Internal medicine in the United States and Germany: mutual influences from 1870 to today

Over the past 140 years, the close academic and clinical interactions in Internal Medicine between German-speaking countries and the United States have been through three distinct stages. From 1870 until the First World War, German medical research, teaching, and university organization served as a model for U.S. medical schools and practice. However, after World War I, medical education reforms were implemented in the U.S., and due also to radical economic and political changes at home, German medicine lost its pioneering role. Furthermore, many scientists and clinicians were forced to emigrate in the face of racial and political persecution in Germany and Austria. Since the Second World War, American medicine has grown further to become the world leader in research, training, and clinical practice. The earlier trend of American physicians studying abroad was thus reversed, with many of today's foremost German physicians completing clinical and research training in the United States.

["On a strictly scientific basis.” German constitutional medicine establishing itself, 1911–1921]

In the years between 1911 and 1921, modern constitutional medicine established itself as an interdisciplinary research program in German-speaking countries. Untouched by later holistic interpretations and still far from the ,,crisis of medicine“ of the late 1920s early constitutional medicine was very attractive due to its scientific self-characterisation. Thus, it became influential across the medical disciplines. This paper examines history and subject matter of German modern constitutional medicine in its first decade, starting in 1911, the year constitutional medicine was first publicly discussed by the Wiesbaden congress for internal medicine, including its development during World War I and closing with the first textbooks for medical students in 1921.

[History of the 4th Department of Internal Medicine of the First Faculty of Medicine at Charles University and the General University Hospital in Prague]

In 2015, the doctors and nurses of the 4th Department of Internal Medicine of the First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University and the General University Hospital in Prague celebrated the 70th anniversary of its founding. The article summarizes the clinics contribution to the field of internal medicine, and particularly to angiology, hepatogastroenterology and lipidology. It comments the clinics current activities and the possibilities of its further development. Attention is also paid to the tradition of high ethical and professional standards of medical care in accordance with the norms established by the clinic's founder, prof. MUDr. Bohumil Prusík.

John H. Laragh MD: The Man

John has been variously described as an inspiration, mentor, teacher, friend (fiend--a typo?), charming, warm, enthusiastic, visionary scientist, pioneer, innovator, egalitarian, and golfer. At other times he was called street fighter, competitor, and some unprintables. I believe he was all of these, and more. Join us in celebrating the life of Dr. John Laragh.

[Medical anthropology in academies: on the criticism of natural science medicine exemplified by Viktor von Weizsäcker]

Viktor von Weizsäcker (1886-1957) founded his concept of medical anthropology as a clinician educated in internal medicine and neurology. He tried to broaden natural scientific medicine psychosomatically focussing on the "sick human". The natural scientific approach would exclude subjectivity, and therefore he propagated the "introduction of the subject' (Einführung des Subjekts) into the life sciences. His own sensory physiological experiments and Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis inspired him essentially since the 1920s. In his main work Der Gestaltkreis (gestalt circle) published in 1940 he stressed the "entity of perceiving and moving" (Einheit von Wahrnehmen und Bewegen) in regard to relevant aspects of medicine. In 1932, Weizsäcker became a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, whose president he was from 1947 till 1949; 1942 he became a member of the Leopoldina. Primarily his merits as a neurologist were highly appreciated. His medical anthropology was not relevant for his election by the two academies. Nevertheless, there was a certain repudiation against the objectivistic and materialistic Weltanschauung within the scientific community. So, Paracelsus and Goethe were highly estimated as natural philosophical guides for own conceptions. This was especially evident for the circle around Wilhelm Troll and Karl Lothar Wolf in Halle, both members of the Leopoldina, who were fascinated by Goethe's concept of "Gestalt". Weizsäcker's lecture on "Gestalt und Zeit" in Halle in 1942 fitted in the concept of those natural scientists.

[A reading of Foucault's "The Birth of the Clinic"]

The starting point for Foucault's book was his wide reading of French medical literature from late 18th and early 19th centuries. He showed how the concept of disease changed profoundly during that period of great societal changes. Foucault's protagonists in the book were the French doctors Pinel, Bichat, Laënnec and Broussais. Here, short biographies and summaries of their works will be presented in the medical and historical context and together with extracts of Foucault's text.