[On Conditioned Rats and Stressed Workmen : Rudolf Baumann and the Discourse About Stress and Environment in the GDR]. / Von konditionierten Ratten und gestressten Werktätigen : Rudolf Baumann und der Stress- und Umweltdiskurs in der DDR.

The emergence of cardiovascular diseases from stress, i.e. psychosocial pressure, was a constitutive element in the international medical discourse of the 1960s and 1970s. This article describes an East German variant of the stress discourse, developed by Rudolf Baumann and his associates at the Institute for cortico-visceral pathology and therapy in Berlin-Buch. The group sought to develop a genuinely materialist approach to the problem of psychosocially caused diseases, as well as ways of therapy and prevention suited to a socialist health system. At the same time, it was constantly drawing on Western concepts and practices. By examining this project in international context, congruences and differences between Eastern and Western perceptions of the stressful effects of industrial society are worked out. Furthermore, the article discusses that the concept of stress implied ambitious programs for social prevention and therapy, the realization of which in both political systems was constrained by the social reality.

Pedigrees of madness: the study of heredity in nineteenth and early twentieth century psychiatry.

This article discusses the development of the statistical methods employed by psychiatrists to study heredity as a causative factor of mental diseases. It argues that psychiatric asylums and clinics were the first institutions in which human heredity became the object of systematic research. It also highlights the different concepts of heredity prevalent in the psychiatric community. The first of four parts traces how heredity became a central category of asylum statistics in the first half of the nineteenth century. The second part deals with attempts to introduce new methods of surveying in order to generate more precise data about psychopathological inheritance in the 1860s and 1870s. The third part discusses how, by the end of the nineteenth century, a widespread discontent with the results of asylum statistics led to an increasing interest in the use of family studies. Finally, the fourth part examines the impact of Mendelian theory on psychiatric statistics in the early twentieth century.

Genetics as a modernization program: biological research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes and the political economy of the Nazi State.

During the Third Reich, the biological institutes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWG, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft) underwent a substantial reorganization and modernization. This paper discusses the development of projects in the fields of biochemical genetics, virus research, radiation genetics, and plant genetics that were initiated in those years. These cases exemplify, on the one hand, the political conditions for biological research in the Nazi state. They highlight how leading scientists advanced their projects by building close ties with politicians and science-funding organizations and companies. On the other hand, the study examines how the contents of research were shaped by, and how they contributed to, the aims and needs of the political economy of the Nazi system. This paper therefore aims not only to highlight basic aspects of scientific development under Nazism, but also to provide general insights into the structure of the Third Reich and the dynamics of its war economy.

Molding national research systems: the introduction of penicillin to Germany and France.

In our historical imagination, penicillin plays the role of the good sister of the atomic bomb. It epitomizes the success of the U.S. scientific mobilization and the emergence of modem biomedicine. This chapter discusses the fate of penicillin in France and Germany, comparing the reactions of the two countries to the antibiotic challenge under restricted conditions. The comparison centers on the scientific and industrial practices that created penicillin. It also sheds light on the professional styles, forms of expertise, and political resources that helped shape the meanings and uses of the antibiotic. The French section recounts how the Pasteur Institute and the military administration organized penicillin research and production during 1945-1947. The alliance between the two has roots in the highly peculiar political and social climate of the liberation and in the biotechnological tradition of the Pasteur Institute. The German section focuses on the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biochemistry. The study of the institute, which worked closely with a pharmaceutical company, features the interplay between academic chemists and industry, while providing insights into the research organization under National Socialism.