- As a historian of medicine and health care, Frank W. Stahnisch's interests span the development of experimental physi... moreAs a historian of medicine and health care, Frank W. Stahnisch's interests span the development of experimental physiology and laboratory medicine since the late 18th century (particularly France and Germany), the historical relationship between neurology/the neurosciences and the philosophy of the mind (focus on the German-speaking countries and North America), the relationship between clinical neuroscience and public mental health (particularly Canada and the United States), the historical epistemology of the life sciences (18th to 21st centuries), and the longer history of visualization practices in medicine and health care. His current research as a Principle Investigator has been supported by research grants from SSHRC, CIHR, AvH, NSHRF, AMS, and AHRF, while several of his books have also been supported through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Since 2015 he has succeeded Professor Malcolm Macmillan (University of Melbourne, Australia) as Editor-in-Chief of the international "Journal of the History of the Neurosciences" (with Taylor & Francis - Routledge Group).edit
Contemporary medical education is increasingly concerned with such processes as “identity building” and “professionalization,” along with how narrative can help us understand such processes and other learning matters in health care and... more
Contemporary medical education is increasingly concerned with such processes as “identity building” and “professionalization,” along with how narrative can help us understand such processes and other learning matters in health care and medicine. This article examines the means of identity construction through narrative writing and self–reflection, yet not as part and parcel of how the modern medical student and doctor behave in the clinical setting and what they might experience in their career, but as a process rendered meaningful by extreme political circumstances. When considering twentieth–century biomedicine, probably no single migratory event in global history has shaped today’s landscape in medical practice as much as the large–scale forced migration of approximately nine–thousand Jewish and German anti–Nazi scientists, physicians and healthcare researchers from 1930s Europe. Among the physicians were almost six hundred individuals trained in psychiatry and its related fields. They principally fled to the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and other countries of the British Empire. Not much ink has been spilled so far on the actual obstacles, problems, and traumas that émigré physicians experienced when arriving in their new host countries; looking at narrative ego–documents such as letters, diaries, and autobiographies offers valuable insights into the critical psychological resilience process for refugee physicians. This work presents an example of the writings of an émigré neuroscientist through reviewing archival materials eliciting the migratory path and the narrative reports of neuroanatomist Hartwig Kuhlenbeck (1897–1984). Narrative, private–historical sources such as those produced by Kuhlenbeck provide a rare vehicle for intricate comprehension of the influence of history on medicine.
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Kurt Goldstein (1878–1965) gilt als einer der Mitbegründer der theoretischen Neurologie im deutschen Sprachraum während der Weimarer Zeit und räumte dem Begriff der ‚Morphologie‘ in seiner holistischen ‚Gestaltlehre‘ einen zentralen... more
Kurt Goldstein (1878–1965) gilt als einer der Mitbegründer der theoretischen Neurologie im deutschen Sprachraum während der Weimarer Zeit und räumte dem Begriff der ‚Morphologie‘ in seiner holistischen ‚Gestaltlehre‘ einen zentralen philosophischen wie klinischen Stellenwert ein. Obwohl er selbst nur eine kurze akademische Ausbildung in Philosophie erhalten hat und an erster Stelle klinisch-praktisch in Neurologie und Psychiatrie tätig war, so hat er doch in heuristisch produktiver Weise die vorgenannten Begriffe neu geprägt und in seine Lehren vom physiologischen Organismus, von der Humanpathologie und neuronalen Reflexologie wie auch zerebralen Lokalisationskritik eingefügt. Diese Begriffsprägungen fanden in einer Phase historisch-epistemologischer Umbrüche der 1920er Jahre in Deutschland statt, welche die amerikanische Wissenschaftshistorikerin Anne Harrington treffend als „Umbruchzeit“ auf einer „Suche nach Ganzheit“ bezeichnet hat. Seither haben sich mit dem Morphologiebegriff verknüpfte Theoriebildungen in der klinischen Neurologie und der Neurorehabilitation, welche etwa mit Fragen der ‚Lokalisation‘, ‚Adaptation‘ und ,neuronalen Plastizität‘ verbunden sind, bis in unser Jahrzehnt fortgesetzt und auch und gerade auf Goldsteins Phänomenologie und Holismus Bezug genommen.
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It took 83 years after the foundation of the “Canadian Society for the Protection of Science and Learning” in 1938 – which had been founded at the University of Toronto to help the plight of Central European academic émigrés fleeing the... more
It took 83 years after the foundation of the “Canadian Society for the Protection of Science and Learning” in 1938 – which had been founded at the University of Toronto to help the plight of Central European academic émigrés fleeing the new Nazi governments in Germany, Austria, and increasingly their occupied neighbouring countries – that the Canadian academy has finally stepped up again towards a concerted action to aid displaced scholars and researchers. In the late fall of 2021, the Royal Society of Canada has initiated a committee and working group – after several years of deliberations – that seeks help for refugee academics, provides social and legal assistance, and identifies funding sources to help foreign scholars and scientists from the recent conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. The initiative has established an inclusive excellence program by acknowledging exceptional and high-achieving At-Risk and Displaced Academics and Artists (ARDAA) in Canada. And it now aligns with a Universities Canada priority of reducing “barriers to equity, diversity and inclusivity on campus and in society.” The recent shock regarding the inadequate military and civil initiatives in Afghanistan, which led to the re-establishment of the Taliban’s rule and violent crack-downs on school and university systems, on women’s emancipation, and on religious and cultural minorities, may have led to this new swing of attitudes in Canada, with finally joining long-standing international movements and institutions, such as the Council for at-Risk Academics (CARA) in Britain, the Philipp Schwartz Initiative of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, or the Global Young Academies’ At-Risk Scholar Program, which have been actively supporting displaced scholars due to warfare, religious and cultural persecution, or the devastating effects of climate change for a decade or even decades (CARA since 1933!).
In my project for the CIH, I am particularly interested in some antecedents and the historical case example of the vast forced migration of German-speaking émigré scientists and scholars, who had to flee Nazism and Fascism in Europe since the 1930s. Likely no other single migratory event in modern global history has shaped today’s landscape in the biomedical sciences and in academic learning as much as the large-scale forced migration of approximately 3,000 Jewish and oppositional scientists and 6,000 physicians and health care researchers. Among these were approximately 600 psychiatry- and neurology-trained individuals, who were ousted from their positions during the times of Nazism and Fascism in Europe. Yet we do not have a historical or sociological overview perspective on what the scientific impact and wider social implications of this forced migration wave predominantly to the United Kingdom and North America meant.
In my project for the CIH, I am particularly interested in some antecedents and the historical case example of the vast forced migration of German-speaking émigré scientists and scholars, who had to flee Nazism and Fascism in Europe since the 1930s. Likely no other single migratory event in modern global history has shaped today’s landscape in the biomedical sciences and in academic learning as much as the large-scale forced migration of approximately 3,000 Jewish and oppositional scientists and 6,000 physicians and health care researchers. Among these were approximately 600 psychiatry- and neurology-trained individuals, who were ousted from their positions during the times of Nazism and Fascism in Europe. Yet we do not have a historical or sociological overview perspective on what the scientific impact and wider social implications of this forced migration wave predominantly to the United Kingdom and North America meant.
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This article investigates the scientific performance and impact of Jewish and politically oppositional émigré German-speaking neurophysiologists from Nazi-occupied Europe since the 1930s. The massive loss of nearly 30% of all academic... more
This article investigates the scientific performance and impact of Jewish and politically oppositional émigré German-speaking neurophysiologists from Nazi-occupied Europe since the 1930s. The massive loss of nearly 30% of all academic psychiatrists and neurologists in Germany between 1933 and 1945 also shattered the basis of German-speaking neuroscientific research. A focus will be laid here on the contingency of situated knowledge economies in Central Europe, the UK and North America, as well as their roles in the formation of international cultures of scientific excellence in the forced migration process. While examining excellent émigré laboratory research, the intriguing biographies of three Nobel Prize-winning neurophysiologists-Otto Loewi (1873-1961; from Germany/Austria to the USA), Bernard Katz (1911-2003; from Germany to the UK) and Eric Kandel (b. 1929; from Austria to the USA)-can tell us considerably more about the appraisal of medico-scientific knowledge through an epistemic lens representing world history along explicit regional knowledge economies. This article examines some of the more intricate scientific practices and professional patterns of determining academic excellence related to situated knowledge communities in the contemporary brain sciences.
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The modern thesis regarding the "structural plastic" properties of the brain, as reactions to injuries, to tissue damage, and to degenerative cell apoptosis, can hardly be seen as expendable in clinical neurology and its allied... more
The modern thesis regarding the "structural plastic" properties of the brain, as reactions to injuries, to tissue damage, and to degenerative cell apoptosis, can hardly be seen as expendable in clinical neurology and its allied disciplines (including internal medicine, psychiatry, neurosurgery, radiology, etc.). It extends for instance to wider research areas of clinical physiology and neuropsychology which almost one hundred years ago had been described as a critically important area for the brain sciences and psychology alike. Yet the mounting evidence concerning the range of structural neuroplastic phenomena beyond the significant early 3 years of childhood has shown that there is a progressive building up and refining of neural circuits in adaptation to the surrounding environment. This review essay explores the history behind multiple biological phenomena that were studied and became theoretically connected with the thesis of brain regeneration from Santiago Ramón y Cajal's pioneering work since the 1890s to the beginning of the American "Decade of the Brain" in the 1990s. It particularly analyzes the neuroanatomical perspectives on the adaptive capacities of the Central Nervous System (CNS) as well as model-like phenomena in the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS), which were seen as displaying major central regenerative processes. Structural plastic phenomena have assumed large implications for the burgeoning field of regenerative or restorative medicine, while they also pose significant epistemological challenges for related experimental and theoretical research endeavors. Hereafter, early historical research precursors are examined, which investigated brain regeneration phenomena in non-vertebrates at the beginning of the 20th century, such as in light microscopic studies and later in electron microscopic findings that substantiated the presence of structural neuroplastic phenomena in higher cortical substrates. Furthermore, experimental physiological research in hippocampal in vivo models of regeneration further confirmed and corroborated clinical physiological views, according to which "structural plasticity" could be interpreted as a positive regenerative CNS response to brain damage and degeneration. Yet the underlying neuroanatomical mechanisms remained to be established and the respective pathway effects were only conveyed through the discovery of neural stem cells in in adult mammalian brains in the early 1990s. Experimental results have since emphasized the genuine existence of adult neurogenesis phenomena in the CNS. The focus in this essay will be laid here on questions of the structure and function of scientific concepts, the development of research schools among biomedical investigators, as well as the impact of new data and phenomena through innovative methodologies and laboratory instruments in the neuroscientific endeavors of the 20th century.
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This article explores the work by Bernard Katz (1911-2003), Stephen W. Kuffler (1913-1980), and John C. Eccles (1903-1997) on the nerve-muscle junction as a milestone in twentieth-century neurophysiology with wider scientific... more
This article explores the work by Bernard Katz (1911-2003), Stephen W. Kuffler (1913-1980), and John C. Eccles (1903-1997) on the nerve-muscle junction as a milestone in twentieth-century neurophysiology with wider scientific implications. The historical question is approached from two perspectives: (a) an investigation of twentieth-century solutions to a longer physiological dispute and (b) an examination of a new kind of laboratory and academic cooperation. From this vantage point, the work pursued in Sydney by Sir John Carew Eccles' team on the neuromuscular junction is particularly valuable, since it contributed a central functional element to modern physiological understanding regarding the function and structure of the human and animal nervous system. The reflex model of neuromuscular action had already been advanced by neuroanatomists such as Georg Prochaska (1749-1820) in Bohemia since the eighteenth century. It became a major component of neurophysiological theories dur...
