[Historical aspects concerning the symptom of itch in the German-speaking region (1850-1939)]. / Medizinhistorische Aspekte zum Symptom "Pruritus" im deutschsprachigem Raum (1850-1939).

Since the establishment of dermatology as an independent discipline of medicine in the middle of the 19th century, pruritus or itch has been a subject of research. The goals were to discover the etiology of pruritus, to develop useful therapies and to achieve a classification within the system of skin diseases. Looking at historical aspects of pruritus demonstrates just how difficult it has been to approach this problem. The difficulties even influence present day pruritus research. For example, there is no definite international standard of pruritus. Etiology-oriented classifications have dominated, but have recently been supplemented by a clinical classification.

[About Itching and scabies. Pruritus in medical history--from ancient world to the French revolution]. / Uber Jucken und Krätze. Pruritus im Lauf der Medizingeschichte--von der Antike bis zur Französischen Revolution.

Pruritus (itching) as a disease state and especially as a disease symptom has been object of medical and scientific descriptions and examinations in all epochs since the antiquity and in different cultural periods. Antiquity was dominated by observations and descriptions but during the course of medical history and particularly since the establishment of dermatology, more and more emphasis has been placed on classification and etiologic research.

[Motivation or burden?--Illness and health in the elderly from the historical perspective]. / Lust oder Last?--Alterskrankheit und Altersgesundheit in historischer Perspektive.

Medical theories and practices concerning illness and health in old age as well as several aspects of society that do influence the aging process are described from a historical perspective integrating classical antiquity, middle ages, and modern times. From the present state of research it is distinguished between "primary illnesses in old age" and chronical diseases which might principally also begin in younger ages but take a different course in old age. Even if the frequency of disease and multimorbidity is increasing, negative stereotypes of the aging process have to be invalidated. Advances in medical sciences are a good pre-condition for increasing physical and mental health in old age.

Malaria and World War II: German malaria experiments 1939-45.

The epidemiological and pharmacological fight against malaria and German malaria research during the Nazi dictatorship were completely under the spell of war. The Oberkommando des Heeres (German supreme command of the army) suffered the bitter experience of unexpected high losses caused by malaria especially at the Greek front (Metaxes line) but also in southern Russia and in the Ukraine. Hastily raised anti-malaria units tried to teach soldiers how to use the synthetic malaria drugs (Plasmochine, Atebrine) properly. Overdoses of these drugs were numerous during the first half of the war whereas in the second half it soon became clear that it would not be possible to support the army due to insufficient quantities of plasmochine and atebrine. During both running fights and troop withdrawals at all southern and southeastern fronts there was hardly any malaria prophylaxis or treatment. After war and captivity many soldiers returned home to endure heavy malaria attacks. In German industrial (Bayer, IG-Farben) and military malaria laboratories of the Heeres-Sanitäts-Akademie (Army Medical Academy) the situation was characterised by a hasty search for proper dosages of anti-malaria drugs, adequate mechanical and chemical prophylaxis (Petroleum, DDT, and other insecticides) as well as an anti-malaria vaccine. Most importantly, large scale research for proper atebrine and plasmochine dosages was conducted in German concentration camps and mental homes. In Dachau Professor Claus Schilling tested synthetic malaria drugs and injected helpless prisoners with high and sometimes lethal doses. Since the 1920s he had been furiously looking for an anti-malaria vaccine in Italian mental homes and from 1939 he continued his experiments in Dachau. Similar experiments were also performed in Buchenwald and in a psychiatric clinic in Thuringia, where Professor Gerhard Rose tested malaria drugs with mentally ill Russian prisoners of war. Schilling was put to death for his criminal research in 1946, Rose was condemned to lifelong imprisonment in 1947, though, not for his malaria research but for his dreadful experiments with epidemic typhus sera which he also had performed in concentration camps and with prisoners of war in Russia.

Malaria and colonialism in the German colonies New Guinea and the Cameroons. Research, control, thoughts of eradication.

German malaria research during the colonial period took place between medical and political interests. In the field of zoological and clinical research of malaria Germany was not a pioneer. Nevertheless, Robert Koch forced by impressive Italian results tried to participate in malaria research on the field of acquired malaria immunity and by optimizing the therapeutic doses of quinine in German New Guinea. In the German Cameroons, on the other hand, the fight against malaria was completely dominated by racial and political arguments. The paper tries to shed light on this dichotomy, which turned out to be not very productive.

[Not Available]. / "Und setzet eure Worte nicht auf schrauben." Medizinische semiotik vom ende des 18. bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts - Gegenstand und Forschung.

There is no doubt that medical semiotics are having a revival at the moment. Different aspects of yesterday's and today's interest in semiotics and in the historical interpretation of signs of disease in the context of theory and history of medicine can be illuminated: their deciphering as the history of the sign in medicine by historic science, their overestimation by philosophy during the Age of Enlightenment, their reduction to a phenomenology of medicine and natural science during the first half of the 19th century and their transformation to medical diagnostics since the middle of the 19th century and recently even their functionalization as methodical instrument within the history of science. The following will show the change in meaning of medical semiotics. Modern development and especially the transition to medicine, based on natural science, will be emphasized.

[The nature of hospitals and hospital review in the late Middle Ages and in early modern times]. / Spitalwesen und Spitalkritik im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit.

The paper is to point out some characteristic facts on the medieval christian and early modern hospital, its hygienic situation, and its critique. Light will be thrown on the unhealthy effects of keeping cattle in the medieval town, on its problems with water supply and the removal of feces, on the challenges of pestilence and leprosy, and finally on the hygienic state of the early modern European hospital. The source for that will be the didactic picaresque novel "Landstörtzer: Gusman von Alfarche oder Picaro genannt" (1615) by the Jesuit pupil Aegidius Albertinus (1560-1620). Albertinus' novel shows that the early modern hospital sometimes was far from being a clean place, and that someone could catch something like a gastrointestinal disease or even the worse more easily in a hospital than elsewhere.