Constitutional Medicine, Neoromanticism, and the Politics of Antimechanism in Interwar Germany

Abstract

One of the defining features of interwar medical debates in German-speaking countries was the remarkable popularity of holistic concepts among both experts and the lay public. Attacks on the allegedly too-mechanistic outlook of modern medicine were frequent and were often associated with calls to research and treat the constitution of patients rather than isolated causes of disease. This paper traces the rise of the new constitutional medicine, locating its roots in nineteenth-century medical science. The essay attempts to explain the increasingly antimechanistic outlook of promoters of constitutional medicine by relating it to the larger context of the politics of health in Weimar Germany, to concerns of medical practitioners over the rise of the welfare state and the popularity of nonlicensed healers, culminating in the widespread notion of a "crisis of medicine." Drawing on case studies of, among others, the Danzig surgeon Erwin Liek and the Vienna gynecologist Bernhard Aschner, the article distinguishes between rationalist and neoromantic constitutionalists and aims to demonstrate that antimechanism in constitutional medicine was related to neoromantic tendencies in art and other realms of society, while rationalists were concerned with making German men and women fit for war and the requirements of modern industry.

Types, norms, and normalisation: Hormone research and treatments in Italy, Argentina, and Brazil, c. 1900–50

“…As the evidence showed, not all individuals who were exposed to a germ, for example that of tuberculosis, developed the disease. Infection took root only in those people who were predisposed because of their constitution (Olby, 1994; Timmermann, 2001; Tracy, 1998). According to the advocates of constitutional medicine, the specific constitution, interpreted as the sum of the anatomical and functional characteristics of an individual, played a critical role in pathogenesis.…”

Eine Antwort auf die «Krise der Medizin»? Die Moderne Konstitutionslehre im Krisendiskurs 1925 bis 1933

“…7 Roelcke 2016Schmiedebach 1989;2014;Geiger 2010;Bothe 1991. 8 Hofer 2007Timmermann 2001;Klasen 1984. 9 Die anderen sind «Der Arzt als Biologe, Eugeniker und Rassenhygieniker», «Die Aufwertung der Bedeutung seelischer Faktoren; Psychotherapie und Psychosomatik» und «Wiederentdeckung der hippokratischen Medizin».…”

“…Jahrhundert zum patientenzentrierten Blick der Konstitutionslehre zurückschlug, sollte in den nächsten sechzig Jahren nachhaltig medizinhistorische Darstellungen der Konstitutionslehre prägen -nach 1945 insbesondere vermittelt durch Diepgens «Geschichte der Medizin» (1949Medizin» ( -1955, siehe auch Probst 1982. Ebenfalls kritisch zu dieser Sichtweise: Timmermann 2001, 727-28. 113 Metzger 2016 114 Jaensch mit seiner speziellen konstitutionspathologischen Richtung zähle ich hier nicht auf, da er in seiner Veröffentlichung (Jaensch 1933) die Krise als überwunden darstellt.…”

“…Dazu siehe oben Klasen 1984;Timmermann 1996;2001;Hofer 2007.. Downloaded from Brill.com01/04/2021 01:10:02AM via free access…”

A emergência da biotipologia no Brasil: medir e classificar a morfologia, a fisiologia e o temperamento do brasileiro na década de 1930

“…Investigações históricas têm proposto que os estudos da medicina constitucionalista, nas primeiras décadas do século XX, consistiram em uma reação de alguns médicos clínicos ao reducionismo das práticas médicas a procedimentos laboratoriais, focados não no indivíduo, mas em fatores exteriores como causadores de doenças -como era o caso da microbiologia -, e a abordagens que buscavam uma etiologia única, atenta à localização da doença em órgãos e tecidos específicos e associada a uma ênfase exclusiva na cura (Tracy, 1992;Albrizio, 2007;Timmerman, 2001;Hau, 2003;Lawrence e Weisz, 1998). Os médicos brasileiros que advogavam pela prática da biotipologia pareciam fundamentar-se nessa concepção.…”