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Research in biological psychiatry during the first half of the 20(th) century was based upon a wide range of interrelated disciplines, including neurology, neuroanatomy, neuropathology, and experimental biology. The work of... more
Research in biological psychiatry during the first half of the 20(th) century was based upon a wide range of interrelated disciplines, including neurology, neuroanatomy, neuropathology, and experimental biology. The work of German-American psychiatrist and neurologist Lothar B. Kalinowsky (1899-1992) is taken here as an example of how such fields could be combined to produce a highly innovative and multidimensional research program in clinical neuroscience. Kalinowsky functioned exceptionally well in both scientific and clinical cultures despite the marked contextual differences between the Charité in Berlin and his later workplace in New York's Columbia Medical School. The innovative ideas exemplified by Kalinowsky's efforts, however, sometimes amounted to a dubious advantage for émigré clinical neuroscientists: they easily led to incommensurable scientific views, and sometimes even resulted in the marginalization of the innovator from existing research programs.
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Biological psychiatry in the early twentieth century was based on interrelated disciplines, such as neurology and experimental biology. Neuropsychiatrist Franz Josef Kallmann (1897-1965) was a product of this interdisciplinary background... more
Biological psychiatry in the early twentieth century was based on interrelated disciplines, such as neurology and experimental biology. Neuropsychiatrist Franz Josef Kallmann (1897-1965) was a product of this interdisciplinary background who showed an ability to adapt to different scientific contexts, first in the field of neuromorphology in Berlin, and later in New York. Nonetheless, having innovative ideas, as Kallmann did, could be an ambiguous advantage, since they could lead to incommensurable scientific views and marginalization in existing research programs. Kallmann followed his Dr. Med. degree (1919) with training periods at the Charité Medical School in Berlin under psychiatrist Karl Bonhoeffer (1868-1948). Subsequently, he collaborated with Ernst Ruedin (1874-1952), investigating sibling inheritance of schizophrenia and becoming a protagonist of genetic research on psychiatric conditions. In 1936, Kallmann was forced to immigrate to the USA where he published The Genetics...
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Although François Magendie's studies on the functional differentiation of the spinal nerves, on the maintenance of blood pressure, and on the circulation of the cerebrospinal fluid have been... more
Although François Magendie's studies on the functional differentiation of the spinal nerves, on the maintenance of blood pressure, and on the circulation of the cerebrospinal fluid have been sufficiently considered in medical historiography, his physiological research on nutrition, carried out between 1831-1841, has hardly attracted attention. With several series of animal experiments, Magendie tried to answer the question whether a gelatine-based fare would be suitable for feeding the indigent people of Paris. Taking these experimental series as a specific historical example, an approach from sociological systems theory is proposed in order to analyse the relations between Magendie's hunger laboratory, the French Académie des Sciences, food industrialists, and health and military administrators. The historiographical relevance of this approach as well as its methodological limitations are discussed in this article.
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This book will probably be the last edited volume in the series Samuel Thomas Soemmerring Werke (and also of the now complete edition of Soemmerring’s anatomical works [Vom Baue des menschlichen Körpers] in four volumes), a series... more
This book will probably be the last edited volume in the series Samuel Thomas Soemmerring Werke (and also of the now complete edition of Soemmerring’s anatomical works [Vom Baue des menschlichen Körpers] in four volumes), a series initiated by medical historians Gunter Mann (1924–1992) and Werner Friedrich Kümmel (b. 1936) of the Johannes Gutenberg University (Mainz), and Jost Benedum (1937–2003) of Justus Liebig University (Giessen), in conjunction with the Mainz Academy of Science and Literature in Germany; 19 of the 24 planned volumes have appeared since 1990. The collaborating editor and commentator of the reviewed volume, Dr. Reinhard Hildebrand (b. 1943), is an Emeritus Professor of Anatomy and former Director of the Institute of Anatomy at the Wilhelm Westphalian University (Münster). As a contemporary expert in the histological and cytochemical method- ology of neuroanatomy and as a frequent contributor to the Soemmerring research group at the Mainz Academy of Science and Literature, his collaboration has already proved to be highly valuable during the editing of the three previous volumes in this series—“Osteology,” “Ligaments and Musculature,” and “Heart and Blood Vessels”— as well as in the accompanying Soemmerring research publication series, the Soemmerring Forschungen. All of these endeavors have profited greatly from Reinhard Hildebrand’s detailed morphological knowledge, which has significantly assisted “translation” of eighteenth-century anatomical knowledge, as well as its com- parison and alignment with modern medical terminology.
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ABSTRACT Background: Stroke is a common and debilitating disease that is diagnosed many times per day across Canada. However, diagnostic uncertainty is common and represents an important influence on decision-making. Moreover,... more
ABSTRACT Background: Stroke is a common and debilitating disease that is diagnosed many times per day across Canada. However, diagnostic uncertainty is common and represents an important influence on decision-making. Moreover, epidemiological studies suggest that rates of diagnostic error are high. Methods: An online survey containing clinical vignettes and brain-imaging information was distributed to neurologists in Canada and the United States in order to assess the process of diagnostic and treatment decision-making in acute stroke management. We assessed physicians’ self-reported diagnostic certainty, in response to a variety of clinical factors. We intend to obtain a sample of 600 respondents. Results: Results from the first 79 respondents indicate high confidence in the diagnosis of acute stroke (mean certainty = 97.3%) once physicians had been presented with the clinical history, a physical examination vignette, and a CT scan with CT Angiography and CT Perfusion. The clinical history appears to be the most significant contributor to diagnostic certainty. The CT, CTA, and CTP scans increase diagnostic certainty slightly, despite significant rates of error in their interpretation. Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that a patient’s clinical history is the most important element for diagnostic certainty in the diagnosis of acute stroke. Advanced imaging contributes somewhat to diagnostic certainty, although rates of misinterpretation are high. Further research is needed to thoroughly explore physicians’ diagnostic process, in order to maximize diagnostic accuracy and confidence.
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The disciplinary development of the new science of experimental physiology is often associated with the conditions of cultural development and increasingly technical working contexts of the Industrial Age. Following this perspective, the... more
The disciplinary development of the new science of experimental physiology is often associated with the conditions of cultural development and increasingly technical working contexts of the Industrial Age. Following this perspective, the germ cells of 19th century institutes of experimental physiology were particularly found in the metropolises of Paris, Leipzig or Berlin. Only the major cities sat the revolutionary trends and within this general process, the scientific trends were no exceptions - the provincial research universities simply followed the central ones in their normal science endeavours. Due to this interpretation, the development of the scientific community was pre-formatted as the interplay of innovation (the city) and reception (the periphery). Isidor Rosenthal (1836-1915) was born in Labischin (District of Bromberg/Posen) in 1836 and got his medical training in Berlin. Like not many other experimental physiologists, he can be used as a historiographical testing probe, to follow the conditions of knowledge transfer from center to periphery: After his studies at the Friedrich Wilhelms University and the completion of his dissertation in 1859, Rosenthal entered the newly founded Physiological Institute in Berlin as the first Research Associate of Emil DuBois-Reymond (1818-1896). Rosenthal worked here particularly on the problem of "direct and indirect muscle irritation" in frogs. These neurophysiological investigations led to his growing scientific renown. In 1872, Rosenthal became offered a first professorship in physiology at the Friedrich Alexander University in Bavaria, as one of only few Jewish scientists (and even before Wilhelm Wundt, 1832-1920). But his life and work proved not only exceptional because of his scientific achievements, but also due to his deep rootedness in cultural life--both during his time in Berlin and in Erlangen. By applying a comparative and microhistorical approach in this article, the working conditions of this scientific migrant from Berlin are scrutinized as to the changes that took place between the city and regional university.
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For nearly fifteen years, the impact of modern neuroscience has become a central focus of public debate, not just following the Decade of the Brain in the United States. Newly developed options for manipulating the central nervous system... more
For nearly fifteen years, the impact of modern neuroscience has become a central focus of public debate, not just following the Decade of the Brain in the United States. Newly developed options for manipulating the central nervous system (CNS) are not only of primary medical concern but have come to be regarded as extremely questionable in recent bioethical discourse. This article provides an in-depth comparison between modern neuromanipulative approaches from "Deep Brain Stimulation" (DBS) with methods from earlier historical periods. After World War II, electrophysiological stimulation was developed, which changed the functional capacity of the human brain. It is argued that many contemporary debates questioning neuroethical applications are flawed in significant respects: A unique neuroethical position can neither be upheld philosophically nor with regard to consumer-oriented clinical practice. By drawing on individual case examples from the contemporary and recent history of neuroscience, some related problem fields and consequences are mapped out and discussed. They show an increasingly blurred conceptual boundary furnished by the complex relations between clinical research, physiological restitution, and functional enhancement inherent in modern biomedicine.
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ABSTRACT Since the middle of the Nineteenth Century, neurophysiological researchers such as Theodor Fechner (1801–1887), Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), or Maximilian Ruppert Franz von Frey (1852–1932) started to analyze the causes,... more
ABSTRACT Since the middle of the Nineteenth Century, neurophysiological researchers such as Theodor Fechner (1801–1887), Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), or Maximilian Ruppert Franz von Frey (1852–1932) started to analyze the causes, propagation, and perception of “pain” in the nervous system through the systematic use of experimental laboratory investigations. Particularly, Theodor Fechner’s groundbreaking works made the contemporary neurophysiologists aware of the potential inclusion of psychological and subjective perceptions as a respectable object for the experimental study in mid-nineteenth century laboratories and clinical wards. Wilhelm Wundt frequently crossed the intersections between animal and human subject research and opened up many theoretical discussions, which also incorporated pluridisciplinary perspectives. On the research side, Wundt worked with many experimental physiological methods, developed theoretical psychophysiological considerations, and provided a detailed philosophical analysis of the new experimental findings and the subjective accounts of pain perceptions in his test persons – among many other experimental and investigative approaches. While each one of these neurophysiologists’ research programs have been extensively studied in their own right, their mutual contributions to modern pain research and impact on this emerging interdisciplinary field of biomedical, psychophysiological and philosophical studies have so far not sufficiently been analyzed from a historiographical perspective. This even regards their highly sophisticated instruments and apparatuses that they applied to the study of pain, which Maximilian on Frey used further in the medical wards at the Fin de Siècle. These instruments became applied to many patients with acute or chronic pain disorders. In a way, the substantial time lag between early laboratory research and the application of these findings in the medical clinics of the time could also be explained as a process of newly defining the boundaries of the experimental instrumentation by situating the physiological apparatuses and experiments alongside the spectrum from threshold values to normal values. This hence led to the recalibration of the new field of investigations of pain phenomena. Until today, the elements of phenomenological “identification”, “evaluation” and “physical reduction”, which these pioneers had started and importantly put on the scientific map of nineteenth-century medicine and neuroscience, accompany the scientific endeavour of modern pain research.
