Surgeon

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Surgeon is the earlier term used from the Middle Ages (first as "arzet vür die wunden" at the beginning of the 13th century) to the second half of the 19th century for various healers who were active in surgery . Surgeons were also to be found in the military, where they were called Feldscher , and there were surgeons who ran their own practices in larger settlements or who traveled the country as traveling doctors. Surgeons were also employed at court to provide personal care for better-off personalities. Surgeons were important contact points for the population for all kinds of diseases. In the Middle Ages, it became customary in many cities to appoint surgeons as so-called city ​​doctors . Johann Andreas Eisenbarth ("Doktor Eisenbarth", 1663–1727) , who worked in large parts of Germany and who died in Münden , achieved particular fame . Another example is Daniel Schwabe in Königsberg (Prussia) .

education

Surgeons had usually completed a craft training, that is, an apprenticeship with a bath or barber , with a final journeyman's examination. In order to ensure the quality of the training and practice of wound medicine and to protect oneself from abuse and charlatanry, professional regulations were issued that regulated the activities of the guild surgeons (“Scherer”, “chirurgi”, “tonsores”). For example, certain activities were only permitted under supervision or as instructed by a trained doctor. Academic doctors did not perform any surgical interventions themselves. For this reason, surgery was given little attention at the universities as a craft education at the time or was even frowned upon.

Some surgeons specialized in certain tasks and concentrated e.g. B. on the star piercing or stone cutting , such. B. Lenhart Steinmann in Luebeck, with some both as " average doctor " (as in the treatment of hernias ) as well as an ophthalmologist or oculist were operationally active. Traveling surgeons mainly offered their services at annual fairs, which in some cases massively encouraged charlatanism.

There were also surgeons who had acquired their knowledge as autodidacts or through the transmission of knowledge in the family. They could only practice their art with a sovereign privilege and had to pass an examination at the Collegium Medicum .

Duties of the surgeon

James Gillray : The Bloodletting (around 1805)

As the name suggests, the main task of the surgeons was, in addition to the panacea at the time, bloodletting , to take care of external wounds (as with the “arzet vür die wunden” in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival ). In addition, surgeons treated abscesses , tumors , hemorrhoids , burns and varicose veins , led Star stitches , Blasenstein- and hernia and intestinal sutures through, dislocated joints one, served fractures and pulled teeth. Surgeons also performed amputations and made prostheses .

Differentiation between surgeon, bath and barber

The exercise of practical surgery in the Middle Ages was for the in guilds merged craft surgeon . Depending on the regional characteristics, these were the bathers , barbers and surgeons. The English name for the historical occupation of the barber is "barber surgeon" and the French name is "barber surgeon " . The bathers, barbers or surgeons employed in the military were called field scissors . The demarcation of the tasks of the surgeon to those of the bath, barber and shearer is difficult. Resident or wandering bathers and barbers also drained their veins and treated broken bones, dislocations, fresh wounds, toothaches and general internal illnesses. Barbers were mainly responsible for shaving and bloodletting and also worked as dentists and pharmacists. Barbers were socially less respected than surgeons, often they were even referred to as quacks , even though, unlike surgeons, they knew their way around medication . Nevertheless, some barbers achieved high esteem and wealth. Bader carried out the activities of "minor surgery". They operated baths and spas. Sometimes they went to their profession on wanderings, which was a required part of the training to become a master. Bader and Scherer are considered to be the forerunners of the surgeon.

Craft doctors and academic medicine

Actress disguised as the wife of a medieval surgeon or barber, Archeon

The tasks of surgeons ( chirurgi ) and academic medicine ( medici ) began to separate from one another from the 10th century. This separation of surgery and internal medicine , to which the academic doctors devoted themselves, was officially reinforced by a resolution of the Council of Tours (1163) and one of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. This made it mandatory for academics to renounce surgical practices. The background was that there were often deaths during and after surgical interventions, which was morally incompatible with the spiritual office of the then mostly clerical doctors. As a result, surgery was excluded from the universities as a minor medicine and given the responsibility of the artisan bathers and barbers. Just as academic doctors did not perform surgical interventions, surgeons were prohibited from doing internal medicine. However, surgeons also wrote healing literature (such as prescriptions and other pharmacopoeias ).

