[The evolutionist fallacy of early visitors. Analogies between 'primitive peoples' and prehistoric man in medical historiography].
Accounts of 'prehistoric medicine' and 'ethnomedicine' have sometimes led to conclusions by analogy in medical historiography that are seen as highly problematic in modern cultural anthropology. However, this review of medical historical writings of the last three centuries shows that evolutionist identifications of early with foreign medicine were not a permanent trait of medical historiography. This approach flourished mainly in the climate of certain movements or periods that were characterised by fanatical belief in progress and by social utopias: the French Revolution, Darwinism and the period of industrial expansion in Germany, and National Socialism. Medical historiography shared this problematic approach with contemporary (social and cultural) anthropology, and - despite this methodological misuse - both acknowledged the legitimacy or even requirement of studying also similarities in the development of different periods and cultures.
Bruchhausen
Walter
W
Medizinhistorisches Institut, Bonn. walter.bruchhausen@ukb.uni-bonn.de
D000883:Anthropology / Q000266:history*; D005075:Biological Evolution; D005060:Europe; D006663:Historiography; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D008519:Medicine, Traditional / Q000266:history*; D035503:Sociobiology / Q000266:history*