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.

[Lessons from the history of therapy--therapeutic optimism and its pitfalls]. / Lehren aus der Therapiegeschichte--der therapeutische Optimismus und seine Tücken.

If we are to help patients effectively, our understanding of diseases and our therapeutic potential should, again and again, just be somewhat better than they actually are. Throughout the ages this has been the fundamental situation in medical practice. The response on the physician's part has nearly always been an attitude of therapeutic optimism. At all times physicians--and patients also--have relied on therapeutic principles and remedies based on professional experience and medical theory. In conjunction with the (generally recognized) healing powers of nature, and of (unrecognized) autosuggestion, this has led to many satisfactory and even remarkable cures. Examples from antiquity to the 19th century are quoted, and the snags of an over-optimistic attitude become evident, viz. a rational therapy is no better than the underlying pathogenetic theory; exaggerated therapeutic activity may cause useless torment to the patient (a point already made by Hippocrates); the optimistic physician or the enthusiastic pioneer of a new remedy may be blind to toxic side effects or the development of addiction. To sum up: therapeutic optimism is fine--but don't overdo it!