Von der Experimentalisierung des Todes zum experimentellen Tod. Anmerkungen zum wissenschaftlichen Sterben, 1800-1945.

This paper deals with the history of scientific dying in the 19th and 20th century by focusing three main incisions: the experimentalization, the implementation, and the instrumentalization of human death in research contexts. With the anti-vitalistic turn in the 1840s the experimentalization of death, which was closely linked to the spectacular "physique amusante" of galvanizing and magnetizing human subjects, was suspended. Scientists were no longer interested in the physiological and spiritual processes of dying and experimental death became parenthetic. This implementation of death in the 19th century was removed by the instrumentalization of scientific dying in the Nazi Concentration Camps. From a sociological perspective, the experimental death in the 'Krankenrevier' was constitutive for the absolute power of the SS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]