Because of the strict separation of tasks, there were often disputes and mutual accusations of quackery between learned doctors ("Medici", also known as " Physici " as municipal employees ) and surgeons. In the early modern period , surgery was the theoretical subject of academic medical training, but the practical implementation was still left to the surgeons. Surgeons also assisted lecturers and anatomists as “prosectors” (pre-cutters) and carried out the necessary interventions according to the instructions of the scholars. The situation can be well described using a quote from Albrecht von Haller : “Although I have been a professor of surgery for 17 years and have repeatedly taught the most difficult surgical interventions on cadavers, I never brought it up to myself to do that on living people Using knives because I feared too much harm. ”It was not until the 18th century that the professions of surgeon and learned doctor began to gradually converge. The craft training of surgeons was common until the second half of the 19th century. The entire medical science of that time (internal medicine, surgery and obstetrics) was combined in Bavaria in 1843 with the academic full medical practitioner (old doctor's signs still bore the designation "doctor, surgeon and obstetrician"). In Prussia, where the differences between surgeon and doctor were regulated in a joint license to practice medicine for doctors, surgeons and obstetricians in 1852, an industrial code of 1869 repealed the institution of surgeons. After the surgeons as a professional group had been repealed on January 1, 1872 by Article 29 of the trade regulations of the German Reich, the last surgeon exams were carried out in Württemberg in 1873. Thereafter, only academic surgeons were trained. The Association of Wuerttemberg Surgeons and Obstetricians , founded in 1847, existed until 1919.

In Austria, institutions for the medical and surgical training of surgeons were founded under Maria Theresia , as there were far too few academic doctors for the medical care of the population. These schools were established in the capitals of those Austrian regions where there were no universities or only universities without a medical faculty. For more than 100 years, these educational institutions provided the rural population with surgeons. These studies initially lasted two years and later three years. From 1777 anatomy lessons were compulsory for surgeons. In the 19th century the course was set for modern medicine and the division into internal medicine and surgery was overcome. In 1873 the surgical schools were closed. The only way to become a doctor was through academic studies. The practicing surgeons in Austria outnumbered doctors with doctorates at universities for years. After the schools of surgeons closed, their number naturally gradually decreased until it was zero in 1937.

Well-known surgeons

Most of the surgeons of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period remained unknown to the medical literature. The surgeons still known today include:

Surgeons as quackery

As described above, surgeons were not permitted to practice internal medicine that was reserved for learned doctors. They were therefore not allowed to “mess with the doctors”. Many surgeons disregarded the strict separation in the practice and thus became "quackery", which initially did not assess the quality of the treatment, but expressed the fact that the "quackery" carried out a treatment that he was basically not entitled to .

