Subject(s)
Physician-Patient Relations , Practice Patterns, Physicians'/history , Europe , Family , History, 17th Century , History, 18th Century , History, 19th Century , Politics , Practice Patterns, Physicians'/organization & administration , Practice Patterns, Physicians'/trends , Religion , ScienceABSTRACT
In his medical diary the physician Johann Christoph Götz from Nuremberg recorded his visits as well as his consiliary correspondence. The case of Count Ernst of Metternich who dwelled in Ratisbon and suffered from a bladder stone is particularly well documented. Thus, the source which is focusing the doctor permits to take a look at a section of the medical market managed by the patient around 1720. Besides the Medicus ordinarius Metternich's specific network, the patient's network, comprised quite a number of local or transmigratory doctors, surgeons or lay healers as well as (former) invalids, whom he consulted in direct interviews or--in the case of Götz--by letter. The example reveals in which way the medical market was determined by the ego-network. Analyzing this section of the market, which becomes visible through the interaction between Metternich and Götz, one can profit from Pierre Bourdieu's conception of different forms of capital. Financial capital, the exchange of goods or services against money, seems of minor importance. In lieu thereof, different cohesions become obvious, in which social, cultural and symbolical capital could become decisive for the doctor's as well as for the patient's actions and assertive for the market.
Subject(s)
General Practice/history , Physician-Patient Relations , Germany , History, 18th Century , Physician's Role/historyABSTRACT
Contemporary sources reveal little information about the social conditions of Jewish medical practitioners in 14th and 15th century Munich. Due to the concurrence on the local "medical market" none of the five Jewish doctors named in the documents could practice for a longer period in teh late medieval city. Unlike their co-religionists in several cities of Westphalia, where physicians and surgeons were lacking, no Jewish medical practitioner was ever employed by the Magistrate of Munich. Thus, all of them seemed to have hoped for an employment at the court of the Bavarian Dukes. But with the exception of Jacob of Landshut, physician to the Bavarian Dukes Steven III. and Albrecht III. during the second half of the 14th century, whose medical career and social environment can roughly be retraced, no Jewish doctor seems to have been in service of the court for a longer time.
