatic values present in the American psychiatric context, due in part to the influence of William James. From a historical standpoint, I suggest that the metaphor of the pendulum doesn't capture the full complexities of this shift in psychiatry at the turn of the century; from a philosophical standpoint, my discussion brings to light two strands of pragmatism salient to scientific psychiatry., (© 2021. Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)

Purpose: Among brain tumor patients, frailty is associated with poor outcomes. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased frailty in the general population. To date, evidence on changes in frailty among brain tumor patients during the pandemic is lacking. We aimed to compare frailty among brain tumor patients in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic to the pre-pandemic era and to assess potential effects on brain tumor care., Methods: In this retrospective observational study, we compared frailty among brain tumor patients hospitalized during the COVID-19 pandemic in years 2020 through 2022 to pre-pandemic years 2016 through 2019 based on administrative data from a nationwide network of 78 hospitals in Germany. Using the Hospital Frailty Risk Score (HFRS), frailty was categorized as low, intermediate, or high. We examined changes in frailty, patient demographics, the burden of comorbidity, rates of surgery, and mortality rates for different frailty groups during the pandemic and compared them to pre-pandemic levels., Results: Of the 20,005 included hospitalizations for brain tumors, 7979 were during the pandemic (mean age 60.0 years (± 18.4); females: 49.8%), and 12,026 in the pre-pandemic period (mean age: 59.0 years [± 18.4]; females: 49.2%). Average daily admissions decreased from 8.2 (± 5.1) during pre-pandemic years to 7.3 (± 4.5) during the pandemic (p < 0.01). The overall median HFRS decreased from 3.1 (IQR: 0.9-7.3) during the pre-pandemic years to 2.6 (IQR: 0.3-6.8) during the pandemic (p < 0.01). At the same time, the Elixhauser Comorbidity Index (ECI) decreased from 17.0 (± 12.4) to 16.1 (± 12.0; p < 0.01), but to a larger degree among high compared to low frailty cases (by 1.8 vs. 0.3 points; p = 0.04). In the entire cohort, the mean length of stay was significantly shorter in the pandemic period (9.5 days [± 10.7]) compared with pre-pandemic levels (10.2 days [± 11.8]; p < 0.01) with similar differences in the three frailty groups. Rates of brain tumor resection increased from 29.9% in pre-pandemic years to 36.6% during the pandemic (p < 0.001) without differences between frailty levels. Rates of in-hospital mortality did not change during the pandemic (6.1% vs. 6.7%, p = 0.07), and there was no interaction with frailty., Conclusion: Even though our findings are limited in that the HFRS is validated only for patients ≥ 75 years of age, our study among patients of all ages hospitalized for brain tumors in Germany suggests a marked decrease in levels of frailty and in the burden of comorbidities during the COVID-19 pandemic., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Background: Quality of life (QoL) is a widely recognised outcome in residents of long-term care homes. However, little is known about the impact of care satisfaction on QoL. The aim of this study was to assess the association between care satisfaction and QoL in residents of long-term care homes. Additionally, we were able to assess the impact of the Covid-19 contact restrictions on QoL., Methods: We applied a cross-sectional study in N = 40 long-term care homes in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany. Using regression models, we analysed the association between QoL (operationalised through the World Health Organization Quality of Life Assessment-Old Module [WHOQOL-OLD]) and self-rated nursing care satisfaction. The date on which the questionnaire was completed was used to calculate whether the completion was prior the emergence of the Covid-19 contact restrictions. Further potential confounders were included in the analysis., Results: N = 419 residents of long-term care homes participated. Explained variance of QoL was low in our models at 2 to 16%. Self-rated nursing care satisfaction was the strongest predictor of QoL and positively linked to the following subdimensions of QoL: autonomy; past, present and future activities; social participation; intimacy. The Covid-19 contact restrictions were negatively linked to social participation., Conclusion: Nursing care satisfaction was associated with QoL in residents of long-term care homes. Future research should focus on the direction of the association and different aspects of nursing care satisfaction with QoL. Furthermore, we showed the impact of contact restriction during the Covid-19 lockdown on social participation., Trial Registration: WHO UTN: U1111-1196-6611; DRKS-ID: DRKS00012703 (Date of Registration in DRKS: 2017/08/23)., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

This paper presents and analyzes the practice journal of a barber-surgeon in the town of Münster, in Northern Germany, in which he recorded about 950 cases he treated between 1602 and 1614. Based on this source, it examines the clientele and the fees of a German barber-surgeon in the early seventeenth century, and looks at the injuries and complaints for which patients sought his treatment., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

