Histories of Medical Practice, Ethics
and Expertise
The research of this theme examines
medical practice in Europe from the late
Middle Ages to the early 20th century
under two specific aspects: its ethical
implications and its claims for
expertise vis-à-vis other realms of
social and cultural authority, in
particular religion and the law. Our key
research questions are: How did medical
practitioners define their ethical
status and moral obligations towards
patients in issues such as abortion,
sexuality, bedside manner and
appropriate demeanour, truth-telling,
and consent to treatments? How did male
and female practitioners assert their
expertise and authority in matters of
the body and disease in courts of law?
And to what extent could practitioners
draw upon socially embedded religious
(Christian and Jewish) and ideological (Hippocratist)
views on acceptable health behaviour?
Our case studies explore these questions
for late medieval and Renaissance
Portugal (Iona McCleery), Ancien
Régime France (Cathy McClive),
and Imperial Germany (Holger Maehle,
Sebastian Pranghofer and Lutz Sauerteig).
Complementarily, the uses and abuses of
the Hippocratic Oath, and notions of
‘Hippocratic ethics’ in the Western
medical tradition from Antiquity to the
Nuremberg trials, are being studied (Thomas
Rütten). In specific projects we
investigate:
-
the medical ethics, psychological
work and sexology of the German
(Jewish) psychotherapist and
medico-legal expert Albert Moll
(1862-1939) and their socio-cultural
context;
-
the conduct of French practitioners
in Ancien Régime law courts,
especially that of female
practitioners as experts in cases
concerning human reproduction and
against a Roman Catholic background;
-
stereotypes of ‘good’ and ‘bad’
practitioners in Portugal
(c.1350-c.1550) against the
background of stricter medical
regulation, the expulsion or forced
conversion to Christianity in 1497
of the Jews, who were one of the
most prominent groups of physicians,
and the Portuguese global expansion
of the sixteenth century.
The projects within this theme build on
earlier relevant work of the researchers
involved. Based on her current project
on the relationship between religious
and secular healing in medieval
Portugal, Iona McCleery wants to
complement with her new work on medical
stereotypes in Portugal and its early
empire the various existing studies by
other scholars on Renaissance medicine
in France, Italy, Germany and Spain and
to consider the context of early
imperialism. Cathy McClive’s new
study on the gendered nature, status and
authority of medical expertise within
the early modern French judiciary
emerges from her earlier work on
interpretations of the female body,
menstruation, and pregnancy in this
period. Our project of a modern
biography of Albert Moll as an
integrative figure in the culture of
fin-de-sciècle metropolitan medicine
responds to a recent resurgence of
interest in him within medical
psychology, sexology, ethics, and Jewish
history. While Holger Maehle
enters this new study on the basis of
his current work on medical ethics in
Imperial Germany and (together with
Sebastian Pranghofer) on the history
of medical confidentiality, Lutz
Sauerteig comes to it from his
research on the history of sexuality and
venereal disease. Thomas Rütten
builds on his expertise in the reception
of Hippocratic texts in the classical
and modern periods. His new study of
receptional phenomena of the Hippocratic
Oath ranges from ancient to contemporary
times and also comes under systematic
headings such as ‘Law and Injustice’,
‘Text and Understanding’ and ‘Art and
Kitsch’. We hope that this versatile
history of receptions of the Hippocratic
Oath will appeal to a wide
interdisciplinary and public audience.
|
