Paper #1- Logan Nance - Grade: B PDF

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Paper for Heather Perry's History of Disease course on Johannes Storch...

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Logan Michael Nance HIST 2140 Paper #1 A Medieval Doctor in The Early Modern Era German doctor Johann Storch lived and died in a crossroads between medical eras. The old ways of doing things such as the belief that the body was influenced by astronomical bodies, or the infallibility of the text, were being challenged by the ideas of people like Paracelsus who focused on ‘knowing nature’ and understanding the properties of plants, animals, and minerals to create materia medica. Johann Storch, a local town doctor, believed some modern ideas and some ancient ideas. He wrote his case studies in German, the vernacular, rather than the formal, officious Latin, which was a very modern idea. But, at the same time, many of those case studies reflect an unwillingness to touch or otherwise actively intervene in the body beyond the prescription of materia medica and bleeding of the body. However, despite his more modern ideas, Storch still relied on Medieval and ancient ideas and practices. He bled the body, he did not touch his patients, and treated pain rather than fight a disease. In keeping with medieval practices, and the ideas of ancient physicians such as Galen and Hippocrates regarding the humoral system, Storch frequently prescribed things that dealt with realigning humors within the body, such as the prescription of an ‘blister-inducing plaster’1 to be laid upon the leg, to draw the bad humors closer to the skin (he later realized he should have fled the girl’s feet to draw out the menses, which he felt had traveled to the head, in keeping with the limited knowledge of circulation, and the idea that humors move), or when a ‘soldiers wife, pregnant in the seventh month, felt ‘swooning combined with faintness’, and had three ounces of blood drawn”2, in keeping the humoral theory that if you relieve some of the humoral matter, balance may be restored, alleviating the illness. His notes on cases also dealt with humoral theory. In one case, he rationalized the course of an illness as ‘the internal and external forms of ‘some humoral matter, which prior to the pregnancy had issued at the thigh””. Storch rarely touched his patients, or even saw them. Most of his advice and prescriptions were in the form of notes relayed to and from the patient by another person, or to a barber-surgeon. This harkens back to the medieval idea that doctors did not treat their patients physically, as that was the job of the barber-surgeon. The medieval doctor focused on theoretical knowledge and did not touch the patient. Interacting with the patient was beneath them, and the job of the barber-surgeon, who would perform bleedings, tooth extractions, and other physical procedures while doctors would give prescriptions and advice. When Doctor Storch treated his patients, he did not fight a disease, as modern doctors do. Instead, he treated for pain. While he had no real interest in doing so, as “Storch was still not thinking about combating pain, just as he was not interested to making his patients healthy. He could not get of pain, no more than he could get rid of the body”3. Pain was expressed in a multitude of ways by the patient, who would often self-diagnose their issue and go to Storch for the prescription. While in our society, self-diagnosis is generally frowned upon, in eighteenth 1 Duden, The Woman Beneath The Skin, Page 110 2 Duden, The Woman Beneath The Skin, Page 75, 3 Duden, The Woman Beneath The Skin, Page 88,

Logan Michael Nance HIST 2140 Paper #1 century Eisenach, it was normal. “…in most other cases where his advice was sought, his recommendations were integrated into the usual practice of self-diagnosis and self-treatment” 4. Storch, as he did not touch his patients, for the most part, played the role of medical advicegiver. ‘They wanted a ‘prescription’. They usually did not say what the remedy should contain, but they often knew precisely which effects they expected from the prescription.”5 In conclusion, while Dr. Johann Storch may have done some modern things, such as a rare ‘opening’ when the next of kin could be persuaded to allow it, but for the most part, he used medieval methods and customs, because that what was he knew, and how things had been done for hundreds of years prior. He was a product of his times, a medieval style doctor with a few modernish leanings who rarely came in contact with his patients. However, he was slowly approaching modernity, as he condemned belief in magical practices, and, as mentioned before, conducted autopsies to learn more about human anatomy, and wrote his case studies in the vernacular, so younger doctors could learn from his experiences, which is a rather modern idea, as opposed to simple rote memorization of Hippocrates and Galen in university.

4 Duden, The Woman Beneath The Skin, Page 93, 5 Duden, The Woman Beneath The Skin, Page 93...