Anatomical Mercury: Changing Understandings of Quicksilver, Blood, and the Lymphatic System, 1650-1800.

The use of mercury as an injection mass in anatomical experiments and preparations was common throughout Europe in the long eighteenth century, and refined mercury-injected preparations as well as plates of anatomical mercury remain today. The use and meaning of mercury in related disciplines such as medicine and chemistry in the same period have been studied, but our knowledge of anatomical mercury is sparse and tends to focus on technicalities. This article argues that mercury had a distinct meaning in anatomy, which was initially influenced by alchemical and classical understandings of mercury. Moreover, it demonstrates that the choice of mercury as an anatomical injection mass was deliberate and informed by an intricate cultural understanding of its materiality, and that its use in anatomical preparations and its perception as an anatomical material evolved with the understanding of the circulatory and lymphatic systems. By using the material culture of anatomical mercury as a starting point, I seek to provide a new, object-driven interpretation of complex and strongly interrelated historiographical categories such as mechanism, vitalism, chemistry, anatomy, and physiology, which are difficult to understand through a historiography that focuses exclusively on ideas.

Medical Machines as Symbols of Science?: Promoting Electrotherapy in Victorian Canada.

This article tackles a common assumption in the historiography of medical technology, that new medical instruments in the nineteenth century were universally seen as symbols of the scientific nature of medical practice. The article examines the strategies used by Jenny Trout, the first woman in Canada licensed to practice medicine, and J. Adams, a homeopathic physician, to advertise electrotherapy to the residents of Toronto in the 1870s and 1880s. While electrotherapy involved complex electrical technology, the doctors in this study did not draw attention to their instruments as proof of the legitimacy of their practice. In fact the technology is almost entirely absent from their promotional texts. While both doctors wanted their practice to be associated with scientific medicine, neither saw their instruments as immediately or obviously symbolic of science.

[Similia Similibus Curentur: revisiting historical aspects of homeopathy nine years later]. / Similia Similibus Curentur: revisitando aspectos históricos da homeopatia nove anos depois.

Revising earlier conceptual misconstructions and delving deeper into the historical debate on the origins of homeopathy, this text returns to discussions initiated in the article "Simila Similibus Curentur: historical notes on homeopathic medicine" (1997). Research has been based on two main sources: ancient texts--Corpus Hippocraticum and works by Galen, Paracelsus, and Hahnemann--and the studies of commentators. In the nine years since original publication, previously explored content has undergone gradual revision, some points have been corrected, and discussions have developed further, lending substantially greater maturity to earlier positions. 'Born' in the eighteenth century yet rooted in the very origins of Western medicine, homeopathy is endeavoring to blossom in the twenty-first century as a specialty that wants to be autonomous but that needs the legitimacy of 'traditional' medical science.

Francis Crick, cross-worlds influencer: A narrative model to historicize big bioscience.

The essay is an empirical case study of famed British scientist Francis Crick. Viewing him as a 'cross-worlds influencer' who was moreover dedicated to a cause, I have tried to understand how these two characteristics influenced the trajectory of his long career and how they shaped his contributions to the diverse research fields in which he was active, and concluded that these characteristics reconfigure Crick's career into a coherent whole. First, I identify a major thread running through Crick's career: helping organise 'un-disciplined' new research fields, and show that his successive choices were not serendipitous but motivated by what he construed as a crusade against 'vitalism': anti-vitalism was a defining driver of his career. I then examine how Crick put his skills as a crossworlds influencer to the service of his cause, by helping organise his chosen fields of intervention. I argue that his activities as a cross-worlds influencer were an integral part of his way of 'doing science' and that his contributions to science, neuroscience in particular, should be re-evaluated in this light. This leads me to advance a possible strategy for historians to investigate big bioscience fields. Following Abir-Am, I propose to trace their genealogies back to the fluctuating semi-institutional gatherings and the institutional structures that sustained them. My research on Crick supports the view that such studies can bring insights into the question of why the contours of contemporary big bioscience endeavours have come to be shaped the way they are. Further, the essay provides a heuristic device for approaching these enquiries: 'follow the cross-worlds influencers' who worked to build and organise these semi-institutional gatherings and institutional structures.

[Remarks on homeopathy and therapeutic nihilism in the medical biography of Józef Dietl]. / Uwagi o homeopatii i nihilizmie terapeutycznym w lekarskiej biografii Józefa Dietla.

Józef Dietl was for a time interested in homeopathy that became a germ for progressive turn in the conventional medicine in the second half of the 19th century and it have even a certain influence on Dietl's views. The paper tries to trace this influence in the therapeutic nihilism attributed to Dietl and indicates that in the Polish historiography there has been a tendency to pass over in silence the homeopathic train in the medical image of the eminent personage.

[One of Avicenna's electuaries: or on the difficulty of identifying the ingredients of ancient medications]. / Un électuaire d'Avicenne; ou De la difficulté d'identifier les constituants de médicaments antiques.

In view of the many thousands of existing plant varieties, it is sometimes difficult to determine which particular medicinal plant has been used in antiquity and during the middle ages. Scanty descriptions transmit often insufficient information to later generations of physicians and pharmacists trying to duplicate a prescribed medication. In the article a composite medication on xyloaloesbasis, taken from the Canon of Avicenna is used as an example to show the difficulties connected with the understanding of an ancient text. Quarrels more than a century ago between expert translators of old Arabic scientific works further illustrate the difficulties encountered with the interpretatiion of such texts. The example chosen provides furthermore an insight to the formerly neglected influence of old Indian medical tradition and gives an additional indication of the identity of Avicenna's ingredients.

