XVIII Conference of the German-Polish Society for the History of Medicine (Web)

Time: 03.-05.2021
Venue: Berlin
Proposals by: 31.08.2020

The XVIII Conference of the German-Polish Society for the History of Medicine is being organized in cooperation with the Center for Historical Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Berlin and the Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine, Charité Medical University.

Dating back to the philosophy of nature in Greek antiquity, “reproduction” has constituted a grey area between “nature” and “culture”, between the biological, social and cultural world. On one hand, questions about fertility and procreation, embryonic development and birth, require further research and explanation by natural science; on the other, far-reaching religious, moral, and cultural norms have been established around sexuality. Finally, it has been part of the social-philosophical program since antiquity to understand and control the circumstances and conditions of reproduction for selective breeding purposes – in order to produce an especially suitable future elite or even for creating entire populations.

All three of these factors are in a constant state of flux, especially their interaction and historically and culturally specific forms of superimposition, which are expressed in characteristic features of a given epoch. These include aristocratic claims to power, municipal regulations on midwives, and eugenic ideas among utopians in the 16th century; phenomena such as the discourse of the “medical police” (Medizinische Polizei) in the 18th century, and debates surrounding the evolutionary theories of Jean Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin that resulted in novel family and sociopolitical concepts, including explicitly racist projects, during the first half of the 20th century. Read more and source … (Web).