This paper engages with a little-known controversy between Jakob Stuchlik and Walter Slaje on the involvement of Erich Frauwallner, the renowned scholar of Indian philosophy (1898-1974), with NS institutions. It sheds new light on this controversy and highlights the Aryan-supremacist ideology that is reflected in Frauwallner's division of the history of Indian philosophy into an Aryan and non-Aryan period. On the whole, the paper sides with Stuchlik and exposes Slaje's attempt to whitewash Frauwallner and certain aspects of his work, despite his adoption of NS ideology and involvement with NS institutions such as the Gestapo and SA. Moreover, the paper dwells on Frauwallner's adherence to antisemitism and Aryan-supremacist ideology even after the WWII and as late as the 1960s., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

The recent discovery of a manuscript has allowed historians to understand the medical routine in a hospital known as the Schneidhaus in Augsburg between the sixteenth and nineteenth century. The context of the manuscript shows that at this institution, non-academic specialists, generally members of the guild of barber-surgeons and barbers, routinely performed surgical cures of intestinal hernia, scrotal swellings, and vesical calculus. The Schneidhaus exclusively admitted patients applying for such specialised treatments and offered no other services. Such a degree of specialisation within medical establishments seems to have only existed in the Holy Roman Empire at this institution founded by the Fugger family in Augsburg. We propose that the Schneidhaus was either itself a model hospital or adopted a model from another site in Europe. In this paper, we investigate the connections of the Schneidhaus to the practice of surgeons in both Italy and Spain. In Italy, a momentous new technique for identifying and removing vesical calculi was first published in 1522. Although surgical treatment was established in Italian hospitals, they tended not to specialise in such surgical treatment exclusively. Moreover, at the time of the hospital's foundation, the Fugger shifted their economic and social focus from Venice to the Iberian Peninsula. In Spain, research in the history of medicine is complicated by outdated notions about specialised surgery, not unlike those that were recently still current regarding the Holy Roman Empire. We attempt to disprove these notions and use the exemplary textbook of one academic physician, Francisco Díaz, to approach specialized surgical practice in sixteenth-century Spain. In his work, Díaz describes the new Italian surgical method in detail and recognizes the importance of craftsman surgeons to both its development and application. However, he also argues for an expanded role for academic physicians as supervisors of craftsman surgeons' work. All this is suggestive of a greater network of surgical professionals within which both the methods of the craft and its organisational structures were transported. As such, the Schneidhaus can be seen as a node that embodied the institutionalization of surgical practice as a European phenomenon. Further research is necessary, and we propose how this might be carried out to reveal these historical phenomena in their full complexity., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)

Patient history has enriched medical history since about the 1980s. But there are still research gaps in certain periods and themes, especially in topics related to the medical history of West Germany. This paper deals with the efforts of patients, lay persons, and medical advisors (diabetologists) to enable diabetics to secure employment as civil servants (Verbeamtung). Attention will be payed to the fact that this success relied on the activities of mediators, who translated and conveyed the patients' interests to society at large. This victory was concordant with similar initiatives in other fields of the diabetic life, including sexuality and lifestyle management. Therefore, efforts to achieve civil servant employment for diabetic patients were constitutive of a broader initiative that changed the image of the disease and promoted the integration of diabetic patients into West German society., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

This paper examines the institutional and social dimensions of cooperation in the Alliance of Science Organisations, the central corporatist stakeholder in German science policy, in the 1970s and 1980s, which were a crucial period for this committee. In doing so, this essay mainly focuses on the way science organizations interact with each other, as well as with national politics. The Federal Ministry of Research invited the Alliance to regular meetings and thereby fostered its involvement into political decision-making processes. Consequently, the question of who belonged to the Alliance came into the focus of different players. Although the members of the Alliance themselves decided on the composition of their committee, they were not able to completely insulate themselves from external demands. Including new members into the Alliance had a destabilizing effect on the carefully balanced distribution of power within this committee, as will be shown through the case study on the admission of the Association of the Major Research Centers (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Großforschungseinrichtungen, AGF) in 1976. In order to restabilize the situation, the members of the Alliance tried to exclude the AGF from certain issues. At the same time, the AGF itself was keen on being regarded as an equal partner and thus strove for its inclusion. This complex interplay of cooperative and competitive actions finally resulted in the institutionalization of the Alliance., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

