Quack

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Visiting the quackery
( William Hogarth , around 1745)

Quack refers to a person who (as a charlatan or "botch") treats the sick (incorrectly) (or "cures" ) without adequate medical training . The term quackery often expresses a negative assessment of the quality of this or another service, and occasionally also a fraudulent intention.

Concept history

The compound Kurpfuscher is not found in any of the major German dictionaries ( Kaspar von Stieler , Johann Christoph Adelung , Joachim Heinrich Campe , German dictionary of the Brothers Grimm ). According to Wolfgang Pfeifer , it was first used in Austria at the end of the 18th century.

The term botch means here, "work quickly and therefore sloppily, not in accordance with the guild". In the field of medicine , the words botch (or medicinal botch ) and medicaster primarily referred to healers who practice healing without being licensed as a doctor or pharmacist, while with quack not only such an unprofessional healer, but also a licensed healer dubious competence or qualification can be meant. Lay practitioners (lay practitioners) who treated themselves as naturopaths (“naturopaths”), homeopaths or magnetopaths “under their own control” were also referred to as “Kurpfuschern” in the narrower sense .

The demarcation of a doctor from quackery is not only based on subject-specific competence, but also on the trust-inducing ethics and morally reliable behavior of the academically trained healer.

The term became particularly popular in the quack debate at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century , even if the phenomenon of quackery existed before . At the time, the organized medical profession campaigned for the abolition of courier freedom within the German Reich, among other things, in “Kurpfuscherei Commissions” and in a German Society for Combating Kurpfuscherei founded in Berlin in 1903 . Freedom from courier refers to the (legal) possibility that everyone can carry out medical treatment regardless of their training. Thus, unlike in Austria, drug abuse was no longer part of criminal law. The term “ quack ” stood for a number of older terms ( quack , medicaster, mediciners, mediciners, mediciners) and was used differently: in the opinion of a few doctors, lawyers and judges, but above all by naturopaths, the term applied to everyone who was sick harmed by his treatment, regardless of whether he has a license to practice medicine or not. From the perspective of professionally organized doctors, on the other hand, it applied to everyone who gave medical treatment at all without a license to practice medicine or in violation of their license limits (e.g. as dentists, pharmacists). Not in terms of terminology, but in terms of content, it was incorporated into the Heilpraktikergesetz in 1939 . “Anyone who wants to practice medicine without being a doctor” , so his most important statement, “requires a permit” .

Legal situation in Austria

The Austrian Criminal Code contains § 184 "Kurpfuscherei". According to this, the commercial exercise of an activity that is reserved for doctors without having the training required to exercise the medical profession is punishable by imprisonment of up to three months or a fine of up to 180 daily rates. The perpetrator is only punishable if he has treated a large number of people. The non-commercial bungling is not punishable in court.

See also

swell

  • Robert Jütte: Alternative medicine. In: Werner E. Gerabek, Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil, Wolfgang Wegner (Eds.): Encyclopedia of Medical History [in 3 volumes], De Gruyter , Berlin / New York 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-019703-7 , Pp. 42-49.
  • Robert Jütte: History of Alternative Medicine. From folk medicine to today's unconventional therapies. CH Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-40495-2 , pp. 18–23 ( “Quackery” versus “traditional” medicine (around 1800) ) and pp. 32–42 ( “Kurpfuscherei” versus “conventional medicine” (1880 -1932) ).

Further literature not consulted

  • Eberhard Buchner: Doctors and quackery. Munich 1922.
  • Reinhard Spree : Kurpfuscherei - fighting and its social functions during the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. In: Medical interpretive power in the social change of the 19th and early 20th centuries. ed. by A. Labisch and R. Spree, Bonn 1989, pp. 103-121.

Web links

Wiktionary: Kurpfuscher  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. Even in the first edition of: The large dictionary of the German language . Vol. 1-6. Dudenverlag 1977–1981 is missing.
  2. Wolfgang Pfeifer: Etymological Dictionary of German . 3. Edition. Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag 1997, p. 747 under the heading Kur .
  3. See e.g. B. https://books.google.de/books?id=L1-3KAZ1qJoC&q=Kurpfuscher&dq=Kurpfuscher&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioh_3_78LpAhVR1qYKHSfAAFkQ6AEIUTAF
  4. ^ Friedrich Kluge , Alfred Götze : Etymological dictionary of the German language . 20th edition, ed. by Walther Mitzka . De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1967; Reprint (“21st unchanged edition”) ibid 1975, ISBN 3-11-005709-3 , p. 548 ( botch ).
  5. "Magnetopath: Healer who treats with magnetism." ( DUDEN: Das Große Fremdwörterbuch . Dudenverlag: Mannheim et al. 1994, p. 848.).
  6. ^ Robert Jütte: History of Alternative Medicine. From folk medicine to today's unconventional therapies. 1996, p. 21 f. and 38-42.
  7. Richard Toellner : Georg Bartisch (1535-1606). Citizen, oculist, incision and surgeon in Dresden and his work "Ophthalmodouleia that is eye service". Supplement to: Richard Toellner (Ed.): Georg Bartisch von Königsbrück, Augendienst. Reprint of the first German-language comprehensive ophthalmology from 1583. Edition "libri rari" Th. Schäfer, Hanover 1983, ISBN 3-88746-071-5 , p. 2 f.
  8. ^ Karl Sudhoff : Quack, doctors, city authorities at the end of the 15th century. In: Sudhoff's archive for the history of medicine. Volume 8, 1914, p. 98.
  9. Karl Sudhoff: Philipp Begardi and its index Sanitatis. A contribution to the history of the medical profession and Kurpfuschertum in the first half of the 16th century. In: Archives for the History of Medicine. 1, 1907, pp. 102-121.
  10. ^ German dictionary by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. German paperback publisher. Vol. 19, Col. 416, engr. «Storger»: “Land-drivers, peddlers, quacks, dentists wandering around”. [Nouns in capitalization].
  11. Stieler, Caspar von: Der teutschen Sprache Genealogy and Fortwachs . Altdorf 1691, part 2, col. 1452/53, engraving. « Bungler »: drug bungler : "Empiricus".