Zeitpfeile,Zeitfaltungen und Diskursanalyse: zu Kontinuitäten der Imaginationslehre

Time Lines, Folded Time, and Discourse Analysis: Continuities of Maternal Imagination. Focusing on a discourse‐oriented history of knowledge, this article deals with the relation between continuity and time. It will discuss concepts of linear and homogenous time and problematize a one‐sided focus on discontinuity and rupture in discourse analyses. After examining notions of continuity, discontinuity, and temporality in the work of Michel Foucault, I will ask how continuous elements can be theorized both as instruments and objects of research, without adopting a linear concept of time. Thus, Michel Serres' concept of folded time will be presented, because it implies a multiple, heterogenous and non‐linear temporality and entails both continuous and discontinuous entities. Thereby relations of power should be considered as factors influencing the shape of the folding. In this way, folded time can serve as a useful tool for discourse analysis, enabling to examine specific and local continuities that vary in different discursive formations. To give an example, I will briefly turn to the concept of women's imagination in pregnancy. According to most historical analyses, this concept declined in the middle of the 18^th century and persisted afterwards only as an outdated remainder in folk knowledge. Nevertheless, a closer examination reveals that knowledge on imagination was actively produced in medical advice literature and some scientific discourses until the first decades of the 20^th century. This demonstrates that an overemphasis both on rupture and on the timeline of academic medicine might conceal continuous elements and the folded time of specific knowledge formations.     

Verzeitlichungs- und Historisierungstendenzen in der frühen Geologie und Paläontologie

Steno described in 1669 geological sections which were interpreted as the result of a series of earlier events. Steno used actuogeological methods. This was the first step towards temporalizing nature. Steno was succeeded by a lot of other researchers from different European countries. It is amazing to see, that “actualism” was widespread during the 18th century. The next step was the discovery that fossils are extinct beings (Ray, Hooke and others). Using methods of comparing anatomy W. Hunter (forerunner of Cuvier) could prove in 1769 that the Mastodon is an extinct vertebrate. The work of Soulavie in France (1780) is stressed. He held in his hand the key for solving the problem of index-fossils. About 1800 the importance of fossils for stratigraphy and describing a history of the earth was recognized. Theories and hypotheses were needed to explain the fossil documents (strange shells in older strata and higher developed mammals in younger strata). All these theories couldn't propose a feasible mechanism for the change of beings during the history of the earth. But it could be said, that all fossils proove a history of life and the earth i. e. a progressive development in one sense, a development which is not reversible.     

Prestige und gemeiner Nutzen Universitätsgründungen im deutschen Spätmittelalter

The medieval German university entered the picture late but thereby as a new and third type of university in Europe besides Paris and Bologna: This was the ruler-controlled ‘Four-Faculties-University’, which powerfully integrated the socially very different associations of liberal arts, theology, medicine, and law. From the beginning on the ‘German type’ was tied to the princely founder, his court, his dynasty, and his territory (in some cases also to the municipal leadership), and it was politically subjected to his will. All foundations produced prestige and dynastic need at first rather than public need (utilitas publica), respectively the advancing of common learned education and science. The great royal dynasties of Luxembourg, Habsburg, and Wittelsbach began founding in Prague, Vienna, and Heidelberg. Up to 1506 all the seven prince electors, some more important princes and big towns of the Holy Roman Empire had their university or had relations to a university. Public need was rather an indirect result: university students utilized surprisingly strongly the possibilities offered by the subsequent university foundations in Germany - about 200.000 people during a long-term 15^th century. However, it has to be thought over in the history of science and effectivity of the German universities in a European frame, that more than 80% of them were ‘only’ students of arts.     

Geschlecht und Gesellschaft: Die ersten Ärztinnen und sozialpolitische Vorurteile

The objective mode of scientific inquiry has increasingly been called into question especially within feminist theory. I have tried to introduce two methodological approaches in examing a small area of medical opinion-making in the medical press at a period in which the question of women doctors was being discussed, but very few women doctors were actually practicing in Germany. Methodologically feminist history sees gender as a structural component used to ascribe sexual division of labour and to form concepts of “masculinity” and “femininity” in a society. It does not define “women's history” as a separate sphere additive to other traditional areas of historical writing including history of science. The second methodological approach is that of deconstruction: “objective” statements in medicine and the biological sciences are part of social and cultural preconceptions. I have examined the pattern of unreflected scientific statements about women's claims to want to become doctors. The pattern is one of preventive prejudice: representative doctors wrote about women in physiological and biological terms of being “weak” and “unfit”. This was an effective strategy for maintaining a status quo of dequalification. The historical examination of women entering the professions has not so much to do with their own capacities, but rather with socially conceived forms of argumentation indirectly applied: preventive statements in medicine about biological function, the “weaker” sex, intellectual denigration, physiological determinism. Some of the statements I found are amusing, but the humour becomes bitter when the consequences enter our social consciousness.     

Über die Aufhänge- und Anzeigevorrichtung der ägyptischen Waage der Pharaonenzeit

A number of different and partly contradictory interpretations about the suspension and the indicator system of the ancient Egyptian balance has been given so far. In this article previous explanations of these devices are presented and critically considered; at the same time the balance of the Egyptians is included in the complete evolution of this instrument. Based on original Egyptian colour drawings on papyrus taken from the Book of the Death and considering weighing techniques, it is stated that all interpretations given so far are not capable of providing a satisfactory explanation of the function of these devices. The interpretation given already in 1888 by Sir Flinders Petrie comes closest to the real function of the indicator system: According to his assumption the device consisted of a solid pointer attached to the beam, in relation to which a plumbline was observed after the oscillations had stopped. This interpretation, however, has to be varied or to be complemented by taking into consideration the special drawing technique of the ancient Egyptians: Processes were drawn in a reproduction technique which consisted in the simultaneous combination of a top view and a side view. A new hypotheses about the function of the suspension and the indicator system of the ancient Egyptian balance is presented, which has the advantage of agreeing completely with the Egyptian drawing technique and which, in addition, ensures optimum precision of the weighing procedure.     

Österreichische Ärzteemigration 1934-1945 - Zwischen neuem Tätigkeitsgebiet und organisierten Rückkehrplänen

Information on emigrant doctors and university teachers of medicine from Austria is rather poor up to now. This article is a preliminary sketch to give a first impression of the problems, quantity and quality of the doctors' emigration. First, there is made a distinction between different groups of emigrants, who emigrated at different times owing to the political changes in Austria (civil war and ?Anschluß”?). Then the emigration prior to the political set-ups during the thirties is discussed. The assertion is made, that the reasons for emigrating during the twenties are very much the same than in later years. Hostility against Jews, socialists, democrats and foreigners made living and working conditions increasingly unbearable. Concerning the influence of emigrated scientists on science and learning in immigration countries some theoretical and clinical sub-specialties of medicine are examined, e.g. social medicine, internal medicine, pharmacology, orthopedic surgery and child psychiatry. Whereas in some cases the influence is minimal, e.g. social medicine, other disciplines have been influenced enormously, e.g. child psychiatry. Finally there follows a short examination of the organisations of Austrian doctors and medical scientists in the United States and Great Britain.