So I’ve read just over a quarter of Timothy Lenoir’s discourse on the revolution of institutional medicine in Germany during the 19th century. It has a lot to do with changing of philosophy, over a very short time really, between two generations. The first boasting individuals like Felix du Bois-Reymond, advocate of Kantian philosophy, the second generation boasting his son, Emil du Bois-Reymond, who departed from his father’s philosophies in favour of Fichte’s humanist approach.
Christ I can barely remember any of it without looking at my notes. There was also a guy called.. Helmholtz, whose father was also a member of the first generation. Helmholtz was a volunteer in the Prussian force which fought Napoleon and strongly desired a unified German nation, not just a disparate collection of small states. He professed his opinions to his students at his Potsdam Gymnasium, but was censured on the eve of revolution because of these overly-liberal notions. He threatened the stability of the old order, that to which men like his father held.
Lenoir’s discussion of du Bois-Reymond and Helmholtz aims to describe their roles in the formation of medical institution in the nascent industrial power that was the Germanic lands in the 1800s. Newly available tools like the microscope seemed to push science in the direction of laboratory work, which in turn helped to create a middle-class of German bourgeoise intellectuals such as du Bois-Reymond and Helmholtz.
I’m gonna try and add to this once I’ve been through the workshop ordeal.
