Dear Hmadness readers,

Two articles published in the Medizinhistorisches Journal may be of interest to you. The first is titled “Psychoses as Trauma Sequelae in the Discourse of West German Postwar Psychiatry” by Peter Theiss-Abendroth, and the second is “‘Nötiger Unterricht derer kranckheiten menschlichen Leibes sowohl innerlich alß eußerlich zusammengetragen’: A Manuscript (1710) by Johann Jacob Döbelius (1674–1743)” by Nils Hansson and Marie-Isabelle Schwarzburger.

Here are the abstracts of these articles, as published on the journal’s website:

Psychoses as Trauma Sequelae in the Discourse of West German Postwar Psychiatry

“When faced with the task to assess survivors of Nazi persecution for their compensation claims after World War II, German psychiatrists found themselves conceptually rather ill-prepared. For decades, the doctrine of unlimited resilience of the healthy brain (i. e. subject) had prevailed. These obstacles were even higher in the assessment of psychotic individuals as the paradigm of endogeneity prohibited the influence of environmental factors on the development of psychotic disorders. This paper traces the emergence of a new theory of trauma sequelae including psychotic features, developed by a small group of pioneering West German psychiatrists, together with their emigrated colleagues, in the 1950s and 1960s. It investigates the pool of variant concepts dating back from the lively debate in the 1920s and the gradual reacceptance of phenomenological and psychodynamic elements 40 years later, but also the underlying reasons for the widespread resistance in the scientific community. It turns out that not only medically oriented nosological systematics, but also a traditional form of knowledge production reached its limits”.

Nötiger Unterricht derer kranckheiten menschlichen Leibes sowohl innerlich alß eußerlich zusammengetragen : Ein Manuskript (1710) von Johann Jacob Döbelius (1674–1743)

“During the heyday of Swedish hegemonic ambitions in the Baltic region in the 17th and 18th centuries, German physicians moved to Sweden with conspicuous frequency. There, they held positions as professors at universities and as personal physicians at court. This essay describes a manuscript written by the German-Swedish physician Johann Jacob Döbelius or Johann Jakob von Döbeln (1674-1743): “Nötiger Unterricht derer kranckheiten menschlichen Leibes sowohl innerlich als eußerlich zusammengetragen”, today kept at the Charité. Through his work as a professor of medicine and rector at Lund University, physician in the Swedish army, member of the Stockholm Collegium Medicum and his connections to the royal court, as well as his entrepreneurial activities as a supplier to the military, Döbelius was one of the most influential representatives of German physicians in Sweden. He began writing the manuscript “Nötiger Unterricht” shortly after his Lund appointment in March 1710. As far as is known today, the work was neither printed nor otherwise reproduced. Further research aims at reconstructing the various sources Döbelius took into consideration while preparing the manuscript”.