This exploratory study sought to test the relationship among race, self-rated health (SRH), and colorblindness, conceptualized as the belief that race/ethnicity should not and does not matter. Independently, SRH, a multidimensional concept entailing physical and psychological health and one's affiliation in an ethnic/racial group, may contribute to racial attitudes. However, little is known about how SRH and racial/ethnic identity in combination may affect colorblind racial attitudes. It was thus hypothesized that SRH would moderate the relationship between race/ethnicity and colorblind racial attitudes. The research sample consisted of 136 autochthonous adults and "individuals with migration backgrounds" residing in Bavaria (Germany), who were divided by self-identified race (whites, n = 85; non-whites, n = 51). The results show that SRH moderates the relationship between race and racial colorblindness. More specifically, it was found that the greater the SRH of the white participants, the less they embraced a colorblind ideology. Conversely, the greater the SRH of the non-white participants, the greater their colorblind racial attitudes. These results suggest that stronger SRH may reduce colorblindness among whites and intensify it among non-whites. The implications of the obtained results may be useful in addressing how surmount barriers to data collection, measurements, and research related to racial and ethnic health disparities in "colorblind" Germany may contribute to health inequalities. Thus, this paper's contribution lies in tracking such disparities to aid their reduction or elimination., (© 2020. W. Montague Cobb-NMA Health Institute.)

As cases of COVID-19 continue to rise, some countries, including the US, Chile, and Germany, have considered issuing "immunity passports." This possibility has raised concerns and debate regarding their potential social, political and economic ramifications, especially for marginalized communities. This paper contributes to that debate by exposing that ways in which immunoprivilege already exists and operates within our present system of structural inequalities.

In early German ecology, the key concept used to refer to a synecological unit was Biozönose (biocoenosis). Taken together with the concept of the Biotop (biotope), it was also understood as an integrated higher-order unit of life, sometimes called a "Holozön" (holocoen). These units were often perceived as having properties similar to those of individual organisms, and they informed the mainstream of German ecology until at least the late 1960s. Here I ask how "organismic" these concepts really were and what conceptual problems they entailed. To do so, I focus on some almost forgotten dissident positions, especially those of (German-born) Friedrich Simon Bodenheimer and Fritz Peus, which I contrast with the mainstream German ecology of the time. In a radical paper published in 1954 that postulated the "dissolution of the concepts of biocoenosis and biotope", Peus in particular elicited a forceful response from many prominent German ecologists. An analysis of the ensuing debate, including especially a colloquium held in 1959 that was partly inspired by Peus' paper, is helpful for sifting the various arguments proffered with respect to a quasi-organismic perception of the biocoenosis in German speaking ecology. Although German mainstream ecologists rejected the notion of the biocoenosis as a superorganism, ontological holism was quite common among them. Additionally, the mainstream concept of the biocoenosis was plagued by several methodological problems and much conceptual confusion, to which the "dissidents" rightly pointed. Some of these problems are still pertinent today, e.g. in connection with more modern concepts such as "ecosystem".

This paper is part of Forum COVID-19: Perspectives in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In the current COVID 19 pandemic, the importance of professional nursing is widely recognized. In German-speaking and international research, the history of nursing during pandemics and epidemics is largely unwritten. This paper gives an overview of questions and results in this research area and discusses the potential of a pandemic nursing history.

In this paper, I investigate the variety and richness of the taxonomical practices between the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. During these decades, zoologists and paleontologists came up with different quantitative practices in order to classify their data in line with the new biological principles introduced by Charles Darwin. Specifically, I will investigate Florentino Ameghino's mathematization of mammalian dentition and the quantitative practices and visualizations of several German-speaking paleontologists at the beginning of the twentieth century. In so doing, this paper will call attention to the visual and quantitative language of early twentieth-century systematics. My analysis will therefore contribute to a prehistory of the statistical frame of mind in biology, a study which has yet to be written in full. Second, my work highlights the productive intertwinement between biological practices and philosophical frameworks at the turn of the nineteenth century. Deeply rooted in Kantian bio-philosophy, several biologists sought to find rules in order to apply ordering principles to chaotic taxonomic information. This implies the necessity to investigate the neglected role of Kantian and Romantic bio-philosophy in the unfolding of twentieth-century biology.

