The Politics of Medical Translations and its Impact upon Medical Knowledge in the Habsburg Monarchy 1770–1830

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 296-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teodora Daniela Sechel
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Medical Schools ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Medical Translation

This article analyses the politics of medical translation and shows the complexity of knowledge production and circulation in the intercultural and multiethnic contexts of the Habsburg Monarchy. It argues that medical translations, including books, manuals, and brochures, were one of the important tools that contributed to the standardization of medical knowledge and practices in this region. Most of these books were authored by physicians and professors at medical schools in Vienna. They had a great influence upon medical knowledge and practices, thus Vienna was the authority approving what was taught and published. The usage of the same manuals and books implies that more or less the same medical knowledge was shared by the medical practitioners in the Habsburg Monarchy. The medical theories and practices transmitted reflect also the games of influence and power exercised by protomedici and professors at the Vienna University. It was a process of authorization and dissemination of knowledge from the “center” to the provinces.

Magic, Medicine and Authority in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Muscovy: Andreas Engelhardt (d. 1683) and the Role of the Western Physician at the Court of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, 1656-1666

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 399-427
Author(s):  
Robert Collis
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Western Influence ◽  
Folk Remedies ◽  
German Physician

In Early Modern Europe court physicians exerted great influence in service to their royal patrons. These medical practitioners acted as learned conduits, whose knowledge of natural philosophy, which often included occult theories of healing, natural magic and astrology, was able to serve the broad interests of their patrons. Thus, in addition to being charged with maintaining the health of a ruler, physicians were often exploited by monarchs seeking to enhance the general health of their body politic. This case study of the German physician Andreas Engelhardt examines his decade-long service in Moscow between 1656 and 1666 at the court of Aleksei Mikhailovich. This study of Engelhardt’s role at court at a time of increased Western influence in Muscovy aims to reveal how the tsar sought to utilize the learning of his German physician in a variety of ways. Engelhardt not only administered Western medical remedies, including the use of unicorn horns, to the royal family, but was also instructed to ascertain whether various Russian and Siberian folk remedies possessed beneficent qualities. This process of legitimization and containment of medical knowledge coincided with an attempt to suppress the authority of folk healers, thereby reflecting the autocratic nature of Aleksei Mikhailovich’s reign. Furthermore, this article demonstrates that the tsar drew on Engelhardt’s supposed expertise in astrology and divination in order to know how Muscovy would be affected by the appearance of a comet in the winter of 1664-1665.

scholarly journals ‘By Merit Raised to That Bad Eminence’: Christopher Merrett, Artisanal Knowledge, and Professional Reform in Restoration London

2012 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Mauck
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal College ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Experimental Methods ◽  
Alternative Methods ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
Medical Regulation

AbstractThis article examines the career and reform agenda of Christopher Merrett as a means of evaluating the changing conditions of medical knowledge production in late seventeenth-century London. This period was characterised by increasing competition between medical practitioners, resulting from the growing consumer demand for medical commodities and services, the reduced ability of elite physicians to control medical practice, and the appearance of alternative methods of producing medical knowledge – particularly experimental methods. This competition resulted in heated exchanges between physicians, apothecaries, and virtuosi, in which Merrett played an active part. As a prominent member of both the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians, Merrett sought to mediate between the two institutions by introducing professional reforms designed to alleviate competition and improve medical knowledge.These reforms entailed sweeping changes to medical regulation and education that integrated the traditional reliance on Galenic principles with knowledge derived from experiment and artisanal practices. The emphasis Merrett placed on the trades suggests the important role artisanal knowledge played in his efforts to reorganise medicine and improve knowledge of bodily processes.

Epidemics and History: Multiple Approaches to the Subject

2021 ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Dmitriy Mikhel
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
New Generation ◽  
The 19Th Century

The problems of epidemics have increasingly attracted the attention of researchers in recent years. The history of epidemics has its own historiography, which dates to the physician Hippocrates and the historian Thucydides. Up to the 19th century, historians followed their ideas, but due to the progress in medical knowledge that began at that time, they almost lost interest in the problems of epidemics. In the early 20th century, due to the development of microbiology and epidemiology, a new form of the historiography of epidemics emerged: the natural history of diseases which was developed by microbiologists. At the same time, medical history was reborn, and its representatives saw their task as proving to physicians the usefulness of studying ancient medical texts. Among the representatives of the new generation of medical historians, authors who contributed to the development of the historiography of epidemics eventually emerged. By the end of the 20th century, they included many physician-enthusiasts. Since the 1970s, influenced by many factors, more and more professional historians, for whom the history of epidemics is an integral part of the history of society. The last quarter-century has also seen rapid growth in popular historiography of epidemics, made possible by the activation of various humanities researchers and journalists trying to make the history of epidemics more lively and emotional. A great influence on the spread of new approaches to the study of the history of epidemics is now being exerted by the media, focusing public attention on the new threats to human civilization in the form of modern epidemics.