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ABSTRACT Background: Stroke is a common and debilitating disease that is treated many times per day across Canada. However, epidemiological studies suggest wide variations in the use of tPA for acute stroke, with uncertainty and biases... more
ABSTRACT Background: Stroke is a common and debilitating disease that is treated many times per day across Canada. However, epidemiological studies suggest wide variations in the use of tPA for acute stroke, with uncertainty and biases representing potentially significant influences. Methods: An online survey containing clinical vignettes and brain-imaging information was distributed to neurologists in Canada and the United States in order to assess the process of diagnostic and treatment decision-making in acute stroke management. We assessed physicians’ self-reported likelihood of treatment, in response to a variety of clinical factors. We intend to obtain a sample of 600 respondents. Results: Results from the first 79 respondents indicate a high likelihood of treatment with tPA (mean likelihood = 90.3%) in response to a standardized clinical case depicting a patient with a left MCA branch occlusion and an NIHSS score of 6. The likelihood of treatment was moderate after the patient’s history and examination, and increased with exposure to the CT scan, CT angiogram and CT Perfusion scan. The unenhanced CT scan was reported by almost half of the respondents (41.8%) as the most important element in treatment decision-making. Interpretation of the CTA and CTP demonstrated high rates of error and had mixed impact on treatment. Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that the unenhanced CT scan is the most important element in physicians’ decision-making about the use of tPA in acute stroke. Advanced imaging contributes somewhat to the likelihood of treatment, although rates of misinterpretation are high. Further research into this topic is needed to explore physicians’ treatment decisions, in order to ensure judicious use of tPA and the best possible outcomes for patients.
Metaphors derived from everyday-life and existing technological applications have always played a significant role in the clinical and research practice of neurology. A prominent place has thereby been given to metaphors originating from... more
Metaphors derived from everyday-life and existing technological applications have always played a significant role in the clinical and research practice of neurology. A prominent place has thereby been given to metaphors originating from musicology and in particular the design of musical instruments. The musical notions which are used in neurological handbooks and articles are legion: the 'string chord', the 'harp', the 'clavichord', and the 'well-tempered clavier' are but a few. Drawing on sources from neurological research publications, personal and biographical narratives, and high literature ? spanning the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries ? this chapter outlines various social and epistemological implications that are crucial to the historical use and understanding of musicological metaphors in neurological research and practice.
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Page 1. Frank Stahnisch .,Neurotheologie"- Zur Konjunktur eines aktuellen mythologischen Phanomens im Zeitalter medizintechnologischer Bildgebung Siegfried Bodenmann [Hg.) Mythos - Helden - Symbole Legitimation, Selbst-und... more
Page 1. Frank Stahnisch .,Neurotheologie"- Zur Konjunktur eines aktuellen mythologischen Phanomens im Zeitalter medizintechnologischer Bildgebung Siegfried Bodenmann [Hg.) Mythos - Helden - Symbole Legitimation, Selbst-und Fremdwahrnehmung ...
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Research Interests: Neurology, Histology, Germany, Humans, Male, and 4 moreClinical Sciences, Aged, Photomicrography, and Neurosciences
Already emerging as an original thinker in the field of classical philology and history of medicine, German scholar Ludwig Edelstein became one of many scholars who lost his academic position when the National Socialists came to power in... more
Already emerging as an original thinker in the field of classical philology and history of medicine, German scholar Ludwig Edelstein became one of many scholars who lost his academic position when the National Socialists came to power in early 1933. This paper details his life before and after his difficult transition from Europe to North America, while reviewing the lasting significance of his translation and commentary on the Hippocratic Oath.
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"Creating the Future of Health" is the fascinating story of the first fifty years of the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary. Founded on the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Health Services in 1964 the... more
"Creating the Future of Health" is the fascinating story of the first fifty years of the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary. Founded on the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Health Services in 1964 the Cumming School has, from the very beginning, focused on innovation and excellence in health education. With a pioneering focus on novel, responsive and systems-based approaches, it was one of the first faculties to pilot multi-year training programs in family medicine and remains one of only two three-year medical schools in North America. Drawing on interviews with key players and extensive research into documents and primary material, Creating the Future of Health traces the history of the school through the leadership of its Deans. This is a story of perseverance through fiscal turbulence, sweeping changes to health care and health care education, and changing ideas of what health services are and what they should do. It is a story of triumph, of innovation, and of the tenacious spirit that thrives to this day at the Cumming School of Medicine.
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From 1928 to 1972, the Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act, Canada’s lengthiest eugenic policy, shaped social discourses and medical practice in the province. Sterilization programs—particularly involuntary sterilization programs—were... more
From 1928 to 1972, the Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act, Canada’s lengthiest eugenic policy, shaped social discourses and medical practice in the province. Sterilization programs—particularly involuntary sterilization programs—were responding both nationally and internationally to social anxieties produced by the perceived connection between mental degeneration and heredity. Psychiatry and the Legacies of Eugenics illustrates how the emerging field of psychiatry and its concerns about inheritable conditions was heavily influenced by eugenic thought and contributed to the longevity of sterilization practices in Western Canada.
Using institutional case studies, biographical accounts, and media developments from Western Canada and Europe, contributors trace the impact of eugenics on nursing practices, politics, and social attitudes, while investigating the ways in which eugenics discourses persisted unexpectedly and remained mostly unexamined in psychiatric practice. This volume further extends historical analysis into considerations of contemporary policy and human rights issues through a discussion of disability studies as well as compensation claims for victims of sterilization. In impressive detail, contributors shed new light on the medical and political influences of eugenics on psychiatry at a key moment in the field’s development.
With contributions by Ashley Barlow, W. Mikkel Dack, Diana Mansell, Guel A. Russell, Celeste Tuong Vy Sharpe, Henderikus J. Stam, Douglas Wahlsten, Paul J. Weindling, Robert A. Wilson, Gregor Wolbring, and Marc Workman.
Using institutional case studies, biographical accounts, and media developments from Western Canada and Europe, contributors trace the impact of eugenics on nursing practices, politics, and social attitudes, while investigating the ways in which eugenics discourses persisted unexpectedly and remained mostly unexamined in psychiatric practice. This volume further extends historical analysis into considerations of contemporary policy and human rights issues through a discussion of disability studies as well as compensation claims for victims of sterilization. In impressive detail, contributors shed new light on the medical and political influences of eugenics on psychiatry at a key moment in the field’s development.
With contributions by Ashley Barlow, W. Mikkel Dack, Diana Mansell, Guel A. Russell, Celeste Tuong Vy Sharpe, Henderikus J. Stam, Douglas Wahlsten, Paul J. Weindling, Robert A. Wilson, Gregor Wolbring, and Marc Workman.
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In recent decades, developments in research technologies and therapeutic advances have generated immense public recognition for neuroscience. However, its origins as a field, often linked to partnerships and projects at various... more
In recent decades, developments in research technologies and therapeutic advances have generated immense public recognition for neuroscience. However, its origins as a field, often linked to partnerships and projects at various brain-focused research centres in the United States during the 1960s, can be traced much further back in time.
In A New Field in Mind Frank Stahnisch documents and analyzes the antecedents of the modern neurosciences as an interdisciplinary field. Although postwar American research centres, such as Francis O. Schmitt's Neuroscience Research Program at MIT, brought the modern field to prominence, Stahnisch reveals the pioneering collaborations in the early brain sciences at centres in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in the first half of the twentieth century. One of these, Heinrich Obersteiner's institute in Vienna, began its work in the 1880s. Through case studies and collective biographies, Stahnisch investigates the evolving relationships between disciplines - anatomy, neurology, psychiatry, physiology, serology, and neurosurgery - which created new epistemological and social contexts for brain research. He also shows how changing political conditions in Central Europe affected the development of the neurosciences, ultimately leading to the expulsion of many physicians and researchers under the Nazi regime and their migration to North America.
An in-depth and innovative study, A New Field in Mind tracks the emergence and evolution of neuroscientific research from the late nineteenth century to the postwar period.
In A New Field in Mind Frank Stahnisch documents and analyzes the antecedents of the modern neurosciences as an interdisciplinary field. Although postwar American research centres, such as Francis O. Schmitt's Neuroscience Research Program at MIT, brought the modern field to prominence, Stahnisch reveals the pioneering collaborations in the early brain sciences at centres in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in the first half of the twentieth century. One of these, Heinrich Obersteiner's institute in Vienna, began its work in the 1880s. Through case studies and collective biographies, Stahnisch investigates the evolving relationships between disciplines - anatomy, neurology, psychiatry, physiology, serology, and neurosurgery - which created new epistemological and social contexts for brain research. He also shows how changing political conditions in Central Europe affected the development of the neurosciences, ultimately leading to the expulsion of many physicians and researchers under the Nazi regime and their migration to North America.
An in-depth and innovative study, A New Field in Mind tracks the emergence and evolution of neuroscientific research from the late nineteenth century to the postwar period.
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Bedside and Community is the inside story of fifty years of health care and health research at the University of Calgary. Drawing on the first-person accounts of researchers, administrators, faculty, and students along with archival... more
Bedside and Community is the inside story of fifty years of health care and health research at the University of Calgary. Drawing on the first-person accounts of researchers, administrators, faculty, and students along with archival research, and faculty histories, this collection celebrates the many significant contributions the University of Calgary has made to the health of Albertans.
With contributions from the Cumming School of Medicine, the Faculty of Nursing, Faculty of Kinesiology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Environmental Design, Department of Psychology, and Indigenous Health Initiatives Bedside and Community is a truly collaborative history. Addressing the links between departments, the relationship between the university and the community, and evolving research and teaching methods, this book places the University of Calgary within a wider national context and shows how it has addressed the unique health needs of Southern Alberta.
With a pioneering focus on primary care and commitment to interdisciplinary connections, the University of Calgary has made strides in health research, health education, and community outreach. Bedside and Community tells the story of a tradition of excellence that will light the way to future outreach and discovery.
With contributions from the Cumming School of Medicine, the Faculty of Nursing, Faculty of Kinesiology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Environmental Design, Department of Psychology, and Indigenous Health Initiatives Bedside and Community is a truly collaborative history. Addressing the links between departments, the relationship between the university and the community, and evolving research and teaching methods, this book places the University of Calgary within a wider national context and shows how it has addressed the unique health needs of Southern Alberta.
With a pioneering focus on primary care and commitment to interdisciplinary connections, the University of Calgary has made strides in health research, health education, and community outreach. Bedside and Community tells the story of a tradition of excellence that will light the way to future outreach and discovery.
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The processes of long-term migration of physicians and scholars affect both the academic migrants and their receiving environments in often dramatic ways. On the one side, their encounter confronts two different knowledge traditions and... more
The processes of long-term migration of physicians and scholars affect both the academic migrants and their receiving environments in often dramatic ways. On the one side, their encounter confronts two different knowledge traditions and personal values. On the other side, migrating scientists and academics are also confronted with foreign institutional, political, economic, and cultural frameworks when trying to establish their own ways of professional knowledge and cultural adjustments. The twentieth century has been called the century of war and forced migration: it witnessed two devastating World Wars, which led to an exodus of physicians, scientists, and academics. Nazism and Fascism in the 1930s and 1940s, forced thousands of scientists and physicians away from their home institutions based in Central and Eastern Europe. “Did you ever go half way ...” was a central question that all of them had to align with their personal consciousness, their family bonding, and the relationship to their academic peers. No one could leave without finding their individual answers to this existential question that lay at the bottom of their professional and scientific lives. Following this general theme, the current special issue particularly reflects on the personal stories and institutional narratives of German-speaking scientists and physicians to North America since the 1930s, as a relevant case study from twentieth-century history of medicine and science. By drawing on diaries, questionnaires, institutional histories (including those of the Max Planck Society among others), novels, and personal estates, this special issue as a whole intends to emphasize the impact of forced migration from a North-American perspective by describing the general research topic; showing how the personal lives of many of these individuals were intertwined with their careers and choices of scientific topics, projects, and personal destinies. Moreover, this special issue seeks to explore whether new historiographical approaches can provide a deeper understanding of the impact of European émigré psychiatrists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists on emerging fields of medicine and science, including community and geriatric medicine, developmental neuroscience, and psychiatric traumatology to which the individuals in the respective cohort have strongly contributed in their new host countries.
