Medicine and Modernity
Public Health and Medical Care in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany

A collection of essays on fundamental issues in the history of medicine in modern Germany.

Manfred Berg (Edited by), Geoffrey Cocks (Edited by)

9780521524568, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 22 August 2002

256 pages
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.8 cm, 0.533 kg

"...this collection of essays is a welcome addition to the otherwise sparse English-language literature on the history of German medicine." Eric J. Engstrom, Jrnl of Interdisciplinary History

This collection of essays addresses, in a comprehensive and critical fashion, fundamental issues in the history of medicine in modern Germany. The essays also investigate important continuities and discontinuities in German history, and between Germany and the West. The central focus is on the professionalisation of modern medicine and the medicalisation of modern society. The problem of Nazi Germany is addressed in many of the essays, partly because of its influence on the debate over the nature of modern German government and society in relation to Western social, political, and economic development. Other topics include: the place of hospitals in the early nineteenth century, various forms of Social Darwinism, the politics of state-run health insurance, the influence of eugenics, social control and 'shell shock' in World War I, sterilization and euthanasia, Nazi experimentation, the abortion debate, and the role of former Nazis in the postwar medical leadership.

Introduction Geoffrey Cocks
1. To benefit the poor and advance medical science: hospitals and hospital care in Germany, 1820–70 Johanna Bleker
2. From traditional individualism to collective professionalism: state, patient, compulsory health insurance and the panel doctor question in Germany, 1883–1931 Alfons Labisch
3. In search of German social Darwinism Richard J. Evans
4. Modern German doctors Charles E. McClelland
5. The mentally ill patient caught between the state's demands and the professional interests of psychiatrists Heinz-Peter Schmiedebach
6. Rationalizing the therapeutic arsenal Paul Lerner
7. Sterilization and 'medical' massacres in National Socialist Germany Gisela Bock
8. The Nuremberg doctors' trial and the German Sonderweg as harbinger Geoffrey Cocks
9. The debate that will not end: the politics of abortion Atina Grossman
10. The sewering scandal of 1993 and the German medical establishment Michael H. Kater.

Subject Areas: History of medicine [MBX]