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During the last decades an, international discussion has started on how to reduce the gender gap in women's and men's health. Feminist activists and public health scientists in Canada, Latin America (foremost Brazil), the States and South Africa issued a declaration of intention to focus on health impacts caused by gender-related domestic violence. In Europe, and particularly in Germany, the topic as an issue of medical care has lately been given increased attention. In this article, we present activities undertaken to overcome the obstacles in integrating the topic of domestic violence as a medical issue. The successful Brazilian strategy served as a model, in particular for implementing a hot-line for victims of domestic violence within the day-to-day clinical setting. The General Medical Council (Arztekammer), the Women's Medical Association of Lower-Saxony, and the Hanover Medical School founded a working committee "domestic violence" in co-operation with the Ministry of Women, Work and Social Affairs. Between 2002 and 2003, this task force worked out several guidelines and hand-outs for physicians to promote gender-sensitive treatment of abused women, gaining increasing acceptance by the German medical care providers in medical education and in-training services for physicians.

Respiratory interactions with the heart have remained a challenging physiological phenomenon since their discovery more than two hundred and fifty years ago. In the course of translating the seminal publications of Carl Ludwig and his disciple Pavel Petrovich Einbrodt into English, we became aware of some under-appreciated aspects of their work that contain useful insights into the history of the phenomenon now called respiratory arrhythmia. Ludwig observed arrhythmic effects of respiratory movements in experiments on dogs and horses and published his findings in 1847. He subsequently undertook further work on this problem, together with Einbrodt. Already in 1847 Ludwig had mentioned an exciting observation on the possible role of mechanical factors of the respiratory movements on the action of the heart in a dog in whom he had artificially induced bouts of coughing. Einbrodt decided to systematically develop methods to increase or decrease the pressure of the air the animal had to breathe. He observed that this procedure led to a greater or lesser degree of compression or decompression of all the organs in the thoracic cavity without apparently causing harmful consequences during the time of its application. How the mechanical influence of breathing affects cardiac activity during respiratory arrhythmia has been the subject of scientific discussions and controversies over a period of more than 150 years and is still unresolved. Recent publications suggest that cardiac mechano-electrical coupling plays an important role in the emergence of cardio-respiratory interdependence.

Johannes Müller was the founder of the first school of physiology in Germany. His anatomical, morphological and physiological research as well as his epistemological view of scientific medicine opened the way to a deeper understanding of the structure and the function of the organism. With important discoveries like the law of sense energy, the reflex movement and the definition of different organic stimuli, he enriched the knowledge of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and sensory physiology and smoothed the way to an experimental physiology. All his famous students like Hermann von Helmholtz, Emil Du Bois-Reymond, Ernst Brücke, Jakob Henle, Robert Remak, Rudolf Virchow and Ernst Haeckel solved many crucial research problems, which Müller identified and pointed out to them as open questions, due to the insufficient methods of investigation. Müller's research method, epistemological view of biological sciences, and his open-minded personal style encouraged the development of new methods adapted to particular problems.

Um die Bedeutung von Geschlecht in der medizinischen Ausbildung zu untersuchen und Verfahren zu ermitteln, die schrittweise die Gender-Perspektive von den Gesundheitswissenschaften wie den Gender Studies als interdisziplinares Programm in die medizinische Lehre transferieren, wurde an der Medizinischen Hochschule Hannover, Abteilung Geschichte, Ethik und Philosophie der Medizin, in Kooperation mit der Universitat Bristol, School for Policy Studies, ein zweijahriges von der EU finanziertes Forschungsprojekt zwischen 2001 und 2003 durchgefuhrt. Die Studie zeigte, dass die Kategorie Geschlecht in der europaischen universitaren Ausbildung von MedizinerInnen erst allmahlich Einzug halt. Dabei sind die Fragestellungen vorwiegend auf biologische Geschlechterdifferenzen der PatientInnen bezogen, wahrend die Geschlechterforschung sich auch auf das Geschlechterverhaltnis im Beruf, der Interaktion und Kommunikation, Fuhrungsstile etc. bezieht. Durch das Aufgreifen dieses Zugangs konnen neue Einsichten uber die Beziehung zwischen ArztInnen und PatientInnen, aber auch von Lehrenden und Lernenden gewonnen werden.