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The forced migration of neuroscientists, both during and after the Second World War, is of growing interest to international scholars. Of particular interest is how the long-term migration of scientists and physicians has affected both... more
The forced migration of neuroscientists, both during and after the Second World War, is of growing interest to international scholars. Of particular interest is how the long-term migration of scientists and physicians has affected both the academic migrants and their receiving environments. As well as the clash between two different traditions and systems, this migration forced scientists and physicians to confront foreign institutional, political, and cultural frameworks when trying to establish their own ways of knowledge generation, systems of logic, and cultural mentalities. The twentieth century has been called the century of war and forced-migration, since it witnessed two devastating world wars, prompting a massive exodus that included many neuroscientists and psychiatrists. Fascism in Italy and Spain beginning in the 1920s, Nazism in Germany and Austria between the 1930s and 1940s, and the impact of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe all forced more than two thousand researchers with prior education in neurology, psychiatry, and the basic brain research disciplines to leave their scientific and academic home institutions. This edited volume, comprising of eight chapters written by international specialists, reflects on the complex dimensions of intellectual migration in the neurosciences and illustrates them by using relevant case studies, biographies, and historical surveys.
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This volume, “Trading Zones and Boundary Concepts in the History of Medicine,” is based on a recent conference of the same title at the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco... more
This volume, “Trading Zones and Boundary Concepts in the History of Medicine,” is based on a recent conference of the same title at the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (Stahnisch & Porter 2014). The conference, held on September 5th and 6th, 2014, represented the first joint annual Conference of the Western Humanities Alliance as well as the 5th West Coast Symposium in the History of Medicine. Both conferences in the humanities and history of medicine are travelling independently between major research universities in the Western parts of the United States and Canada. The papers given during three sessions of the conference focused on distinct themes, which nevertheless intersected in related philosophical, social, and knowledge-related topics. Distinguished history professor and Australia Research Council Laureate Fellow at the University of Sydney, Warwick Anderson, gave the Chauncey Leake Lecture in the main plenary session of the joint conference. The organizing team, to which also Kathy Jackson (University of California at San Francisco) and Dr. Reginald McGinnis (University of Arizona) belonged, thought that the thematic issue of “boundary concepts” and “trading zones” would constitute an important overlapping field between the humanities in general and medical historiography in particular. Since the past ten years, in fact, an increasing collaboration between scholarship in the humanities and history of medicine can be noted, which testifies to the fruitful synergies between these two fields of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences (Albury 2005).
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Der Aufbau des Organismus ist das Hauptwerk des deutsch-amerikanischen Neurologen und Psychiaters Kurt Goldstein (1878-1965). Erstmals seit 1934 erscheint es nun in einer neuen deutschsprachigen Ausgabe. Im Spannungsfeld von Neurologie,... more
Der Aufbau des Organismus ist das Hauptwerk des deutsch-amerikanischen Neurologen und Psychiaters Kurt Goldstein (1878-1965). Erstmals seit 1934 erscheint es nun in einer neuen deutschsprachigen Ausgabe. Im Spannungsfeld von Neurologie, Psychologie und Philosophie entwarf Kurt Goldstein im niederländischen Exil eine ganzheitliche Theorie des Aufbaus und der Funktion des menschlichen Organismus, die eine völlig neue Sicht auf die menschliche Psyche und die Funktionsweise des Gehirns ermöglichte. Sein Werk zählt nicht nur zu den Klassikern der modernen Neuropsychologie, sondern prägte auch so unterschiedliche Strömungen wie die Phänomenologie in Frankreich (Merleau- Ponty), die humanistische Psychologie in den USA (Maslow, Rogers) und die Kulturhistorische Schule der russischen Psychologie (Wygotski, Luria, Leontjew). In der Nachkriegszeit in Deutschland weitgehend verdrängt und vergessen, wartete dieses Buch lange auf seine Wiederentdeckung. Angesichts der aktuellen Diskussion des Le...
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This book brings together a number of thoughts and observations on the history of experimental physiology, as it has emerged since the late eighteenth century. Previously unused archival material and then unexplored themes are brought... more
This book brings together a number of thoughts and observations on the history of experimental physiology, as it has emerged since the late eighteenth century. Previously unused archival material and then unexplored themes are brought together and further investigated for the first time. These have helped to map the contextual changes which became indicators and sign posts to some major research steps and important modifications in the development of experimental physiology as a discipline – from the brink of its inception during the late 18th century, its steep emergence throughout the middle of the 19th century as well as the dissolution and externalization of various physiological sub-disciplines in the beginning of the 20th century; representing not only experimental physiology’s medical success but also its relative demise which was ironically due to the successful birth of many of its daughter disciplines, such as biochemistry (first: as “physiological chemistry”), immunology, genetics and microbiology, etc. Furthermore, this book contains historical material, ideas and discussions relating to a number of presentations by the author at academic societies and fruitful communication with many groups of students – medical, history, philosophy, media sciences, and biology etc. over the past ten years.
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Ludwik Fleck gilt seit langem als Klassiker der Wissenschaftstheorie und er- lebt derzeit eine Renaissance, die sich durch die verschiedenen Disziplinen zieht. Die neue Studienausgabe trägt dem Rechnung und versammelt be- kannte und... more
Ludwik Fleck gilt seit langem als Klassiker der Wissenschaftstheorie und er- lebt derzeit eine Renaissance, die sich durch die verschiedenen Disziplinen zieht. Die neue Studienausgabe trägt dem Rechnung und versammelt be- kannte und unbekannte Texte Flecks – zum Teil erstmals in deutscher Über- setzung – sowie biographisches Material und Briefe. Dokumentiert wird die ganze Breite von Flecks Denken und Wirken, wodurch nicht zuletzt der po- litische Hintergrund seiner Wissenschaftstheorie und medizinischen Praxis sichtbar wird. Ludwik Fleck (1896-1961) war Mikrobiologe und Wissenschaftstheoretiker. Im Suhrkamp Verlag sind von ihm erschienen: Entstehung und Entwick- lung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache (stw 312) und Erfahrung und Tatsache (stw 404).
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Welcome to the 16th Meeting of the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences at the Rozsa Centre of the University of Calgary and the Banff Centre for the Arts, which will be a very special meeting this year: For the... more
Welcome to the 16th Meeting of the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences at the Rozsa Centre of the University of Calgary and the Banff Centre for the Arts, which will be a very special meeting this year: For the first time, our society has organized a conference together with our sister society, Cheiron. This will be a joint meeting with The International Society for the History of the Behavioral & Social Sciences in the 43rd year of their meeting history. In fact, it is a very great honour and a real delight to have been the ISHN President during the planning phase of this joint conference. In building upon personal friendships and the double memberships of both societies, the joint program committee as well as the local program committee, this promises to be an exciting and intellectually stimulating program for June 16 through to June 23, 2011. We are further delighted to say that the nature of this joint meeting is also reflected in the integrated paper and poster sessions, mutual discussion panels and fascinating keynote and featured lectures which span a very wide range of topics – from will & intelligence, race, brain & mind, gender questions and neurophilosophy to neuroscience and art –, all of which represent the overlapping research areas of both societies. We invite you to explore all of these activities in this program booklet, comprising ca. 130 presentations and contributions to the discussion, as well as the conference website (http://www.ucalgary.ca/ ISHN_Cheiron/). In addition, we enticed a number of local researchers from Calgary and Alberta to write some introductory sections for this program booklet, which can provide you with some good insight into the history of psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience in the Province of Alberta and Western Canada, while also giving a sense of the thriving local research landscape in the ever-growing interdisciplinary field of the neurosciences and behavioural sciences. The development of the outstanding program of this 2011 meeting has only been possible through the incessant work of the joint program committee, the local program committee, the hard work of many enthusiastic volunteers and the gracious financial support of our donors.
We sincerely and wholeheartedly wish to thank all those who have made this intriguing meeting possible. Together with the ISHN Board of Directors, I now wish you all to have seven inspirational and exciting days of this Joint Annual Meeting of ISHN and Cheiron 2011.
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Bildliche Darstellungen nehmen nicht nur in der Didaktik der Augenheilkunde und der ophthalmologischen Forschung, sondern in der Medizin insgesamt einen hohen Stellenwert ein. Vor diesem Hintergrund konzipierten die Herausgeber das... more
Bildliche Darstellungen nehmen nicht nur in der Didaktik der Augenheilkunde und der ophthalmologischen Forschung, sondern in der Medizin insgesamt einen hohen Stellenwert ein. Vor diesem Hintergrund konzipierten die Herausgeber das Editionsprojekt eines der ersten stereoskopischen Atlanten, welcher unter der Leitung des Breslauer Medizinprofessors Albert Neisser sowie unter Beteiligung einer Vielzahl deutschsprachiger Augenärzte zwischen 1895 und 1906 publiziert wurde. Die erstaunlichen 3D-Aufnahmen sind dabei nicht nur von großem Wert für die heutige medizinische Ausbildung. Vielmehr gestatten sie eine Art virtuellen Besuch in den Augenkliniken Deutschlands, Österreichs und der Schweiz zum Fin de Siècle und lassen die Umstände der klinischen Behandlungssituation der damaligen Zeit recht drastisch erfahrbar werden. In dieser Eigenschaft stellen die präsentierten Stereofotografien von Patientinnen und Patienten auch eine interessante medizinhistorische Quelle für den soziokulturellen Kontext des ausgehenden 19. Jahrhunderts dar und ermöglichen Einblicke in Wahrnehmungs- und Umgangsformen zeitgenössischer Ärzte gegenüber ihrer medizinischen Clientèle. Die Betrachtung der Stereofotografien trägt deshalb mit dazu bei, die zeitgenössische Ikonografie der klinischen Abbildung sowie der theoretischen Augenpathologie um 1900 erneut präsent werden zu lassen. Dem wieder abgedruckten Atlas ist eine historische Einleitung vorangestellt, die in relevante Entwicklungsstufen der Fotografiegeschichte sowie der Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte der medizinischen Abbildung einführt. Zugleich wird der medizinhistorische Kontext im Erscheinungszeitraum des Atlasses beschrieben, und die beteiligten Autoren finden eine individuelle biografische Einordnung. Die Herausgeber Frank Stahnisch, wiss. Ass. am Lehrstuhl für Geschichte der Medizin (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg). Antonio Bergua, Oberarzt in der Augenklinik mit Poliklinik (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg). Bei K&N als Mithrsg. bereits: "Santiago Ramón y Cajal: Die Rache des Professors Max von Forschung" (K&N 1997). Ulrich Schönherr, Vorstand der Augenabteilung des Konventhospitals in Linz (A), apl. Professor (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg).