Dominant forms of contemporary big-data based digital citizen science do not question the institutional divide between qualified experts and lay-persons. In our paper, we turn to the historical case of a large-scale amateur project on biogeographical birdwatching in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to show that networked amateur research (that produces a large set of data) can operate in a more autonomous mode. This mode depends on certain cultural values, the constitution of specific knowledge objects, and the design of self-governed infrastructures. We conclude by arguing that the contemporary quest for autonomous citizen science is part of a broader discourse on the autonomy of scientific research in general. Just as the actors in our historical case positioned themselves against the elitism of gentlemen scientists, avant-garde groups of the twenty first century like biohackers and civic tech enthusiasts position themselves against the system of professional science-while "digital citizen science" remains to oscillate between claims for autonomy and realities of heteronomy, constantly reaffirming the classic lay-expert divide.

This paper seeks to characterize how the study of nutrition processes contributed to revisit the problem of vital organization in the late eighteenth century. It argues that focusing on nutrition leads to reformulate the problem of the relation between life and organization in terms of processes, rather than static or given structures. This nutrition-centered approach to life amounts to acknowledge the specific strategic role nutrition played in the development of a materialist approach to the generation of vital organization. The paper proposes a clarification of the multiple meanings of the concept of organization in the context of Enlightenment physiology and nascent biology, before focusing on the century long analogy between nutrition and generation. It shows how, by contrasting different uses of this analogy, nutrition was employed as a key vital phenomenon in the development of epigenetic theories of generation, i.e. how a nutritive modeling of generation was used in the undermining of preformationism. To this purpose I contrast two seemingly opposite theories of generation, Buffon's and Bonnet's, and show that despite the obvious metaphysical discontent, their views of generation share a common mechanical conceptual frame in which nutrition is conflated with growth and repair. I then turn to the role nutrition played in the epigenetic conception of generation in C. F. Wolff's embryology and analyze this rival understanding of nutrition as an organizing process.

The history of twentieth-century life sciences is not exactly a new topic. However, in view of the increasingly rapid development of the life sciences themselves over the past decades, some of the well-established narratives are worth revisiting. Taking stock of where we stand on these issues was the aim of a conference in 2015, entitled "Perspectives for the History of Life Sciences" (Munich, Oct 30-Nov 1, 2015). The papers in this topical collection are based on work presented and discussed at and around this meeting. Just as the conference, the collection aims at exploring fields in the history of life sciences that appear understudied, sources that have been overlooked, and novel ways of engaging with this material. The papers convened in this collection may not be representative of the field as a whole; but we feel that they do indicate some elements that have received emphasis in recent years, and may become more central in the years to come, such as the history of previously neglected contexts and domains of the life sciences, the question of continuity and change on the level of practices, the history of complexity and diversity in twentieth-century life sciences and the reconsideration of the relationship between history and philosophy of life sciences.

This paper examines medical scientists' accounts of their rediscoveries and reassessments of old materials. It looks at how historical patient files and brain samples of the first cases of Alzheimer's disease became reused as scientific objects of inquiry in the 1990s, when a genetic neuropathologist from Munich and a psychiatrist from Frankfurt lead searches for left-overs of Alzheimer's 'founder cases' from the 1900s. How and why did these researchers use historical methods, materials and narratives, and why did the biomedical community cherish their findings as valuable scientific facts about Alzheimer's disease? The paper approaches these questions by analysing how researchers conceptualised 'history' while backtracking and reassessing clinical and histological materials from the past. It elucidates six ways of conceptualising history as a biomedical matter: (1) scientific assessments of the past, i.e. natural scientific understandings of 'historical facts'; (2) history in biomedicine, e.g. uses of old histological collections in present day brain banks; (3) provenance research, e.g. applying historical methods to ensure the authenticity of brain samples; (4) technical biomedical history, e.g. reproducing original staining techniques to identify how old histological slides were made; (5) founding traditions, i.e. references to historical objects and persons within founding stories of scientific communities; and (6) priority debates, e.g. evaluating the role particular persons played in the discovery of a disease such as Alzheimer's. Against this background, the paper concludes with how the various ways of using and understanding 'history' were put forward to re-present historic cases as 'proto-types' for studying Alzheimer's disease in the present.

