[Looking for the "sugar girl". Sexuality and partnership in the Journal "Der Diabetiker" (1951-1970)]. / Auf der Suche nach dem "Zucker-Mädchen"-- Sexualität und Partnerschaft im Journal "Der Diabetiker" (1951-1970).

This paper examines discussions of intimacy and sexuality between diabetes mellitus patients and their physicians in West Germany after 1945 and considers their effect on the patient-physician relationship. As shown in the Journal Der Diabetiker, founded in 1951 as the organ of the Deutsche Diabetikerbund (German Diabetics Association), diabetic patients not only claimed acceptance of their own needs and attitudes but also, as early as 1956, brought the taboo subject of sexuality out into the open. By this means patients took issue with their physicians' traditional eugenic ideas still prevailing after 1945. With their initiative, which was soon embraced by diabetologists, they changed both the treatment and the therapeutic concepts of the disease itself. In terms of the theories of sociologist Richard Münch this account demonstrates the early democratization of medicine in West Germany within the permanent cycle of criticism and innovation.

[Physicians, journalists and patients as public spheres in West Germany. The example of the journal "Der Spiegel" (1947-1955)]. / Arzte, Journalisten und Patienten als Akteure von Teilöffentlichkeiten in Westdeutschland. Eine Analy- se am Beispiel des Nachrichtenmagazins "Der Spie- gel" (1947-1955).

Until today, it is still unexplored, how modern (scientific) medicine in Western Germany could negotiate its social position in the public sphere and how it was represented in the media. This paper will contribute to the analysis of this problem by investigating all entries on "medicine" in the journal "Der Spiegel" during the period 1947 to 1955, when Western Germany was built up. It is possible to show that the journal was a market place where specific public spheres as e.g. physicians, patients or journalists could discuss medical topics. This way, on the one hand, "Der Spiegel" grasped contemporary notions on medicine and the medical market, which made itself felt in later years of Western Germany. On the other hand, the journal itself molded the discussions about a scientific medicine, which was to be not only innovative but also democratic.

Caught between the old and the new--Walther Straub (1874-1944), the question of drug receptors, and the rise of modern pharmacology.

This paper deals with an important development of scientific pharmacology, focusing on the reaction of the German pharmacologist Walther Straub to the receptor concept, which was a new approach to explain the binding of drugs to cells in the young discipline of pharmacology after 1900. The article analyzes how Straub as an important representative of his field between 1900 and 1944 was influenced by nineteenth-century thinking, and how he developed a rival physical theory to combat the receptor concept. Straub is seen as a man of transition, who on the one side tackled a core question of drug research with modern experimental methods, but on the other side was hardly able to accept new results in chemistry.

The emergence of the drug receptor theory.

Today, the concept of specific receptors for drugs and transmitters lies at the very heart of pharmacology. Less than one hundred years ago, this novel idea met with considerable resistance in the scientific community. To mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of John Newport Langley, one of the founders of the receptor concept, we highlight his most important observations, and those of Paul Ehrlich and Alfred Joseph Clark, who similarly helped to establish the receptor theory of drug action.