[Physicians' households in the 16th century].

Abstract

16th-century's medicine was marked by a wave of professionalization: besides scientific influences--evident by new ambitious texts on botany, anatomy, and chemiatry--functions of medical expertise for political purposes were an important factor. Based on findings made in my DFG-funded project "Arztliche Autorität in der Frühen Neuzeit" (medical authority in early modem times) is discussed how these influences altered the professional conditions for physicians. "Haushalt" (household) can be understood as a social community as well as a monetary budget in this context: physicians earned their money with a lot of different ventures beside medical practice, as commerce, farming, banking, or mining etc. Expenses for houses, gardens, interior etc. were based on needs of everyday life but could also be signs of luxury. Thus the physicians demonstrated the high social status they had acquired, and some of them thereby placed themselves at one social level with the nobility. Even scientific books can be estimated as a special case of such a conspicuous consumption for in most cases publishing made high investments without monetary benefit necessary. Thus scientific reputation was to some degree foreseeable: epoch-making books like above all Andreas Vesalius' "De humani Corporis fabrica libri septem" (Basel 1543) had to be financed out of the assets of the family (in Vesalius' case: a high-standing family in the emperor's services). Other sources show clearly that many doctors were not able to afford publishing comparable elaborated and expensive books.