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Biomedical subjects

Marion Maria Ruisinger

Publications and source records attributed to Marion Maria Ruisinger.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2005

Misreading pictures: Fabricius Hildanus (1560-1634) and the cure of spinal dislocation.

In 1646, Fabricius Hildanus accompanied his description of a new way to apply a setaceum (seton) in the neck with a nicely carved woodcut. In 1951, this same woodcut was used by an author of the History of Neurological Surgery to illustrate Hildanus's method of "reducing cervical dislocation." In 1997 this striking misreading found its way into the History of Neurosurgery in its Scientific and Professional Contexts. The paper discusses how this ahistoric interpretation was possible and why it was perpetuated for nearly half a century.

Cervical Vertebrae↗
PubMed2005

["Children are, generally, more difficult to cure than adults". Young patients in the consultory correspondence of the early 18th century].

Since Philippe Ariès' History of Childhood scholars have been interested in the history of the sick child in the Early Modern Period. This paper adds one more case study to the current research. It analyses sources connected with the physician and surgeon Lorenz Heister: his handbooks on surgery (1719) and medicine (1744) on the one hand, which reflect the respective therapeutic ideal, and his consultation letters on the other hand, which enable us to have a closer look at Heister's therapeutic practice. It can be shown, albeit with the exception of the lower social classes, that in the case of illness it depended not so much on the age of the sick person than the "style" of the family concerned if expert advice was sought or not. Only one feature depended on age: with the young patients-by-post "surgical" diseases were more common than with adults. It seems that the surgeon's diagnosis "from outside" fitted better to the small patients than the physician's anamnesis-based proceeding.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

[The professor and his student. The correspondence between Lorenz Heister and Christoph Jacob Trew].

Letters were the central medium of communication in the medical scientific community of the 18th century. Professional as well as personal relationships were established among the various correspondents. These relationships constituted the smallest units of communication which contributed to the regional and international scientific network of the Republic of Letters. A correspondence that grew out of a trusted teacher-student relationship could gain an especially intense character both intellectually and personally. This contribution offers an analysis of an example of just such a correspondence. Lorenz Heister (1683--1758), medical professor at the universities of Altdorf and Helmstedt, and his disciple, Christoph Jacob Trew (1695--1769), who became a renowned physician and natural scientist in Nuremberg, communicated in letters to one another over a span of almost forty years. Their correspondence started as a rather asymmetrical dialogue. Over time, however, Heister and Trew came to meet as equals in almost every field of their competence. Their letters reveal a broad spectrum of scientific, organisational, professional, medical and personal issues which formed the basis of a stable and lasting learned correspondence in the age of Enlightenment.

Botany↗
PubMed2004

[Monastery asylum. A contribution to the ethno-psychiatry of Greece].

The history of the mentally ill in Greece, at least from the foundation of the Kingdom of Greece in 1832 until the incorporation of the Ionian Islands in 1864, is without either lunatic asylums or specialised psychiatrists. Instead, it is a history of the intermingling of two psychiatric concepts. On the one hand, the imported "professional psychiatry" supported by government and Western education physicians and, on the other hand, the indigenous (autochthon) "folk psychiatry" supported by the majority of the people and by the Orthodox church. The interaction of both systems resulted in the phenomenon of the Greek "monastery asylum". This paper, based on rich archival material, presents this little-known chapter of Greece psychiatry from the view-point of social history.

Eastern Orthodoxy↗
PubMed2002

Lorenz Heister and the challenge of trepanation: a neurosurgical case study from the 18th century.

In the 18th century, medical practice was essentially based on communication. Cranial trepanation, however, was usually performed on an unconscious person. Here the dialogue ceased. It was the only operation which had to be attempted without the positive consent of the patient. Thus trepanation challenged the surgeon's skill not only with its intricate surgical practice, but also with its unusual social setting. The present paper illustrates possible ways out of the "trap of trepanation" by interweaving two points of view. On the one hand, a general account is given on the basis of surgical publications written by Lorenz Heister and his contemporaries. On the other, the unpublished sources of the Heister correspondence serve to reconstruct the case of Heinrich Wilhelm Bachmann, a German merchant who fell victim to a traffic accident and underwent trepanation in 1753. The case study shows how the physician in charge counterbalanced the patient's inability to communicate by strengthening the remaining network of professionals, and ultimately confirming his decisions by use of the post-mortem.

Craniocerebral Trauma↗