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Die Trias Medizin, Geschichte und Geschlecht steckt ein aktuelles Feld kulturwissenschaftlicher Forschung ab. Die Autorinnen und Autoren dieses Sammelbandes prasentieren ihre neuen Forschungsergebnisse, indem sie korperhistorische... more
Die Trias Medizin, Geschichte und Geschlecht steckt ein aktuelles Feld kulturwissenschaftlicher Forschung ab. Die Autorinnen und Autoren dieses Sammelbandes prasentieren ihre neuen Forschungsergebnisse, indem sie korperhistorische Rekonstruktionen von Identitaten und Differenzen vornehmen. Hierbei lassen die resultierenden interdisziplinaren Perspektiven die Geschichte der Medizin als eine wertvolle Perspektive erkennen.
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Anstoß für den vorliegenden Band war die Feststellung, dass der Einsatz von Bildern und visuellen Darstellungen in biomedizinischen Kontexten auf stetig zunehmende Weise von apparativen, manipulativen und informationellen Zugängen... more
Anstoß für den vorliegenden Band war die Feststellung, dass der Einsatz von Bildern und visuellen Darstellungen in biomedizinischen Kontexten auf stetig zunehmende Weise von apparativen, manipulativen und informationellen Zugängen bestimmt wird. Explizit widmet sich "Bild und Gestalt" deshalb der Frage, wie Medienpraktiken im Zug einer solchen Piktoralisierungstendenz die Genese des Wissens in Medizin und Humanwissenschaften ausprägen. Mit dem Begriff der Humanwissenschaften ist hier in Anknüpfung an Michel Foucault beabsichtigt, eine Vielzahl von Forschungsperspektiven in die Untersuchungen einzubeziehen, welche in ihrer Selbstwahrnehmung Aspekte des Lebendigen aufgreifen und Anknüpfungspotentiale für medizinisch-anthropologische Fragestellungen bergen. Dabei ist der Zusammenhang von aktuellen und historischen Bildwelten von besonderem Belang, der auch und gerade in den zeitgenössischen Problemstellungen, die der interdisziplinären Bildforschung heute aufgegeben sind, einen großen Stellenwert einnimmt. Es liegt auf der Hand: Medizin und Humanwissenschaften sind für die Medientheorie ein wichtiger Fall und für interdisziplinäres Arbeiten ein fruchtbarer und zugleich drängender Gegenstand. Diesem wenden sich die hier versammelten Einzelbeiträge mit ihren kulturwissenschaftlichen Instrumentarien zu.
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This monograph evolved out of Frank W. Stahnisch's doctoral dissertation, which was supervised by Professor Volker Hess at the Institute for the History of Medicine at the Free University of Berlin, Germany. It represents a history of... more
This monograph evolved out of Frank W. Stahnisch's doctoral dissertation, which was supervised by Professor Volker Hess at the Institute for the History of Medicine at the Free University of Berlin, Germany. It represents a history of laboratory practices in early 19th century French experimental physiology, an analysis of "Ideas in action: The notion of function and its methodological role in the research program of the experimental physiologist François Magendie (1783-1855)". The manuscript became short-listed for the Young Scholars' Prize of the German Society for the History of Medicine, Science and Technology (DGGMNT), Wittenberg (Germany) in 2002. It was subsequently published with LIT Press in Muenster, Hamburg, London (2003), being one of the first specialized works in German language on experimental practices in modern medical research laboratories.
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In his new book, Bernd Gausemeier provides an institutional history of the Buch research campus from its inception to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The translated title, Central Periphery: Biological and Medical Research in Berlin-Buch,... more
In his new book, Bernd Gausemeier provides an institutional history of the Buch research campus from its inception to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The translated title, Central Periphery: Biological and Medical Research in Berlin-Buch, 1930–1989, reveals a methodological playfulness. The author makes frequent use of inverted language—phrases such as “the long march to Buch” (35), “central plans, local conflicts” (141), and “falling behind through technology” (364), for example—to highlight some of the absurdities that become evident through his analytical examination of the development of Berlin-Buch into a center of German biomedical research. Readers will recognize this center today as the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC; Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers), which was the new name given in January 1992 to what had been the Central Institute for Molecular Biology under the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Gausemeier’s book is organized into three sections and fifteen chapters. He interprets the “long march to Buch” (35) in his first and shortest section, entitled “The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research from its Beginnings to 1945,” as a tendency toward research centralization: “The inauguration of such a research clinic at an institution, which was previously seen as peripheral, represented a significant wartime development [in Germany], and it became significant for the role of the KWIBR [Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research].
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With The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey, Henry M. Cowles attempts to historicize the very idea of a distinct scientific method that ought to have emerged around the end of the 19th century. It... more
With The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey, Henry M. Cowles attempts to historicize the very idea of a distinct scientific method that ought to have emerged around the end of the 19th century. It materialized—according to the author—in scholarly theories of knowledge, disciplinary textbooks, and school curricula, which all fostered a new way of considering and examining scientific, empirical phenomena. The author is particularly concerned with what he sees as a detailed transfer and integration of new discovery processes and models of science following “this pedagogical turn on practices in the classroom [and] the growth of schools of education” (p. 228). Cowles emphasizes that the idea of “a method only” (p. 264) in science emerged at the turn of the 20th century, when it became a prime representation of science's dominance over the natural world as well as a leading concept governing human ways of knowledge generation and organization.
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Der von Rüdiger vom Bruch (Berlin) – Ordinarius für Wissenschaftsgeschichte an der Humboldt-Universität – und Brigitte Kaderas (Berlin) herausgegebene Band ist Resultat einer internationalen Konferenz zum Thema „Wissenschaften und... more
Der von Rüdiger vom Bruch (Berlin) – Ordinarius für Wissenschaftsgeschichte an der Humboldt-Universität – und Brigitte Kaderas (Berlin) herausgegebene Band ist Resultat einer internationalen Konferenz zum Thema „Wissenschaften und Wissenschaftspolitik – Interaktionen, Kontinuitäten und Bruchzonen vom späten Kaiserreich bis zur frühen Bundesrepublik/DDR“. Vom 18. bis 20. Mai 2000 hatten sich im Berliner Harnack Haus der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zahlreiche nationale wie internationale Spezialisten und Spezialistinnen getroffen, um gemeinsam der historischen Entwicklung einer „national verfaßte[n] und zugleich international agierende[n] Dynamik“ (S. 17) im modernen deutschen Wissenschaftssystem nachzugehen und gesellschaftliche Rahmenbedingungen in den politischen Systemen unterschiedlicher zeitlicher Epochen herauszupräparieren. Die Anregung zur Tagung wie auch zur Drucklegung der Ergebnisse im vorliegenden Band kam von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), deren Präsident – Professor Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker (München) – in seiner publizierten Begrüßungsrede auch das Bedürfnis
der DFG hervorhebt, die historischen Verstrickungen der von ihm geleiteten Forschungsförderungsinstitution in die menschenverachtenden Versuche und die politische
Instrumentalisierung von Wissenschaft im Nationalsozialismus aufarbeiten zu lassen. Mit seinem Verweis, daß die DFG „in ihren Gremien, ihren Gutachten und Antragstellern ein Spiegelbild der Wissenschaft ihrer Zeit“ war, beschreibt Winnacker zugleich eine wiederkehrende Figur des Bandes, welche „die Geschichten der DFG, der Max-Planck- Gesellschaft und der Universitäten“ (S. 15) eng verbunden erkennen läßt. Beispielsweise macht hierauf auch der eröffnende Beitrag von Mitchell Ash (Wien „Wissenschaft und Politik als Ressourcen füreinander“ aufmerksam, der ,Wissenschaft’ und ,Politik’ als gegenseitig durchdrungene „Ressourcenensembles“ (S. 32) beschreibt, die je nach divergierenden Zwecksetzungen mobilisiert werden konnten. Ferner folgt auch der zweite Eröffnungsbeitrag von Ulrich Wengenroth (München) „Die Flucht in den Käfig: Wissenschafts- und Innovationskultur in Deutschland 1900-1960“ dieser Stoßrichtung. Hierin werden die isolationistischen Tendenzen in Wissenschaft und Politik während der ersten Jahrhunderthälfte auf den Prüfstand gehoben, die zunehmend eine Abkopplung von ausländischen Eliten und Einengung des Blickes auf die heimischen Ressourcen erzeugt haben. Sicherlich bietet „Wissenschaften und Wissenschaftspolitik“ aber keine
simplizistischen, monokausalen Erklärungsmuster, sondern eine umfassende Pluralität der Perspektiven auf das komplizierte Wechselgeflecht von Forschungsförderung,
Forschungsausrichtung, Wissenschaftsentwicklung und politischer Einbindung von Forschung an. Deshalb mag man auch darüber hinwegsehen, daß der ursprüngliche Tagungstitel wohl zielführender war, als der des Bandes, da sich die überwiegende Mehrheit der Beiträge tatsächlich in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts bewegt.
der DFG hervorhebt, die historischen Verstrickungen der von ihm geleiteten Forschungsförderungsinstitution in die menschenverachtenden Versuche und die politische
Instrumentalisierung von Wissenschaft im Nationalsozialismus aufarbeiten zu lassen. Mit seinem Verweis, daß die DFG „in ihren Gremien, ihren Gutachten und Antragstellern ein Spiegelbild der Wissenschaft ihrer Zeit“ war, beschreibt Winnacker zugleich eine wiederkehrende Figur des Bandes, welche „die Geschichten der DFG, der Max-Planck- Gesellschaft und der Universitäten“ (S. 15) eng verbunden erkennen läßt. Beispielsweise macht hierauf auch der eröffnende Beitrag von Mitchell Ash (Wien „Wissenschaft und Politik als Ressourcen füreinander“ aufmerksam, der ,Wissenschaft’ und ,Politik’ als gegenseitig durchdrungene „Ressourcenensembles“ (S. 32) beschreibt, die je nach divergierenden Zwecksetzungen mobilisiert werden konnten. Ferner folgt auch der zweite Eröffnungsbeitrag von Ulrich Wengenroth (München) „Die Flucht in den Käfig: Wissenschafts- und Innovationskultur in Deutschland 1900-1960“ dieser Stoßrichtung. Hierin werden die isolationistischen Tendenzen in Wissenschaft und Politik während der ersten Jahrhunderthälfte auf den Prüfstand gehoben, die zunehmend eine Abkopplung von ausländischen Eliten und Einengung des Blickes auf die heimischen Ressourcen erzeugt haben. Sicherlich bietet „Wissenschaften und Wissenschaftspolitik“ aber keine
simplizistischen, monokausalen Erklärungsmuster, sondern eine umfassende Pluralität der Perspektiven auf das komplizierte Wechselgeflecht von Forschungsförderung,
Forschungsausrichtung, Wissenschaftsentwicklung und politischer Einbindung von Forschung an. Deshalb mag man auch darüber hinwegsehen, daß der ursprüngliche Tagungstitel wohl zielführender war, als der des Bandes, da sich die überwiegende Mehrheit der Beiträge tatsächlich in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts bewegt.
