Wissenschaft, Medizin und Öffentlichkeit—Bemerkungen zu ihrem Wandel im 18. Jahrhundert

摘要

How did academic medicine come to dominate scientific and medical opinions in local public spheres far away from universities? This contribution—based mainly on material from Lübeck journals and printed books—deals with the transformation of the public sphere in eighteenth century. A closer look at publication strategies and carrers of physicians shows that the new forms of self-empowerment provided by the “Habermasian” public sphere could only prove successful because they ran together with traditional forms of representation such as titles and official posts. Local journals, books, instruments, and reputation could then provide “scientific capital” to be transformed into the “symbolic capital” of grades, titles and posts; which was in turn convertible into the “economic capital” of remunitions from patients or annual awards as town-, state- or court physicians. At the beginning of the nineteenth century professional organisation proved a still greater source of power than the individual strategies that had been developped before.