Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte最新文献

{"title":"Materialities of the In/between: Drugs and Medical Knowledge between Europe and East Asia","authors":"Dominik Merdes,&nbsp;Bettina Wahrig","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202400008","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202400008","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This special issue presents six research papers that were developed within the Taiwanese-German working group “Materialities of Medical Cultures in/between Europe and East Asia.” Our working group uses the concept of “in/between” as an umbrella term to study the cultural history of drugs and the practices of medicine and care. This issue's articles address the question of how drugs and medical knowledge emerged from the various in/between spaces created by encounters between East Asian and European medical cultures. Their focus is on the entanglements of matters and knowledge in the contexts of mission and colonialism, the production of medicinal substances and helminthology, as well as on premodern knowledge cultures concerning childbirth and the preparation and consumption of animals with a medicinal background. The contributions present a comparative perspective on material and knowledge cultures surrounding medical materials from plants, animals, and humans. In this introduction, we summarize the discussions within our Taiwan-German working group as case studies on how scholars of East Asian and European studies can meet under the “in/between” umbrella term as a productive approach to an interdisciplinary and comparative history of knowledge.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"47 4","pages":"295-305"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202400008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142689784","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Human Placenta in Premodern Europe—a Cultural and Pharmaceutical Agent**","authors":"Bettina Wahrig","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202400004","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202400004","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper was prompted by some striking similarities between both the ritual and the medical use of placenta in Ming China and in premodern Europe. Contrary to most accounts, which focus either on the rise of chemiatric medicine or on the growing interest in “exotic” substances, the seventeenth century in Europe also reveals a revived interest in substances from animals, including materials from human bodies. The paper will analyse the use of words signifying the placenta, and follow the trace of vernacular knowledge about the placenta and its role in birth-giving, and in medieval medical texts on women's medicine. I will then analyse how the placenta is treated in systems of signatures in the age of alchemy and will try to trace the advent of more complicated preparations in the seventeenth century, and how between the eighteenth and the twenty-first century, the placenta meandered between a token of folk medicine (re)productive material and pharmaceutical resource.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"47 4","pages":"396-417"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202400004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142689783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Promising Tropical Medicinal Plant: Taiwan as the Production Hub of Japan's Coca Empire**","authors":"Shao-li Lu","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202400005","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202400005","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Before World War II, Taiwan became the second-largest coca leaf production base in Asia, second only to Java, contributing to Japan's position as the world's largest exporter of cocaine. While Japan's opium empire has been the subject of extensive academic inquiry, its coca empire has received far less attention. This article explores Taiwan's role in Japan's dual empire of opium and coca, focusing on the environmental and historical factors that enabled the island to rapidly expand coca production. It finds that, in addition to Taiwan's favorable climate for coca cultivation, the island's long-established tea industry provided mature techniques for harvesting and drying the coca leaves. Furthermore, the sugar company supplied the necessary equipment and capital for the extraction of cocaine, becoming a key resource in the industry's development. Learning from the limitations of the opium monopoly—where raw materials were increasingly constrained by international markets—the colonial government sought to promote self-sufficiency in coca production. This strategy not only ensured a stable supply of raw materials but also allowed the coca industry to balance for the declining incomes from opium as international controls tightened. From all angles, the coca industry met Japan's expectations as a “promising drug.”</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"47 4","pages":"352-381"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142683675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Western Anthelmintics in Early Twentieth-Century China Colonial Practices and Knowledge on “Tropical Diseases” of the In/between**","authors":"Dominik Merdes","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202400001","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202400001","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Protestant (medical) missionaries were the main proponents of Western medicine in China after the Opium Wars. Several studies have highlighted how they used spectacular surgery as a means of gaining public trust. As well as surgery, they also administered anthelmintic drugs such as santonin as a tool of persuasion and conversion. Many anthelmintic drugs of the European <i>materia medica</i> had a colonial history. My paper analyses how <i>coloniality</i> materialised in medical practice and anthelmintics in China. For the late nineteenth century, I will examine the colonial practices in which the drug santonin was involved. At the time, santonin was the drug of choice for treating roundworm. In the early twentieth century, medical missionaries became involved in parasitological research on parasitic worms such as hookworm and <i>Fasciolopsis buski</i>. For this period, I will explore how new knowledge about anthelmintics emerged in the scattered knowledge space of China, and how it related to colonialism and imperialism.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"47 4","pages":"330-351"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202400001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142565311","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Between Living and Non-living: Materiality of the Placenta in Ming China**","authors":"Hsiu-fen Chen","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202400002","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202400002","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study explores materiality and material cultures of human placenta in Ming China (1368–1644), for it perfectly displays Chinese ambiguous attitudes towards the human body parts between living and non-living. For a long time, the Chinese had widely applied human body parts in medical treatments and ritual healings. Numerous evidences in relation to their collection, production, efficacy and application are widely recorded in medical works, in particular those found in <i>materia medica</i>. In the sixteenth century, the <i>Bencao gangmu</i> (Systemic Materia Medica, 1596) illustrates thirty-five “human body drugs.” Of those, the placenta was believed effective for curing illnesses, nourishing the body and prolonging life. The questions to be answered include: how is the placenta perceived in medical and religious discourses? What is its “materiality” and “efficacy” when it becomes a drug? What ethical issues and moral concerns are involved with eating the placenta? Last but not least, how was the placenta ritually buried after childbirth in premodern China? In so doing, this essay aims to provide a better understanding of the placenta situated in both material and cosmological worlds. It helps us rethink the multiple relations of human body part to part, part to whole, and body to body.