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Der von den Medizin- und Wissenschaftshistorikern Cornelius Borck (Montreal), Volker Hess (Berlin) und Henning Schmidgen (Berlin) herausgegebene Band ist Produkt einer "diszipliniert-undisziplinierte[n] Lese- und Arbeitsgruppe" am MPI für... more
Der von den Medizin- und Wissenschaftshistorikern Cornelius Borck (Montreal), Volker Hess (Berlin) und Henning Schmidgen (Berlin) herausgegebene Band ist Produkt einer "diszipliniert-undisziplinierte[n] Lese- und Arbeitsgruppe" am MPI für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (1997/98), die sich der Diskussion der Schriften Georges Canguilhems gewidmet hat. Aus dieser Kooperation resultierte eine interdisziplinäre Werkstatt-Tagung, die ihren wohldisziplinierten Platz auf der Jubiläumstagung der "Deutschen Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Medizin, Naturwissenschaften und Technik e.V." in Hamburg fand. Mit dieser Veranstaltung wurde das Zentenarium deutscher Wissenschaftsgeschichte gewissermaßen dem Jahrhundertzeugnis des französischen Biophilosophen und Wissenschaftshistorikers Georges Canguilhem (1904-1995) gegenübergestellt. Näher betrachtet ergibt sich aus dieser polaren, aber immer wieder überwundenen Oppositionsstellung auch eines der Oberthemen des Bandes, der nicht allein nach der Entwicklung des vielgestaltigen Denkens Canguilhems, nach dessen Bedeutung für Biophilosophie und Wissenschaftshistoriografie oder respektiven Anwendungsmöglichkeiten fragt. Denn unabhängig von der wechselvollen Rezeptionsgeschichte des Canguilhem'schen Denkens repräsentiert dessen Jahrhundertwerk zugleich den Gang einer intellektuellen französisch-deutschen Grenzbeziehung bis hin zur Konjunktur Canguilhems in der rezenten Wissenschaftshistoriografie. All diesen Themen wenden sich die größtenteils hochspannenden 14 Beiträge zu.
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Gerald Kreft, dans son nouveau livre sur l’anatomiste et neurologue Ludwig Edinger (1855–1918), souligne qu’on doit regarder la vie et les travaux de ce savant de Francfort-sur-le-Main dans le contexte de son éducation socioculturelle... more
Gerald Kreft, dans son nouveau livre sur l’anatomiste et neurologue Ludwig Edinger (1855–1918), souligne qu’on doit regarder la vie et les travaux de ce savant de Francfort-sur-le-Main dans le contexte de son éducation socioculturelle juive. Son ambition est de reconstruire l’histoire de la réception de l’oeuvre de ce chercheur extrêmement doué en neurosciences dans l’histoire de la médecine allemande. Pour ce but, Deutsch-Jüdische Geschichte und Hirnforschung réunit plusieurs travaux précédents de Kreft sur Edinger et son Institut neurologique (p.111). En outre, cet ouvrage ajoute de nombreux portraits de chercheurs autour de la carrière d’Edinger à Strasbourg, Giessen et finalement à Francfort. Le travail comprend à vrai dire deux parties, l’une
plutôt biographique et l’autre contextuelle. Dans une première partie, Kreft s’efforce de resituer dans le contexte scientifique et culturel de l’époque les pratiques d’investigation et la généalogie de l’organisation de l’institut d’Edinger dans la capitale bourgeoise et commerciale de la Hesse. Durant sa formation, son intérêt se porte tout d’abord sur la neuroanatomie, domaine dans lequel il est arrivé à une supériorité exceptionnelle comme l’a dit Adolf Wallenberg
(1862–1949) juste après la mort de son maître (p. 37). Mais après son départ de Strasbourg, en présentant sa thèse d’habilitation à l’Université de Giessen en 1881, Edinger
rencontre des obstacles qui sont associés à ses origines juives et à un climat très antisémite dans nombre de Länder allemands. Kreft développe cette thématique en détail dans un ensemble de neuf chapitres.
plutôt biographique et l’autre contextuelle. Dans une première partie, Kreft s’efforce de resituer dans le contexte scientifique et culturel de l’époque les pratiques d’investigation et la généalogie de l’organisation de l’institut d’Edinger dans la capitale bourgeoise et commerciale de la Hesse. Durant sa formation, son intérêt se porte tout d’abord sur la neuroanatomie, domaine dans lequel il est arrivé à une supériorité exceptionnelle comme l’a dit Adolf Wallenberg
(1862–1949) juste après la mort de son maître (p. 37). Mais après son départ de Strasbourg, en présentant sa thèse d’habilitation à l’Université de Giessen en 1881, Edinger
rencontre des obstacles qui sont associés à ses origines juives et à un climat très antisémite dans nombre de Länder allemands. Kreft développe cette thématique en détail dans un ensemble de neuf chapitres.
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Michael Hagner’s "Der Geist bei der Arbeit" (probably best translated as “The Mind at Work”) is not what it at first glance appears to be. Although the preliminary matter states that the book “concludes his trilogy on the history of the... more
Michael Hagner’s "Der Geist bei der Arbeit" (probably best translated as “The Mind at Work”) is not what it at first glance appears to be. Although the preliminary matter states that the book “concludes his trilogy on the history of the modern brain,” this volume by no means stands on the same level as his earlier Homo cerebralis and Geniale Gehirne. Apart from the introduction, every chapter was previously
published in German-language edited volumes (see p. 261 ff.), and some of them were coauthored with other historians of the life sciences, such as Cornelius Borck and Margarete Vöhringer. Thus readers who anticipated that this volume would be the cornerstone of Hagner’s trilogy on the modern brain might be disappointed. A closer look, however, reveals that the reprinted essays form a unified selection and effectively convey Hagner’s message that the euphoric rhetoric of neuroscientists about deciphering the working brain is completely misleading (p. 7).
published in German-language edited volumes (see p. 261 ff.), and some of them were coauthored with other historians of the life sciences, such as Cornelius Borck and Margarete Vöhringer. Thus readers who anticipated that this volume would be the cornerstone of Hagner’s trilogy on the modern brain might be disappointed. A closer look, however, reveals that the reprinted essays form a unified selection and effectively convey Hagner’s message that the euphoric rhetoric of neuroscientists about deciphering the working brain is completely misleading (p. 7).
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Issu d’une thèse d’habilitation effectuée par Gradmann à Heidelberg (2002), cette étude approfondie s’inspire de nouveau de la biographie scientifique de Robert Koch (1843–1910), et dépeint les progrès et la chute de la bactériologie... more
Issu d’une thèse d’habilitation effectuée par Gradmann à Heidelberg (2002), cette étude approfondie s’inspire de nouveau de la biographie scientifique de Robert Koch (1843–1910), et dépeint les progrès et la chute de la bactériologie médicale face à la pratique clinique de la Fin de Siècle. Le titre de l’ouvrage qui est l’objet de cette recension, «Maladie au laboratoire» (traduction libre), en indique bien le contenu: l’auteur s’est empressé de reconstruire la vie extraordinaire d’un des plus célèbres
membres du corps médical sous l’empire wilhelmien, une vie intrinsèquement liée aux événements sociaux, culturels et économiques du Berlin prussien. A l’opposé de nombreux livres hagiographiques et unidimensionnels, son ambition est de dresser la «microstructure du travail scientifique au laboratoire bactériologique» (p. 10), en analysant la valeur épistémologique de la thèse de Georges Canguilhem (1904–
1995), selon laquelle la microbiologie serait mieux comprise comme pratique couronnée de succès que comme simple innovation théorique (Canguilhem, 1979). En ce qui concerne la position historiographique, Gradmann applique un des arguments de Michel Foucault (1926–1984), selon qui la bactériologie entraîne une «rupture épistémologique» en science médicale face aux nosographies cliniques inspirées de l’histoire naturelle.
membres du corps médical sous l’empire wilhelmien, une vie intrinsèquement liée aux événements sociaux, culturels et économiques du Berlin prussien. A l’opposé de nombreux livres hagiographiques et unidimensionnels, son ambition est de dresser la «microstructure du travail scientifique au laboratoire bactériologique» (p. 10), en analysant la valeur épistémologique de la thèse de Georges Canguilhem (1904–
1995), selon laquelle la microbiologie serait mieux comprise comme pratique couronnée de succès que comme simple innovation théorique (Canguilhem, 1979). En ce qui concerne la position historiographique, Gradmann applique un des arguments de Michel Foucault (1926–1984), selon qui la bactériologie entraîne une «rupture épistémologique» en science médicale face aux nosographies cliniques inspirées de l’histoire naturelle.
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The book under review was published in 2006 by “award-winning” author Fen Montaigne, “a freelance writer who often contributes to the ‘National Geographic”’ (internal book cover). Montaigne’s previous publications include "The First... more
The book under review was published in 2006 by “award-winning” author Fen Montaigne, “a freelance writer who often contributes to the ‘National Geographic”’ (internal book cover). Montaigne’s previous publications include "The First
Directorate" (1994, together with Oleg Kalugin), "Reeling in Russia" (1998), and "Surviving Galeras" (2001, together with Stanley Williams); books that belong rather to the genre of historical travel reports (on non-medical topics). In 1995, Montaigne was short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize in recognition of his work as an outdoor columnist
for the Philadelphia Inquirer in Moscow. Johns Hopkins University Press (JHUP) advertises his book "Medicine by
Design" with descriptions such as the following: “From the almost commonplace pacemaker to the latest generation of artificial hearts, Montaigne tells the stories of pioneering patients, engineers and surgeons. Taking the reader behind the scenes of a dozen of America’s leading centers of biomedical engineering, Montaigne recounts the field’s history while describing cutting-edge work in medical imaging, orthopedics, cardiovascular care, neurological therapies, and genetics.” Despite its publication by the oldest and world-renowned university press in the United States, the book is actually a piece of popular work, focusing on the subtitle’s theme: “The practice and promise of biomedical engineering” (JHUP, 2010). JHUP’s reference to a “[recounting] of the field’s history” or the “taking [of] the reader behind the scenes” is, however, quite misleading, as it equates academic work with idiosyncratic personal
narratives.
Directorate" (1994, together with Oleg Kalugin), "Reeling in Russia" (1998), and "Surviving Galeras" (2001, together with Stanley Williams); books that belong rather to the genre of historical travel reports (on non-medical topics). In 1995, Montaigne was short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize in recognition of his work as an outdoor columnist
for the Philadelphia Inquirer in Moscow. Johns Hopkins University Press (JHUP) advertises his book "Medicine by
Design" with descriptions such as the following: “From the almost commonplace pacemaker to the latest generation of artificial hearts, Montaigne tells the stories of pioneering patients, engineers and surgeons. Taking the reader behind the scenes of a dozen of America’s leading centers of biomedical engineering, Montaigne recounts the field’s history while describing cutting-edge work in medical imaging, orthopedics, cardiovascular care, neurological therapies, and genetics.” Despite its publication by the oldest and world-renowned university press in the United States, the book is actually a piece of popular work, focusing on the subtitle’s theme: “The practice and promise of biomedical engineering” (JHUP, 2010). JHUP’s reference to a “[recounting] of the field’s history” or the “taking [of] the reader behind the scenes” is, however, quite misleading, as it equates academic work with idiosyncratic personal
narratives.
