摘要
Romantic medicine in continental Europe was practiced from the 1790s until the mid-nineteenth century as part of the greater movement of Romanticism.It reacted to an ongoing foundational crisis in medicine when radically new approaches to healing were essential.Especially in German-speaking countries,Romantic medicine resulted fom anti-science sentiments to Enlightenment ideas favoring scientific progress based 0 materialist and reductionist assumptions.For the Romanticists,these were troublesome fo the individual,nature and the future.However,without understanding disease and by rejecting both the scientific method and mysticism,attention tumed to post-Kantian idealism and Naturphilosophie What distinguished Romantic medicine from existing humoralism was a passion for comprehending the exceptional attribute of life itself,implicitly from which a new medicine could ascend.However,better healthcare was not(achieved).Although anatomy and physiology had made rapid strides,these did not directly benefit patients.News of successive developments in medicine did not appear to circulate to healers.Meantime,since the eighteenth century,recognition of the seat of disease had progressed from the whole-body(humor theory),to organs(Morgagni),to tissues(Bichat)。and eventually to cells(Virchow)where hypotheses could be tested.Possible reasons for the downfall of Romantic medicine include socio-political pressures that demanded better healthcare,Comte's positivism,the successes of cell and germ theories of disease,Virchow's Cellularpathologie,diminishing professional dogmatism and improved medical communications.