In recent years a certain emphasis has been put by some scholars on Leibniz's concern about empirical sciences and the relations between such concern and the development of his mature metaphysical system. In this paper I focus on Leibniz's interest for the microscope and the astonishing discoveries that such instrument made possible in the field of the life sciences during the last part of the Seventeenth century. The observation of physical bodies carried out by the "magnifying glasses" revealed a matter swarming everywhere with life and activity, contrary to the cartesian and atomistic view of matter as something sterile and passive. Moreover, the discovery of uncountable complete "animalcula" living in the smallest drop of water provided evidence for the idea of the preformation of every organism. During his lifetime, Leibniz was extremely watchful about the new microscopical discoveries and came into contact with some of the major "observers" of his time, such as Hooke, Leeuwenhoek, Swammerdam and Malpighi. Relying both on some passages in Leibniz's texts and on recent critical studies, I will argue that important aspects of his metaphysics have been strongly affected by the empirical observation of the "invisible world" which the microscope made possible. In the last part of the paper I show how the concept of "preformation", originally drawn from the context of the life sciences, comes to play in Leibniz's philosophy a very general role, going far beyond the scope of biology and shaping important aspects of his overall philosophical system.

In this paper, I argue that Kant adopted, throughout his career, a position that is much more akin to classical accounts of epigenesis, although he does reject the more radical forms of epigenesis proposed in his own time, and does make use of preformationist sounding terms. I argue that this is because Kant (1) thinks of what is pre-formed as a species, not an individual or a part of an individual; (2) has no qualm with the idea of a specific, teleological principle or force underlying generation, and conceives of germs and predispositions as specific constraints on such a principle or force. Neither of these conceptions of what is "preformed", I argue, is in strict opposition to classical epigenesis. I further suggest that Kant's lingering use of preformationist terminology is due to (1) his belief that this is required to account for the specificity of the specific generative force; (2) his resistance towards the unrestricted plasticity of the generative force in radical epigenesis, which violates species-fixism; and (3) his insistence on the internal, organic basis of developmental plasticity and variation within species. I conclude by suggesting that this terminological and interpretative peculiarity is partly due to a larger shift in the natural philosophical concerns surrounding the debate on epigenesis and preformation. Specifically, it is a sign that the original reasons for resisting epigenesis, namely its use of specific, teleological principles and its commitment to the natural production of biological structure, became less of a concern, whereas unrestricted plasticity and its undermining of fixism became a real issue, thereby also becoming the focal point of the debate.

Historians have often described embryology and concepts of development in the period around 1800 in terms of "temporalization" or "dynamization". This paper, in contrast, argues that a central epistemological category in the period was "rhythm", which played a major role in the establishment of the emerging discipline of biology. I show that Caspar Friedrich Wolff's epigenetic theory of development was based on a rhythmical notion, namely the hypothesis that organic development occurs as a series of ordered rhythmical repetitions and variations. Presenting Christian Heinrich Pander's and Karl Ernst von Baer's theory of germ layers, I argue that Pander and Baer regarded folding as an organizing principle of ontogenesis, and that the principle's explanatory power stems from their understanding of folding as a rhythmical figuration. In a brief discussion of the notion of rhythm in contemporary music theory, I identify an underlying physiological epistemology in the new musical concept of rhythm around 1800. The paper closes with a more general discussion of the relationship between the rhythmic episteme, conceptions of life, and aesthetic theory at the end of the eighteenth century.

A well-established narrative in the history of science has it that the years around 1800 saw the end of a purely descriptive, classificatory and static natural history. The emergence of a temporal understanding of nature and the new developmental-history approach, it is thought, permitted the formation of modern biology. This paper questions that historical narrative by closely analysing the concepts of development, history and time set out in Karl Ernst von Baer's study of the mammalian egg (1827). I show that Baer's research on embryogenesis aimed not simply to explain temporal changes, but to inscribe the formation of new individual organisms into a continuous, unending organic process. I confront Baer's views with other explanations of embryogenesis arising in the 1820s and 1830s, especially those of Jean-Baptiste Dumas and Jean-Louis Prévost and of Theodor Schwann. By highlighting divergences between these scientists, especially as to their view of the role of gender differences in reproduction, I argue that biology evolved not from a homogeneous concept of developmental history but out of various, even opposing, views and research programmes. Thus, the birth of biology did not imply the end of all natural history's thought models.

The seventh section of Gregor Mendel's famous 1866 paper contained a peculiar mathematical model, which predicted the expected ratios between the number of constant and hybrid types, assuming self-pollination continued throughout further generations. This model was significant for Mendel's argumentation and was perceived as inseparable from his entire theory at the time. A close examination of this model reveals that it has several perplexing aspects which have not yet been systematically scrutinized. The paper analyzes those aspects, dispels some common misconceptions regarding the interpretation of the model, and re-evaluates the role of this model for Mendel himself. In light of the resulting analysis, Mendel's position between nineteenth-century hybridist tradition and twentieth-century population genetics is reassessed, and his sophisticated use of mathematics to legitimize his innovative theory is uncovered.