literature

  • Oliver Bergmeier: The so-called "lower surgery" with special consideration of the city of Halle an der Saale in the first half of the 19th century. Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, 2002. pp. 6–30.
  • Peter Guttkuhn: Dr. med. Wilhelm Levens (1803-1859). A doctor between the craft of health and scientific medicine . In: Schleswig-Holsteinisches Ärzteblatt. 48 (1995), No. 4: 7-11.
  • Dominik Groß : The abolition of the surgeon profession as reflected in contemporary surgeon sources. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 14, 1996, pp. 459-473.
  • Dominik Groß: The abolition of the surgeon profession. Causes, accompanying circumstances and effects using the example of the Kingdom of Württemberg (1806-1918). (= Sudhoffs Archiv. Supplement 41), Stuttgart 1999 (also medical habilitation thesis Würzburg 1998).
  • Gundolf Keil : surgeon, surgery (surgeon, wound medicine). In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Volume 2 (1980), Col. 1845-1859.
  • Ernst Theodor Nauck: From the history of the Freiburg surgeons and related professions. Freiburg im Breisgau 1965 (= publications from the archive of the city of Freiburg im Breisgau , 8).
  • Hans Schwabe: The long way of surgery: from surgeon and badger to surgery. Strom-Verlag, 1986.
  • Gustav Adolf Wehrli: The hospitals and the publicly employed doctors and surgeons in old Zurich. Zurich 1934 (= communications from the Antiquarian Society in Zurich , XXXI, 3).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bernhard Dietrich Haage: Wolfram's 'Parzival' as an object of medical historical research. Medical habilitation thesis Würzburg 1988, p. 190.
  2. ↑ Ahmed Malak: Three surgeon medical announcements of the 15th century. Studies on the early history of the medical advertising form in Germany. Medical dissertation Würzburg (1985) 1986.
  3. ↑ Barbara Kostolnik: The illustrious Doctor Eisenbarth - Quack or miracle doctor? ( Memento from January 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Bayerischer Rundfunk, March 16, 2015.
  4. ^ Gustav Adolf Wehrli: The surgeons and bathers as a proper organization. History of the Black Garden Society […]. Zurich 1931 (= notification from the Antiquarian Society in Zurich , XXX, 8).
  5. ↑ Walter von Brunn : From the guilds of barbers and surgeons in the Hanseatic cities. Leipzig 1921.
  6. ^ Gustav Steiner : Doctors and surgeons. Surgical guild and medical faculty in Basel. In: Basler Jahrbuch 1954, pp. 179–209; here: pp. 179 and 182–185
  7. ^ Conrad Brunner : The guild of the Schärers and their outstanding representatives among the Swiss surgeons of the XVI. Century. Zurich 1891.
  8. ↑ Gundolf Keil: "blutken - bloedekijn". Notes on the etiology of the hyposphagma genesis in the 'Pommersfeld Silesian Eye Booklet' (1st third of the 15th century). With an overview of the ophthalmological texts of the German Middle Ages. In: Specialized prose research - Crossing borders. Volume 8/9, 2012/2013, pp. 7–175, here: pp. 10 f.
  9. ↑ a b c d e Oliver Bergmeier: The so-called "lower surgery" with special consideration of the city of Halle an der Saale in the first half of the 19th century. Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, 2002. pp. 6–30.
  10. ^ Gustav Adolf Wehrli: The bathers, barbers and surgeons in old Zurich. Zurich 1927 (= communications from the Antiquarian Society in Zurich , XXX, 3).
  11. ^ Bernhard Dietrich Haage: Medical Literature of the Teutonic Order in the Middle Ages. In: Würzburger medical historical reports 9, 1991, pp. 217-231; here: p. 222.
  12. ↑ See for example Jürgen Martin: The Ulm surgeon Johannes Stocker and his nosologically structured pharmacopoeia. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 5, 1987, pp. 85-95.
  13. ↑ Michael Sachs: Matthäus Gottfried Purmann (1649-1711). A Silesian surgeon on the way from medieval folk medicine to modern surgery. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Vol. 12 (1994), pp. 37-64; P. 37
  14. ^ Max Döllner : History of the development of the city of Neustadt an der Aisch until 1933. 1950; 2nd Edition. Ph. CW Schmidt, Neustadt an der Aisch 1978, ISBN 3-87707-013-2 , p. 526.
  15. ^ Claudia Huerkamp : The rise of doctors in the 19th century. From the learned level to the professional expert: The example of Prussia. Göttingen 1985 (= Critical Studies in History , 68), pp. 50–59.
  16. ↑ Eberhard P. Saft: History of the monastery hospital of the Barmherzigen Brüder in Breslau [...]. In: Festschrift of the monastery hospital of the Barmherzigen Brüder on the bicentenary 1712–1912. Breslau 1912, pp. 1-164; P. 195
  17. ^ HO Fr. Hettich (ed.): The medical system in the Kingdom of Württemberg according to the status in the middle of 1875. Stuttgart 1875, pp. XX and 27. f.
  18. ↑ Dominik Groß: The abolition of the surgeon profession in the mirror of contemporary surgeon sources. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 14, 1996, pp. 459-473; here: p. 459.
  19. ↑ Dominik Groß: The "Association of Württemberg surgeons and obstetricians" (1847 / 48-1919). An almost forgotten interest organization. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 18, 1999, pp. 335-358.
  20. ↑ Anna Ehrlich: Doctors, Bader, Scharlatane, The History of Austrian Medicine, Amalthea Verlag Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-85002-574-4 , p. 192 ff.
  21. ^ Gerhard Eis : Message about unknown surgeons from a Weingartner manuscript around 1500. In: Medical monthly. Volume 21, 1867, pp. 404-407.
  22. ^ Kurpfuscher in Duden .