scholarly journals Imparting medical knowledge to pharmaceutical sales force

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 152-154
Author(s):  
Sunil Chaudhry ◽  
Vishwas Sovani
Keyword(s):  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Sales Force ◽  
Sales Representative ◽  
Product Launch ◽  
Medical Terminology ◽  
Medical Department ◽  
Pharmaceutical Sales ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Training Unit ◽  
Marketing Team

Keycustomers of the pharmaceutical industry are qualified medical practitioners. To be able to stand their ground the sales representative needs training about medical terminology, the relevant disease, the molecule being marketed and some competitor information. A short induction could be followed by ongoing refresher training either face to face or online. The medical department has a major role to play here. Product launch training is planned by medical and marketing team based on the feature benefits of the product being launched. The training unit of the medical department of pharma companies are an inseparable part of the whole marketing effort.

scholarly journals Between Party, People, and Profession: The Many Faces of the ‘Doctor’ during the Cultural Revolution

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Gross
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Medical Model ◽  
Rural People ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
The Many ◽  
Levelling Effect ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

During the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–76), Chairman Mao fundamentally reformed medicine so that rural people received medical care. His new medical model has been variously characterised as: revolutionary Maoist medicine, a revitalised form of Chinese medicine; and the final conquest by Western medicine. This paper finds that instead of Mao’s vision of a new ‘revolutionary medicine’, there was a new medical synthesis that drew from the Maoist ideal and Western and Chinese traditions, but fundamentally differed from all of them. Maoist medicine’s ultimate aim was doctors as peasant carers. However, rural people and local governments valued treatment expertise, causing divergence from this ideal. As a result, Western and elite Chinese medical doctors sent to the countryside for rehabilitation were preferable to barefoot doctors and received rural support. Initially Western-trained physicians belittled elite Chinese doctors, and both looked down on barefoot doctors and indigenous herbalists and acupuncturists. However, the levelling effect of terrible rural conditions made these diverse conceptions of the doctor closer during the Cultural Revolution. Thus, urban doctors and rural medical practitioners developed a symbiotic relationship: barefoot doctors provided political protection and local knowledge for urban doctors; urban doctors’ provided expertise and a medical apprenticeship for barefoot doctors; and both counted on the local medical knowledge of indigenous healers. This fragile conceptual nexus had fallen apart by the end of the Maoist era (1976), but the evidence of new medical syntheses shows the diverse range of alliances that become possible under the rubric of ‘revolutionary medicine’.

scholarly journals Reconfiguring health knowledges? Contemporary modes of self-care as ‘everyday fringe medicine’

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 508-523
Author(s):  
Pia Vuolanto ◽  
Harley Bergroth ◽  
Johanna Nurmi ◽  
Suvi Salmenniemi
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Base ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Self Care ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Medical Expertise ◽  
Medical Establishment ◽  
Complex Modes ◽  
Health And Well Being

The contestation of expertise is perhaps nowhere more pronounced than in the field of health and well-being, on which this article focuses. A multitude of practices and communities that stand in contentious relationships with established forms of medical expertise and promote personalised modes of self-care have proliferated across Euro-American societies. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography in three domains – body–mind–spirit therapies, vaccine hesitancy and consumer-grade digital self-tracking – we map such practices through the concept of ‘everyday fringe medicine’. The concept of everyday fringe medicine enables us to bring together various critical health and well-being practices and to unravel the complex modes of contestation and appreciation of the medical establishment that are articulated within them. We find three critiques of the medical establishment – critiques of medical knowledge production, professional practices and the knowledge base – which make visible the complexities related to public understandings of science within everyday fringe medicine.

The state of ethical-legal oaths in UK medical practice today: Is it time to look at standardising?

2016 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 200-202
Author(s):  
RL Atenstaedt
Keyword(s):  
Medical Students ◽  
Medical Practice ◽  
Response Rate ◽  
Medical Schools ◽  
Hippocratic Oath ◽  
The State ◽  
Rite Of Passage ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Electronic Survey ◽  
The Uk

The taking of an ethical-legal oath is a “rite of passage” for many medical practitioners. A 1997 paper noted that half of medical schools in the UK administer an oath. I performed a survey of UK medical schools to see whether these are still used today. An electronic survey was sent to 31 UK medical schools, asking them whether the Hippocratic Oath (in any version) was taken by their medical students; non-respondents were followed up by telephone. Information was obtained from 21 UK medical schools, giving a response rate of 68% (21/31). A total of 18 (86%) institutions use an oath. Ethical-legal oaths are therefore taken in the vast majority of UK medical schools today. However, a great variety are used, and there are advantages in standardisation. My recommendation is that the Standard Medical Oath of the UK (SMOUK) is adopted by all medical schools, and that this is also taken regularly by doctors as part of revalidation.

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