1911 saw the beginning of decisive developments in psychiatric genetic research. During that year, two expert papers dealing with the application of the Mendelian Theory were published in Germany and in the United States. Only a decade after the "rediscovery" of the Mendelian Laws simultaneous efforts were being made to better understand the hereditary transmission process of mental diseases by means of the Mendelian Theory. The results of these efforts were disparate. While in the United States, the Mendelian theory was used to support the polymorphous theory of the hereditary transmission process of mental diseases, by which a common hereditary origin of mental diseases was assumed, the introduction of Mendelism in psychiatry in Germany focused on corroborating Emil Kraepelin's concept of a disease entity. The Mendelian Theory especially helps to underpin the idea of a specific genetic origin of the clinical diseases described by Kraepelin. AS German and North American psychiatric genetics were inspired by diverse disease and genetic concepts, so too was their use of the Mendelian Theory very divergent. Research linked to the use of the Mendelian Theory was both dissimilar and hotly contested. This was due to the fact that it was difficult, if not impossible to identify Mendelian patterns by studying the hereditary transmission profess. As a result, the approach of studying the genetic basis of mental diseases was further developed in Germany.

In September of 1869, while studying sponges off the Norwegian island of Gisoe, Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) discovered a tiny, flagellated ball-shaped organism swimming about in his samples. Appearing first to be the planula larva of an invertebrate marine animal further observation revealed it to be a colony of flagellated cells with a complex life cycle transitioning between multicellular and single-cell stages and several distinct forms of protozoa. Haeckel named it Magosphaera planula (the "magician's ball") and it eventually assumed a central role in his theories of animal evolution, appearing as the modern exemplar of the blastaea stage in his gastraea theory of metazoan evolution. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth it was an object of considerable scientific interest, and yet it was only ever observed by Haeckel himself and then only the once. Eventually it faded altogether from scientific discussion. This paper traces the rise and fall of Magosphaera as an important epistemic object in the theories of Haeckel and other biologists, and an attempt is made to identify what exactly the organism (or organisms!) was that Haeckel observed in the fall of 1869.

This paper shows the formation of the psychological concept of gender from the testing of a new intersex treatment in the 1950s. By analyzing the initial refusal and final success of the new concept and guidelines in the German speaking medical community, it points to the decisive role of treating intersexuals as "experiments of nature" for the clinical research in psychosexual development. This new technology brought the divergent problematizations of "ambiguous sex" in line thus bridging the gap between scientific and clinical approaches and providing the material basis for turning gender into a scientific and practical entity.

While historians of science have demonstrated that in the late eighteenth century the emergence of the human sciences went along with the sexualization and medicalization of women, they paid almost no attention to the development of a medical knowledge on male (in)fertility. This paper argues that in the early twentieth century, the scientific investigation of the male role in reproduction was due to the rise of eugenics and the racial sciences. In order to illustrate this relation, I will discuss how in the context of the Nazi population and racial policy new research outcomes in the field of male (in)fertiliy research were achieved. More generally, I want to show that the transformation of man into a reproductive being and an object of medical knowledge is not only relevant for the history of reproductive medicine, but also for the history of the human sciences in the twentieth century.

Paul Konitzer was one of the outstanding and well-known physicians in the years after the World War II in East-Germany. THe paper describes his professional way as hygienist, social medical, municipal physician and last but not least as health politician in the times of four different political regimes: the imperial era in Germany till 1918, the time of "Weimarer Republic" till 1933, the Nazi dictatorship till 1945 and the early years in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany. The life of Konitzer is a typical example of the fate of a German doctor in the first half of the 20th century. Konitzer was arrested in February 1947 by the Soviet Military Government in Berlin in connection with some political troubles and reproach with a typhus epidemic in a German camp for Russian Prisoners of War in the Nazi era. On April 22nd 1947 he died in prison of Dresden by suicide without condemnation.

This paper compares anti-hookworm campaigns conducted in the early twentieth century in France, Germany, Brazil and West India. The populations that suffer from hookworm are not identical in the North and in the South. In tropical and semi-tropical regions hookworm is mainly found among poor peasants and is related to lack of hygiene, while in temperate climates hookworm was a professional disease of miners, a highly organized professional segment. Nevertheless, major disparities in the pattern of hookworm control did not reflect the North-South divide, but a difference between campaigns. These aimed at the eradication of hookworm infection (Germany and West-India) and at alleviating the effects of this infection on populations (France and Brazil). Maps that represented the prevalence of hookworm mirrored the aims of the sanitary campaign in which they were used: eradication of parasitic worms versus the reduction of the handicap induced by these worms. In public health as well, representing is intervening. And vice versa: patterns of intervention shape representations.

