| German medicine in the early nineteenth century is generally perceived as clinically stagnant and immersed in philosophical speculation under the influence of Naturphilosophie, the philosophy of nature developed by F. W. J. Schelling. This picture requires modification, first because no attempt has ever been made to explain why Naturphilosophie found a congenial reception among physicians, and second because the picture oversimplifies a situation that was more varied. Both points can be made through studying medicine's place in the German universities.;The retention of medical education in universities was essential in the subsequent development of medical thought in Germany, for universities served as the primary centers of scholarship (Wissenschaft) as well as centers of higher education in German culture. When university apologists began articulating a new ideology of education making Wissenschaft the centerpiece of education in the 1790s, medical professors soon began identifying their work with this pedagogical program. Consequently, medical faculties began serving both theory and practice, and university professors of medicine were faced with conflicting choices between the identities of physician and scholar.;This dissertation explores three responses made by university professors to the relationship between theory and practice. One group saw medicine as natural philosophy, identifying themselves with other university scholars, and becoming adherents of Schelling's Naturphilosophie. A second group rejected theoretical science as medicine's ultimate purpose, arguing that university education should emphasize preparation for bedside practice. Finally a third group, the members of the Brownian movement, attempted to unify theory and practice by creating a logically rigorous science of healing. By 1820, the efforts to unify medicine had failed, and theory and practice headed in different directions.;University medical education in the eighteenth century was widely criticized as inadequate. Yet unlike France, where education of medical practitioners was largely taken over by other institutions between 1770 and 1800, in Germany it remained a university function. Reforms made at the end of the 1700s brought major changes to medical curricula, particularly in the form of enhanced clinical instruction. For the first time, German universities assumed the responsibility for training effective practitioners, not merely medical savants. |