Aristotle in the medical works of Arnau de Vilanova (c. 1240-1311).

Arnau de Vilanova, one of the most important physicians of the Latin Middle Ages, was familiar with the vast majority of Aristotle's works that had been translated into Latin. He used a wide range of them, such as the Organon--the introductory books on logic - and the natural philosophical books, which cover a different branches of knowledge. He used Aristotle as an authority, trying to reconcile him with the field of medicine as practiced in his time. In so going, he defined a new theoretical model of medicine by the standards of natural philosophy, while continuing to emphasize the boundaries between medicine and natural philosophy. This paper represents to a first attempt to investigate the Aristotelian quotations in the medical writings of Arnau de Vilanova.

Vital forces and organization: philosophy of nature and biology in Karl Friedrich Kielmeyer.

The historical literature on German life science at the end of the 18th century has tried to rehabilitate eighteenth century vitalism by stressing its difference from Naturphilosophie. Focusing on the work of Karl Friedrich Kielmeyer this paper argues that these positions are based on a historiographical bias and that the clear-cut boundary between German vitalism and Naturphilosophie is historically unattested. On the contrary, they both belong to the process of conceptual genealogy that contributed to the project of a general biology. The latter emerged as the science concerned with the laws that regulate the organization of living nature as a whole. The focus on organization was, at least partially, the result of the debate surrounding the notion of "vital force", which originated in the mid-eighteenth century and caused a shift from a regulative to a constitutive understanding of teleology.

[History of homeopathy in Franconia]. / Zur Geschichte der Homöopathie in Franken.

The research for this paper was initiated by an Erlangen exhibition project on the history of homeopathy on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Samuel Hahnemann's birth in 2005. The founder of homeopathic medicine received his doctor of medicine degree at the University of Erlangen in 1779. As Hahnemann spent only four months in Erlangen, homeopathic physicians, patients and apothecaries in the region from Hahnemann's time until today were investigated. The aim was to provide a concise survey of the general problems in the history of homeopathy derived from regional cases which could be illustrated by objects suitable for an exhibition. Thus, the article is not only about the history of homeopathy in Northern Bavaria (Franconia), but also about a shift in the use of media and about doing science the other way round, viz. by starting at the presentation and ending with the sources. The outcome of the project was that most of the crucial topics of the history of homeopathy could be covered on a micro-historic scale: trials, pharmacy, hospital, patients, university, National Socialism.

The historiography of homoeopathy in Germany.

Homoeopathy originated in Germany. The same applies, by the way, to many other branches of alternative medicine, e.g. mesmerism, homoeopathy, hydropathy, anthroposophical medicine. This historical fact provides more than just an excuse to start with a survey of the historiography of homeopathy in German-speaking countries. The first part of the paper focuses on 19th-century attempts at a history of homoeopathy, reflecting the wish to establish a corporate identity among the adherents of the new art of healing. Early examples are books by prominent homoeopathic doctors on the origins and recent history of homoeopathy in German lands. A look at their motives will give us a notion of the response of the fringe medicine to a wide ranger of attacks of orthodox physicians and medical historians who saw progress in the field of the new "scientific" medicine only and who shared the values and ideologies of the medical establishment. The second part of the paper - which covers the period from the turn of the century to the end of World War II - examines the first attempts by professional medical historians as well as amateurs to write about the rise and fall of homeopathy in Germany. The third part is then centred on recent medical historiography on this subject.

[Directions in the theoretical justification of treatment in German medicine of the first half of the 19th century]. / Kierunki teoretycznego uzasadniania terapii w medycynie niemieckiej pierwszej polowy xix stulecia.

The study presents the contemporary state of research in the historiography of medicine, with regard to the main currents in the theoretical justification of treatment in German medicine of the first half of the 19th century. Researchers distinguish three main currents: vitalist-eclectic, dynamic, and the current based on the precepts of German philosophy of nature (Naturphilosophie), especially the approach of F. Schelling. The article presents the underlying assumptions of each of the three currents; it presents their main representatives as well. The authors also analyses the background for the reception in Germany of medical theories and doctrines of a non-materialist character, making reference to factors of a socio-cultural nature.

[Homeopathic collections at the Institute of Medical History of Stuttgart's R. Bosch Foundation]. / Zbiory homeopatyczne Instytutu Historii Medycyny Fundacji Roberta Boscha w Stuttarcie.

The author contains the history, review and characteristics of the homeopathic collections kept at the Institute of Medical History in Stuttgart. This is the legacy of Samuel and Melania Hahnemann and other German homeopathic physicians. It encompasses printed texts, documentation of diseases, personal manuscripts and elements of 'homeopathic material culture'. The review of the collections described in the article has been arranged in such a way as to serve as a guide for those researching this area.

[Study on Shi Zhenduo's Ben cao bu (Supplemented materia medica)].

Being called "precursor of pharmacy imported from the west" by Fan Xingzhun, a famous medical historian, Ben cao bu was lost in China. It has been found outside China recently. This article deals with the author, blockprinting edition, contents of the book and makes a comparison with its texts cited in Ben cao gang mu shi yi (Supplemented Compendium of Materia Medica). It also evaluates the practical significance of this book as an early dissemination of pharmacy imported from the west.