This paper is on dangerous human experimentations with drugs against trypanosimiasis carried out in the former German colonies of German East Africa and Togo. Victory over trypanosomiasis could not be achieved in Berlin because animals were thought to be unsuitable for therapeutic laboratory research in the field of trypanosomiasis. The colonies themselves were necessarily chosen as laboratories and the patients with sleeping sickness became the objects of therapeutical and pharmacological research. The paper first outlines Robert Koch's trypanosomiasis research in the large sleeping sickness laboratory of German East Africa and then focuses on the escalating human experiments on trypanosomiasis in the German Musterkolonie Togo, which must be interpreted as a reaction to the starting signal given by Robert Koch in East Africa.

The present Institute of Medical Physics and Biophysics (former Institute of Radiation Research) was established on September 1st in 1923 by Walter Friedrich (1883-1968). It was after the Institute in Frankfurt A.M. (founded by Friedrich Dessauer in 1921) - the second Institute of its kind in Germany. As a physicist who wrote his dissertation under Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, he did research together with a Gynecologist in Friedburg on problems of radiation therapy and the prevention of radiation injuries. Thus Friedrich became one of the first German Biomedical Physicists and was appointed to a professorship at the university of Berlin and its faculty of medicine. The paper gives a survey of the history of the Institute of Radiation Research in the twenties, in the time of Nazi-rule, the period after the World War II and in the era of GDR until 1990 and up to the present time. The succession of directorship of the Institute and the main research subjects in medical physics and biophysics have been sketched.

Starting from an assessment of how far Robert Koch's bacteriology had developed in the late 1880s this paper attempts to analyse different aspects of the process that led to the foundation of the Berlin Institute for Infectious Diseases in 1891. With the development of his supposed cure against tuberculosis, tuberculin, Koch attempted to give his research a new direction, earn a fortune with the profits and become more independent of Prussian government officials who, up to that point, had had a major influence on his career. In the period following the presentation of the cure in autumn 1890, however, it became clear that tuberculin's value in treatment was at most dubious. Thus, the failure of tuberculin meant that Koch had to drop his own plans and accommodate those of the Prussian Ministry of Culture. As a result he assumed directorship of the newly founded Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin. Even though this was definitely a prestigious position it reaffirmed Koch's dependency on Prussian government officials and was by no means the kind of institution he had aimed for at the outset.

Robert Koch based his claim that specific microorganisms cause particular diseases on laboratory studies. This paper examines how Koch set up a plausible line of argument by using special methods of representing bacteria. One kind of representation consisted in making the bacteria visible; the other mode of representation was based on disease phenomena. Using a range of techniques of isolating and controlling microorganisms, Koch combined these different modes of representation in a way that made his claims convincing. Thus, the microorganism as a specific cause of disease emerged through a chain of repeated processes of selection and representation in the laboratory.

The paper traces the role of German women into the chemistry profession from 1925 to 1945, examining their relative numbers and experience in higher education, in academic and industrial careers as well as in professional organizations such as the Verein Deutscher Chemikerinnen. The paper examines the effect of the 1930s Depression, National Socialism, and World War II on women chemists, considering both general trends as well as the experiences and achievements of several individual women in a variety of situations. Finally, it considers the longterm consequences of these developments, such as the Nazi expulsion of Jewish women, destruction of women's organizations and devaluing of women's achievements, in limiting the recognition and participation of German women chemists after 1945.

The paper traces the entrance of German women into the chemistry profession from the 1890s to 1925, examining how they first overcame social and cultural conservatism to obtain access to opportunities for a chemical education during the later Kaiserreich, then began to seek academic and industrial careers and to establish a professional organization in the face of resistance from the established Verein Deutscher Chemiker. The paper examines the effect of World War I and the advent of the Weimar Republic in completing the process whereby German women achieved a small but significant role in the profession of chemistry, in science as well as industry. Finally, it discusses the considerable limitations on women's full and equal participation that still remained by 1925.

