The Transformation of German Academic Medicine, 1750-1820 / Edition 1

by Thomas H. Broman

Overview

By examining German university medicine between 1750 and 1820, this book presents a new interpretation of the emergence of modern medical science. It demonstrates that the development of modern medicine as a profession linking theory and practice did not emerge suddenly from the revolutionary transformation of Europe at the opening of the nineteenth century, as Foucault and others have argued. Instead, Thomas H. Broman points to cultural and institutional changes occurring during the second half of the eighteenth century that reshaped both medical theory and physicians' professional identity. Among the most important of these factors was the emergence of a literary public sphere in Germany between 1750 and 1800, a development that exposed medical writing to new discourses such as Jena Romanticism and created the stage on which the bitter medical controversies of the 1790s would be played.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521524575
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/22/2002
Series:	Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine
Edition description:	FIRST/REPRINT
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.02(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.59(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Physicians in eighteenth-century Germany; 2. Fractures and new alignments; 3. Physicians and writers: medical theory and the emergence of the public sphere; 4. The art of healing; 5. Breaking the shackles of history: the Brunonian revolution in Germany; 6. German medicine during the restoration; Conclusion: disciplines, professions, and the public sphere; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Thomas Broman has produced an important and subtle addition to the history of German, and indeed European, medicine....a welcome addition to the growing body of studies on the problems of professions in the modern and premodern world, as well as an eminently readable and thought-provoking reconsideration of a learned estate, their fields of discourse, and their social ambience during an important period of transition." Charles E. McClelland, John Hopkins University Press Bull. Hist. Med.

"...this is a wise and provocative book that is destined for an important place in the literature of medical education." Thomas N. Bonner, American Historical Review

"This well-written and finely nuanced book challenges accepted historiography of the history of the German professions on two counts. ...enhances our knowledge of this transitional phase tremendously." David Lindenfeld, German Studies Review

"Broman...aims at larger perspectives in his Transformation of German Academic Medicine. His thoughtful examination of changing medical theory and the nature of the physician's role is an important contribution to the emergence of modern medical science. ...enrich our understanding of the medical world of eighteenth-century Germany...notable for offering insights into broader historical questions. ...represent growing sophistication of the field of history of medicine." Caroline Hannaway, Isis

From the Publisher