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Historisierungen von medizinhistorischer Forschung haben seit Längerem Konjunktur, wie auch die vielfältigen rezenten Arbeiten aus dem Umfeld der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Medizin, Naturwissenschaft und Technik e.V. oder... more
Historisierungen von medizinhistorischer Forschung haben seit Längerem Konjunktur, wie auch die vielfältigen rezenten Arbeiten aus dem Umfeld der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Medizin, Naturwissenschaft und Technik e.V. oder des Fachverbands Medizingeschichte e. V. aufzeigen. Demgegenüber liegen historisierende Arbeiten zur institutionalisierten Medizinethik für den deutschen Sprachraum weit weniger vor. Man könnte also davon ausgehen, dass die Dissertation von Florian Bruns, welche von Andreas Frewer betreut und im Wintersemester 2007/08 an der MHH in Hannover eingereicht worden ist, hier tatsächlich eine neue Richtung einschlägt, wie dies auch der Untertitel zu „Entwicklungen und Protagonisten in Berlin (1939-1945)“ verspricht. Doch der Blick auf dieses mit 225 Seiten letztlich recht schmale Buch erweist sich thematisch in mehrerer Hinsicht als ambivalent: Um das Negative gleich vorweg zu nehmen, in der vorliegenden Arbeit wird kaum eine „Nationalsozialistische Medizinethik“ (S. 13) im Sinne des Nominalbegriffs geboten. Schwer nachvollziehbar ist die Forschungsausrichtung fast ausschließlich auf Berlin verengt, und der Hinweis auf den „Hauptstadtstatus“ vermag nur wenig zu überzeugen (S. 167). Bruns Perspektive richtet sich vor allem auf eine in der zeitgenössischen Medizingeschichte verankerte Medizinethik, etwa in Anlehnung an die Konzepte des „Ewigen Arzttums“ oder „Das ärztliche Ethos“, wie dies das Cover zugleich ikonografisch hervorhebt. Vielleicht nicht primär vom Autor intendiert, aber gleichwohl aus den untersuchten Quellen hervorgehend, ist recht positiv zu vermerken, dass das Buch in den Kapiteln vier, fünf und sechs doch recht viel zur Vereinnahmung der Disziplin der Medizingeschichte in die medizinische Philosophie und politischen Zielstellungen des NS zu bieten hat. Bruns folgt außerdem der Frage nach der Rehabilitation deutscher Medizinhistoriker in der unmittelbaren Nachkriegszeit, die trotz ihrer NS-Vergangenheit wieder Lehrstühle und Professuren an den Universitäten der frühen Bundesrepublik Deutschland einnehmen konnten. Hier baut seine Arbeit etwa auf den vorliegenden Publikationen Werner Friedrich Kümmels, Gerhard Baaders oder Michael H. Katers auf und trägt ebenso substantielles und detailliertes neues Wissen zum Problembereich bei.
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Es handelt sich beim vorliegenden Band – abgesehen von einzelnen früheren Nachrufen in wissenschaftlichen Fachzeitschriften oder Artikeln, die die Nobelpreisnominierung des deutschstämmigen und während der NS-Zeit emigrierten... more
Es handelt sich beim vorliegenden Band – abgesehen von einzelnen früheren Nachrufen in wissenschaftlichen Fachzeitschriften oder Artikeln, die die Nobelpreisnominierung des deutschstämmigen und während der NS-Zeit emigrierten Wissenschaftlers der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft beschrieben –, tatsächlich um die erste Biographie, die Carl Sandel Neubergs (1877-1956) akademische Leistungen und seinen Lebensweg umfassender nachzeichnet. Insofern ist dem Autorenkollektiv zuzustimmen, wenn es Neuberg als einen „fast vergessenen Biochemiker“ (S. 7) bezeichnet und feststellt, dass er „eine wirklich angemessene Würdigung [...] jedoch nicht [erfuhr], und in der Historiographie seines Faches [...] in Vergessenheit [geraten ist]. Carl Neuberg starb am 30. Mai 1956 im Alter von 78 Jahren in New York City. In diesem Jahr jährt sich sein 50. Todestag, und die Gemeinschaft der Biochemiker kann 2006 das 100jährige Bestehen der ersten internationalen Zeitschrift für Biochemie feiern [...]“ (S. 11). Hieraus geht auch hervor, dass das Erscheinungsjahr ganz bewusst gewählt und anvisiert worden ist, um mit dem Band die Feierlichkeiten an der Medizinischen Hochschule Hannover (MHH) zu flankieren sowie das Gedenken an diesen großen Sohn der niedersächsischen Landeshauptstadt zu befördern.
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Der hier zu besprechende Band erschien anlässlich des 300. Geburtstags des großen Schweizer Universalgelehrten Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) und ist ein weiteres Produkt des Projekts „Albrecht von Haller und die Gelehrtenrepublik des... more
Der hier zu besprechende Band erschien anlässlich des 300. Geburtstags des großen Schweizer Universalgelehrten Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) und ist ein weiteres Produkt des Projekts „Albrecht von Haller und die Gelehrtenrepublik des 18. Jahrhunderts“, das zwischen 1990 und 2003 am Institut für Medizingeschichte der Universität Bern sowie der dortigen Burgerbibliothek durchgeführt worden ist. Die Anregung zu diesem Band ging schon 2004 aus einer Versammlung des Historischen Vereins des Kantons Bern hervor, wobei das Buch vier Jahre später zugleich als 85. Band des Archivs des Historischen Vereins erschienen ist. Zum Gelingen des größtenteils auf Deutsch publizierten Bandes trugen insgesamt zweiundzwanzig internationale Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler bei. Inhaltlich und redaktionell wurde er vor allem von Hubert Steinke betreut, nachdem Urs Boschung das Konzept eines umfassenden Referenzwerks entworfen und ausgestaltet hatte, welches eine breite interdisziplinäre Perspektive auf das vielgestaltige Werk Hallers von der Anatomie und Botanik, über die Dichtkunst bis hin zum Gelehrtentum und zur Theologie entwickeln und hier gewinnbringend für ein breites Publikum aufbereiten sollte.
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"Les corps vils" (was sich im historischen Kontext des vorliegenden Buches vielleicht am besten mit "Die gemeinen Körper“ ins Deutsche übersetzen lässt), stellt den gleichermaßen pointierten wie ambitionierten Versuch dar, eine umfassende... more
"Les corps vils" (was sich im historischen Kontext des vorliegenden Buches vielleicht am besten mit "Die gemeinen Körper“ ins Deutsche übersetzen lässt), stellt den gleichermaßen pointierten wie ambitionierten Versuch dar, eine umfassende Geschichte des Humanexperiments im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert zu schreiben: "Der Titel dieses Werks bezieht sich auf die lateinische Redensart fiat experimentum in corpore vili – Experimentieren an den gemeinen Körpern; führe ein Experiment an den wertlosen Körpern durch“ (S. 8; Übers. F.W.S). Der französische Autor Grégoire Chamayou hat an der Universität von Paris VII (Diderot) Philosophie und Wissenschaftsgeschichte studiert und ebendort – 2007 – seine Doktorarbeit vorgelegt, auf der das hier zu rezensierende Buch aufbaut. Nach seiner Promotion arbeitete er als Agrégé de Philosophie an der Universität von Paris X (Nanterre – La Défense) und ist seit letztem Jahr Gastwissenschaftler in der Abteilung II des Max-Planck-Instituts für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin. Was den Titel und den wissenschaftshistorischen Gegenstand von "Les corps vils" betrifft, hätte man sich eigentlich über dieses Buch sehr freuen können, weil derzeit – abgesehen von vielfältigen Einzel- und Detailstudien – kaum ein umfassendes Werk zur philosophischen Bedeutung wie wissenschaftshistorischen Tragweite des Experimentierens am und mit Menschen für das 18. und 19. Jahrhundert vorliegt. Die gegenwärtige Situation erstaunt umso mehr, als in der von Chamayou thematisierten zweihundertjährigen Periode so entscheidende theoretische und methodologische Grundlagen für die moderne lebenswissenschaftliche Forschung geschaffen worden sind, welche tatsächlich eine eingehende Aufarbeitung und Analyse verdient hätten.
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„Rätselbilder des Geschlechts“ ist die zur Publikation überarbeitete Fassung der Dissertation der Autorin, welche im Jahr 2007 von der Philosophischen Fakultät III der Humboldt Universität zu Berlin angenommen worden ist. Unter der... more
„Rätselbilder des Geschlechts“ ist die zur Publikation überarbeitete Fassung der Dissertation der Autorin, welche im Jahr 2007 von der Philosophischen Fakultät III der Humboldt Universität zu Berlin angenommen worden ist. Unter der Betreuung von Christina von Braun und Susanne von Falkenhausen ist die vorliegende Arbeit der Braunschweiger Medienhistorikerin Kathrin Peters zu weiten Teilen im Berliner DFG-Graduiertenkolleg „Geschlecht als Wissenskategorie“ entstanden. Es liegt somit auch nahe, dass die primäre Ausrichtung dieses Buchs epistemologischer Natur ist und die Autorin danach fragt, welchen wissenschaftshistorischen, überzeugenden und sinnbildenden Wert die Fotografien des Geschlechts – sowohl "sex" als auch "gender" – im medizinischen, anthropologischen und soziologischen Diskurs am "Fin de Siècle" eingenommen haben: „Was hat eine Aktfotografie Wilhelm von Gloedens mit Zeichnungen von extrahierten Geschlechtsorganen zu tun? Was die Studiofotografie eines >Mannweibs< vor romantischem Prospekt mit der vielspaltigen Tabelle sexueller Zwischenstufen? Oder die Künstleranatomie des Anthropologen Gustav Fritsch mit dem Röntgenbild eines Beckens, das Rudolf Virchow zur Begutachtung vorlag? Ikonografisch und medientechnisch kaum etwas, epistemologisch sehr viel“ (S. 21). Ihre sprachlich schön zu lesende Studie, die mit dem als „Verstreute Körper, Verstreute Bilder“ (S. 7) überschriebenen ersten Abschnitt eingeleitet wird, basiert auf der Analyse einer Vielzahl von Einzelfotografien und -zeichnungen, fotografischen Sammlungen, Zeitschriftenartikeln und Kongressberichten, die in einem weitgefassten Sinne aus dem narrativen Diskurs der zeitgenössischen Medizin und verwandter Wissenschaftsbereiche über die Frage der Geschlechterkategorisierung, der Bedeutung der biologischen und psychologischen Einordnungs- und Testmöglichkeiten sowie dem Problem der sozialen Integration „abweichender Sexualtypen“ hervorgegangen sind.
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Dieser von Alexander Gall herausgegebene und in der von Helmuth Trischler, Rolf Gutmann und Dorothee Messerschmid redigierten Reihe "Deutsches Museum. Abhandlungen und Berichte-Neue Folge" mit der Nummer 23 erschienene Band folgt der... more
Dieser von Alexander Gall herausgegebene und in der von Helmuth Trischler, Rolf Gutmann und Dorothee Messerschmid redigierten Reihe "Deutsches Museum. Abhandlungen und Berichte-Neue Folge" mit der Nummer 23 erschienene Band folgt der Fragestellung, welche Wege "man Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts [wählte], um Einsichten in die Struktur der Materie zu erlangen und welche Bilder [sich daraus] ergaben" (Back-Cover). Die versammelten Beiträge von 12 Wissenschafts-und Technikhistorikerinnen und-historikern, denen ein Vorwort des Generaldirektors des Deutschen Museums in München (DMM) Wolfgang M. Heckl (S. 7-8) vorangestellt ist, sind aus Forschungsprojekten im Rahmen der Dauerausstellung "Foto und Film" und des DFG Projekts "Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Naturwissenschaft und Technik: Formen der Wahrnehmung und Wirkung im 20. Jahrhundert" am Forschungsinstitut des DMM hervorgegangen. Während die Argumentation des Bandes auf den begrifflichen Dreischritt aus "konstruieren, kommunizieren und präsentieren" hin ausgerichtet ist, wird dieser Buch-und Einführungstitel (S. 9-22) leider durch eine abweichende Themengliederung in den drei Hauptsektionen aus "Instrument", "Medium" und "Museum" wieder aufgelöst (siehe S. 5-6). Obwohl sich aus diesen historiographischen Einheiten natürlich thematische und epistemische Überschneidungen mit den analytischen Arbeitsbegriffen ergeben-z.B. zwischen Instrument und Konstruktion, zwischen Medium und Kommunikation oder Museum und Präsentation-, sind diese doch aus wissenschafts-und medienhistorischer Perspektive nicht wirklich als deckungsgleich anzusehen. Ungeachtet der meist sehr guten Qualität der Einzelbreiträge in diesem Band, ergibt sich somit in seiner Konzeption ein gewisses analytisches Problem. Der Leser und die Leserin hätten sich durchaus gewünscht, dass die von Gall eingezogene thematische Ausrichtung auch einen stärkeren Eingang in die Verbindung der Einzelbeiträge sowie deren wissenschaftshistoriographische Analyse gefunden hätte.