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"47 4","pages":"382-395"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142565348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Titelbild: (Ber. Wissenschaftsgesch. 3/2024)","authors":"","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202480301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.202480301","url":null,"abstract":"<p>\u0000 <figure>\u0000 <div><picture>\u0000 <source></source></picture><p></p>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </figure>\u0000 </p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"47 3","pages":"173"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202480301","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142316819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Inhaltsverzeichnis: Ber. Wissenschaftsgesch. 3/2024","authors":"","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202480311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.202480311","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"47 3","pages":"177"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202480311","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142316794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Science in Community: Anatomy, Academy, and Argument in the Eighteenth-Century Holy Roman Empire**","authors":"Julia Carina Böttcher","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202300026","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202300026","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Understanding physicians as actors who implemented the early modern ideal of collective empiricism into their practices within the local contexts of everyday life, the paper explores two cases from imperial cities in southern Germany in the 1720s and 1780s in which anatomical studies were contested. By analyzing the strategies and arguments that the two physicians used to justify and continue their anatomical dissections, it focuses on their references to different kinds of (local) community and relates these references to another type of collective: membership in a scientific academy. To examine references to community, it is proposed, offers an opportunity to better understand the spread and practice of the ideal of the study of nature as a collective project and how it was intertwined with concepts and structures of order and society in the Holy Roman Empire.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"47 3","pages":"242-261"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202300026","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141794127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"„History is touchy“ Die History-of-Programming-Languages-Konferenz, 1978","authors":"Amelie Mittlmeier","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202300032","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202300032","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Im Jahr 1967 feierte die Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) ihr 20-jähriges Bestehen. Die zu diesem Zeitpunkt größte und älteste US-amerikanische Computer-Gesellschaft lud ausgewählte Pioniere des Faches nach Washington D. C. ein, um auf die eigene Geschichte zurückzublicken. Mit Hilfe eines Audiorecorders zeichnete man die Sitzung auf und überlieferte so die Anekdoten und Erinnerungen der anwesenden Pioniere für die Nachwelt.¹ Eine solche Selbsthistorisierung wissenschaftlicher Gesellschaften war und ist nichts Ungewöhnliches. Jubiläen und Jahrestage bieten häufig Anlass, sich mit der eigenen Vergangenheit auseinanderzusetzen, und sie tragen so zur „Ausbildung eines fachkulturellen Gedächtnisses“ bei.²</p><p>Ab Mitte der 1970er Jahre startete ein weiteres Projekt, bei dem die Informatik auf ihre Vergangenheit zurückblickte.³ Gut zehn Jahre nach der Jubiläumsfeier der ACM, im Mai 1978, fand in Los Angeles die erste History of Programming Languages Conference (im Folgenden HOPL-Konferenz) statt. Organisiert wurde die Tagung von einer Gruppe InformatikerInnen, und das Programm umfasste die Vorträge ausgewählter Pioniere, die von der Entwicklung besonders bedeutsamer Programmiersprachen berichten sollten. Obwohl die Veranstaltung auf den ersten Blick Parallelen zu dem Jubiläum von 1967 aufweist (die Pioniere des Faches erzählen „ihre“ Geschichte), war ein solcher Zugang genau das, was die OrganisatorInnen mit ihrer Konferenz <i>nicht</i> im Sinn hatten. Dies betonten sie, noch bevor das Vorhaben einen Namen trug: „This [planned history conference] is <span>not</span> supposed to be a group of people just coming together to provide a set of reminiscences.“⁴</p><p>Tatsächlich unterschied sich die HOPL-Konferenz wesentlich von anderen Selbsthistorisierungsprojekten – wie etwa der Jubiläumsfeier 1967. Im Folgenden soll gezeigt werden, dass es der Anspruch der OrganisatorInnen war, aus einer möglichst objektiven Perspektive auf die eigene Vergangenheit zu blicken, sie zu erforschen und eine detailreiche, umfassende sowie korrekte Darstellung der Geschichte zu präsentieren; es ging also gerade nicht darum, das eigene Mitwirken an den vergangenen Entwicklungen zu erinnern, wie im Fall der erzählenden Pioniere. Bemerkenswert ist dieses Vorhaben nicht nur durch seine Abgrenzung zu anderen Selbsthistorisierungsprojekten. Der Anspruch der HOPL-OrganisatorInnen, einen Beitrag zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte zu leisten, verortet die Konferenz in den Kontext der sich wandelnden Wissenschaftsgeschichte jener Zeit. Der folgende Text soll daher auch eine neue Perspektive auf die Geschichte der akademischen Wissenschaftsgeschichte eröffnen.</p><p>Bei der Vorbereitung der HOPL-Konferenz kam es bald zu Diskussionen, in denen Herausforderungen einer (wissenschafts−)geschichtlichen Arbeit zur Sprache kamen. Die umfassend überlieferte Dokumentation der Veranstaltung⁵ bietet nicht nur Einblicke in die Auseinander","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"47 3","pages":"262-286"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202300032","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141762848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Descartes on Place and Motion: A Reading through Cartesian Commentaries**","authors":"Andrea Strazzoni","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202300011","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202300011","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper offers a reconstruction of the interpretations of Descartes's ideas of place and motion by Dutch Cartesians (Henricus Regius, Johannes de Raey, Johannes Clauberg, and Christoph Wittich). It does so by focusing on the reading of Descartes's <i>Principia philosophiae</i> (1644) offered, in particular, by the dictated commentaries on it. It is shown how such commentaries bring to the light new potential Aristotelian-Scholastic sources of Descartes, and the different ways Dutch Cartesians brought to the fore, also with the help of such sources, the rationale of the Cartesian text: in doing so, they constituted a philosophical school.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"47 3","pages":"179-214"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202300011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141762849","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}