This paper focuses on a prominent figure in medicine, one who had no visible political ambitions in terms of the NS-regime: Ludwig Aschoff (1866-1942), pathologist at the University of Freiburg from 1906 to 1936. The period between 1914 and 1933 is emphasized in order to show the development of his political and scientific ideas, which were intertwined from the beginning: Aschoff admired the Kaiserreich, and in World War I he tried to carry out a socio-political programme in that he examined the constitution of the German Volk by performing autopsies of almost every German soldier who had been killed in action. After 1918 he retained his conservative ideas and his medical programme which meant concentrating mainly on constitutional ideas. Although Aschoff tried to reestablish international cooperation and to support the new Republic, he ultimately did support anti-democratic ideas. This attitude proved to be a handicap with regard to his reaction to National Socialism in 1933: Although he did not become a member of the party and a strong supporter, he welcomed the new regime. Aschoff, without being aware of his role, supported the acceptance of the regime within the medical scientific community. It will be possible to obtain deeper insight into the NS-period by encouraging research on its 'mediators', for example, Ludwig Aschoff.

The existence of an animal soul and problems of animal ethics are often discussed in the German philosophical literature of the 18th century, especially in response to the cartesian theory of the beast machine. The following paper presents firstly a view into the early discussions and doctrines about animal souls (e.g., Winkler, Meier). It unfolds secondly some strategies for the legitimation of the death of animals, including contemporary concepts of soul, mainly under the influence of Leibniz. The third part examines some fundamental concepts of obligations to animals within the discussion of natural rights (e.g., Thomasius, Kant). Finally, examples for the early considerations about animal rights (Dietler, Smith) are presented.

In the 1820s, some years after smallpox vaccination had been introduced by most German states, physicians were faced with a seemingly new disease that they called "false smallpox" or "varioloid". The paper deals with two epidemics of "varioloid" that spread in Würzburg between 1825 and 1829. The reports of eyewitnesses, case histories, and patients records from the Julius Hospital in Würzburg are analysed with respect to the state of vaccination in this region, and in consideration of the personal, practical and scientific interests of the physicians involved. Special points of discussion are Schoenleins concept of epidemic disease, the role of contagionism, and the ambiguity of historical diagnosis.

This paper provides an overview of the development of typhus vaccines between the first and second world wars. It is shown that there was a shift in the classification of the causal Rickettsiae from being classed as bacteria to being conceptualised as a type of virus. This 'paradigm switch' stimulated interest in the possibility of producing an effective medicine.

Gustav Theodor Fechner was one of the outstanding German scientists and thinkers. He is well known as the eminent founder of a new science "psychophysics" - the quantitative study of the relations between physical stimuli and sensations. But it seems that first ideas and first solutions of this new science are not the result of hard experimental work but rather of metaphysical speculations. So we found for the first time the important "Fundamentalformel" in the philosophical book "Zend-Avesta", written by Fechner already in 1851. Therefore this formula may not be the result of his later experimental efforts, put down in writing in the important "Elemente der Psychophysik" (1860). In the present paper it was intended to retrace the so-called "indefinite train of thoughts" (Fechner) that lead him to his strictly mathematical formula.

This paper attempts a first outline of an analysis of the connection between the Kabbalah, the tradition of Jewish mysticism, and medicine in the Romantic age. The physician and natural philosopher Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert (1780-1860), a friend and pupil of the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, is chosen as a representative of the era. The political, institutional, and philosophical background at the beginning of the 19th century is outlined to make intelligible the contemporary disposition for mystical ideas. The historical lines of connection between the Kabbalistic tradition and Romantic medical thought as represented by Schubert are investigated, and examples are given for some correspondences of ideas and topics. The specific combination of these topoi, and a multitude of historical lines of connection, primarily through the work of Schelling and the theologian Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, support the hypothesis that Schubert was indirectly influenced by ideas from the Kabbalah. Finally, the history of the reception of Romantic medicine is sketched, with special regard to those strands that are likely to have incorporated elements from the Jewish mystical tradition.

This paper examines the debate over the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) from an historical perspective. The changing criteria for proving the link between putative pathological agents and diseases are discussed, beginning with Robert Koch's research on anthrax in the late nineteenth century. Various versions of 'Koch's postulates' are analyzed in relation to the necessity and sufficiency arguments of logical reasoning. In addition, alterations to Koch's postulates are delineated, specifically those required by the discovery of rickettsiae and viruses in the early twentieth century and by the immunological testing developed after mid-century to demonstrate the links between elusive viral agents and two diseases, hepatitis B and infectious mononucleosis. From this perspective, an examination of the AIDS debate is constructed. Molecular biologist Peter Duesberg's argument that HIV is not the cause of AIDS is analyzed in light of his contention that a version of Koch's postulates has not been satisfied. Additional research findings through 1990 relating to the etiology of AIDS are also noted.