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The Making of Modern Medicine ist das zuletzt erschienene Buch des renommierten kanadischen Medizinhistorikers Michael Bliss und fasst seine im Jahr 2008 gehaltenene Goodman Vorlesungsreihe am Historischen
Institut der Universität von... more
The Making of Modern Medicine ist das zuletzt erschienene Buch des renommierten kanadischen Medizinhistorikers Michael Bliss und fasst seine im Jahr 2008 gehaltenene Goodman Vorlesungsreihe am Historischen
Institut der Universität von Western Ontario in London, Ontario, zusammen. Das mit anspruchsvollem Titel versehene Bändchen – welches mit 104 Seiten doch recht schmal ausgefallen ist – stellt nicht mehr, aber auch
nicht weniger als eine Synopsis der Ergebnisse dieser Vorlesungen zur Geschichte der modernen Medizin seit
dem Ende des 19. Jh. dar. Insgesamt fußt es auf den eingehenden Analysen der drei vorangegangenen Monographien des Autors, die in ziemlich direkter Weise „Pate“ für die Hauptkapitel des Bändchens gestanden haben.
Als Emeritus Professor der Universität von Toronto ist Bliss einem breiten nordamerikanischen Publikum nicht
nur als spezialisierter Medizinhistoriker, sondern auch und gerade als Wirtschafts- und Sozialhistoriker des modernen Kanadas bekannt, der sich als streitbarer konservativer "Public Intellectual" über mehrere Dekaden in die politischen Debatten Nordamerikas eingebracht hat. Seine Kolumnen in der landesweiten Zeitung "The Globe and Mail" sind legendär und häufig Zeitkritiken der sozialen und kulturellen Situation des Landes aus einer im europäischen Sinne wertkonservativen Haltung heraus gewesen. Es ist so gesehen bedauernswert, dass man diese profunde sozialhistorische Perspektive in dem hier zu rezensierenden Band kaum wieder findet. Stattdessen folgen die Einzelkapitel einem eher internalistisch geprägten Narrativ, das "The Making of Modern Medicine" als Kulmination von linearen Fortschrittsentwicklungen präsentiert.
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Das in der Reihe „MedienAnalysen“ des transcript Verlags in Bielefeld erschienene Buch: „Digitale Körper, geschlechtlicher Raum. Das medizinisch Imaginäre des »Visible Human Project«“ weist zunächst einen sehr ansprechenden Titel auf,... more
Das in der Reihe „MedienAnalysen“ des transcript Verlags in Bielefeld erschienene Buch: „Digitale Körper, geschlechtlicher Raum. Das medizinisch Imaginäre des »Visible Human Project«“ weist zunächst einen sehr ansprechenden Titel auf, doch geht es hier nur in einem der Kapitel (dem Hauptkapitel 4) um das real existierende »Visible Human Project« der amerikanischen National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland. Die zentrale Frage des „geschlechtlichen Raums“ im Zusammenhang mit dem »Visible Human Project« wird tatsächlich nur stellenweise in diesem Band berücksichtigt, der aus einer am Bereich „Kunst und Medienwissenschaft“ an der Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln 2009 vorgelegten Dissertation entstanden ist, die von Professorin Marie-Luise Angerer betreut wurde. Seither ist Claudia Reiche mit Lehraufträgen als Medienwissenschaftlerin an den Universitäten Oldenburg und Berlin (TU) tätig gewesen und hat als Künstlerin das „Frauen.Kultur. Labor.thealit“ in Bremen betreut. In vielerlei Hinsicht lässt dieses Buch leider den Anspruch an eine kohärente wissenschaftliche Arbeit vermissen.
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The volume edited by L. Stephen Jacyna and Stephen T. Casper, "The Neurological Patient in History," is a long-needed book on the social history perspective of the patient-doctor relationship and of patients’ experiences in the... more
The volume edited by L. Stephen Jacyna and Stephen T. Casper, "The Neurological Patient in History," is a long-needed book on the social history perspective of the patient-doctor relationship and of patients’ experiences in the development of modern neurology in Europe and Northern America. As the editors adequately describe in their introduction to this volume, the patient perspective had long been neglected in modern medical historiography before London-based social historian Roy Porter (1946–2002) brought it back onto the map of many scholars in the history of medicine and health care field (Porter, 1985). “In what quickly became a classic article in the history of medicine, Roy Porter drew attention to patient agency and called for a realignment of the history of medicine around the patient’s perspective. At first glance, Porter appeared to be writing in 1985 from a vaguely leftist perspective. His paper could be read as an attempt to give a voice to a constituency that had been effectively silenced through the tyranny of medical power. The concept of the ‘patient’ was thus configured as akin to other repressed groups, such as women and the working classes, that had been effectively marginalized in conventional historiogra- phy” (p. 3).
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This biographical book originates as part of a broader research program on the history of medicine in Nazi Germany and the social context of the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trials of 1947, as well as questions on the forced migration of Jewish... more
This biographical book originates as part of a broader research program on the history of medicine in Nazi Germany and the social context of the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trials of 1947, as well as questions on the forced migration of Jewish physicians in the 1930s and 1940s that Paul Weindling, the Welcome Trust Research Professor at the Oxford Centre for Health, Medicine, and Society, has pursued over the past decades. His scholarship has already been reflected in substantial monographic publications, including "Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism" (1989) and "Nazi Medicine and the Nuremberg Trials: From Medical Warcrimes to Informed Consent" (2004). These books have examined major themes including human experimentation in the context of racial anthropology and eugenics ideas, as well as the development of the concept of “informed consent” during the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial that pursued medical misconduct during the Second World War and the crimes against humanity committed by Nazi physicians.
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This book on the earliest known “status Indian” to graduate from a Canadian medical school, Chief Peter E. Jones, M.D. (1843–1909)—also referred to as “Kah- kewaquonaby” (The Waving Plume) in his native Ojibwe language—has been written by... more
This book on the earliest known “status Indian” to graduate from a Canadian medical school, Chief Peter E. Jones, M.D. (1843–1909)—also referred to as “Kah- kewaquonaby” (The Waving Plume) in his native Ojibwe language—has been written by Allan Sherwin, Emeritus Professor of Neurology at McGill Univer- sity. Owing to many decades of his own career spent in biomedical research, Sherwin has a long-held interest in the neurochemical effects of modern anti- convulsant drugs and their uses in clinical neurology—a field which led him also to investigate some of the historical origins of these drugs. He has also compared the pharmacological drug repertoires available in modern neurology with traditional, pre-existing forms of medications used by North American First Nations healers in the 19th century.
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There has recently been a resurgent scholarly interest in the scientific reception and ethically questionable use of results from Nazi experiments with human subjects between 1933 and 1945. In this important book, Sabine Hildebrandt,... more
There has recently been a resurgent scholarly interest in the scientific reception and ethically questionable use of results from Nazi experiments with human subjects between 1933 and 1945. In this important book, Sabine Hildebrandt, assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at Boston’s Children’s Hospital and a lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School, offers an overview of the field of anatomy during National Socialism. She covers a wide spectrum of topics, with chapters such as “The Interactions between the NS State and Anatomists,” “NS Victims and the Use of their Bodies for Anatomical Purposes,” and “Developments in Professional Ethics in Anatomy.” Based on her research in archives in Europe and North America, Hildebrandt offers a learned and well-rounded account of the manifold facets of the field, including a discussion of the ethical transgressions of coerced human subject research, the killing of concentration camp prisoners and inmates of mental asylums, and the compilation, uses, and application of knowledge within the most inhumane contexts.
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The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a... more
The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor. The medium of this political confrontation was peculiar and without historical precedent: people's public use of their reason (Habermas 1968, 27; transl. FWS). In his classic book "Knowledge and Interest," German social philosopher Juergen Habermas early on pointed out that all human knowledge endeavors are bound to social, economic, and technological interests emerging from larger cultural contexts and social movements. Crafted as a neo-Marxist critique of the very conditions of the modern life world and industrial sphere, Habermas intriguingly recognized the outright reliance of nearly all human relationships and communication forms on scientific developments and technological infrastructures. It therefore hardly comes as a surprise that Fernando Vidal-research professor at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies and at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain)-and Francisco Ortega-a professor of social medicine and public health at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) also address the question why the neurocentric view of human subjectivity emerged as one of the most powerful concepts in academic, ethical, intellectual, and political debates since the last century. From this perspective then, the authors tackle the question of the scientific ubiquity of the human brain in many different disciplines and social discourses-reaching from neuroeconomics to neuroaesthetics to neurosociology-, while tracing the economic, societal, and military-related conditions from which these diverse interests have sprung particularly since the 1990s. Related to questions raised for instance by Michael Hagner in Ecce Cortex-Beitraege zur Geschichte des modernen Gehirns (1999) and by Nikolas Rose and Joelle M. Abi-Rached Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of Mind (2013), who emphasized that the social technologies among mind and brain sciences have been importantly related to new forms of human productivity, postmodern living conditions, along with distributed forms of governmentality in international consortia and associations, this new book by two leading historians and philosophers of the neurosciences and psychology offers an intriguingly fresh perspective on the problem of the modern condition of the human brain.
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This volume, which is edited by Shula Marks, emeritus professor and distinguished research fellow at the School of Advanced Study in the University of London; Paul J. Weindling, Wellcome Trust research professor in the history of medicine... more
This volume, which is edited by Shula Marks, emeritus professor and distinguished research fellow at the School of Advanced Study in the University of London; Paul J. Weindling, Wellcome Trust research professor in the history of medicine at Oxford Brookes University; and Laura Wintour, historian and grant program officer at the Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA), is probably the most significant book published on the history of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL). It notably adds to the two books written by British economist Sir William Beveridge (18791963) on the history of the SPSL and his personal involvement in this key academic support society, Power and Influence (1953) and A Defence of Free Learning (1959). The Plight, Persecution, and Placement of Academic Refugees, 19331980 is the scholarly result of an interdisciplinary conference, which was primarily organized by Laura Wintour together with the other co-editors of this volume, on the occasion of SPSL-CARA's seventy-fifth anniversary, in conjunction with the Royal Society and held at the British Academy in December 2008. Twenty authors bring together a wide range of topics in the book, which describes the beginnings of the so-called Academic Assistance Council (AAC) in May 1933, only two months after the introduction of the notorious Nazi Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service (Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeam-tentums). This law had led to the persecution and dismissal of tens of thousands of civil servants, scientists, and physicians in government-supported positions of the Third Reich and later in Nazi- occupied countries as well.