Abstract
This meeting celebrates 75 years since the creation of the first chair of “philosophy and history of medicine”. The chair, created in Kraków in 1920 for professor Władysław Szumowski, was a double first: the first in the world to explicitly refer to a “philosophy of medicine”, and the first to link philosophical and historical studies of medicine. Two thinkers were directly involved in this important innovation: Władysław Szumowski and Adam Wrzosek. Both were medical doctors with broad humanistic interests, and both were interested in promoting interactions between the humanities and medical practice. Władysław Szumowski (1875–1954), born in Warsaw, studied medicine at St. Petersburg, then at Warsaw.1 He aspired to become a medical researcher, and his first scientific work was a study on the “Culture of tuberculosis bacilli in protein-free media”. After obtaining his medical diploma in 1899, he spent two years in Fribourg where he specialized in bacteriology (with Maurice Arthus), then went to Heidelberg and worked in a physiology laboratory (under Albrecht Kossel). His promising research career was, however, cut short by tuberculosis. Diagnosed with this disease in 1902, he returned to Poland and spent four years in a sanitarium in Zakopane. In 1903, Szumowski, who wanted to find an occupation compatible with his health problems, started to study philosophy and history at Lwów University, under Twardowski and Finkel. He wrote a doctoral dissertation in philosophy on “Descartes and Malebranche as precursors of the theory of feelings of Karol Lange”, and a historical study on medicine in Galicia (the Kraków region) in the late eighteenth century. In 1907 he obtained both a Ph.D. in philosophy (for the first work), and a certificate in the history of medicine (for the second). From 1907 to 1917, Szumowski taught the history of medicine at the Medical School of Lwów University. In parallel, he did not abandon the practice of medicine. He was at first successively employed by several clinics, and from 1912 on he held a series of jobs in public health.
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Notes
On Szumowski’s career, see Wladyslaw Szumowski, “La Philosophie de la médecine, son histoire, son essence, sa dénomination et sa définition”, paper presented at the 5th International Congress of the History of Sciences, Lausanne, October, 1947. Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences,1949, 2, 1097–1139, pp. 1112–1115. Tadeusz Bilikiewicz, “From the Editorial Committee”, in: Wladyslaw Szumowski, Historia Medvc nv (new edition, reviewed and corrected by an editorial committee headed by Tadeusz Bilikiewicz). Warsaw: Panstwowy Zak/ad Wydawnictw Lekarskich, 1961, pp. x-xiv.
Wladyslaw Szumowski, “Polska szkola filozoficzno-lekarska”, Polski Miesiecznik Lekarski, 1917, 5–6.
Wladyslaw Szumowski, “O przedmiocie studiów lekarskich zwanym historia i filozofia medycyny”, Gazeta Lekarska,1919, 11.
Teresa Ostrowska, “Profesor Adam Wrzosek i jego dorobek naukowy”, Wiadomoici Lekarskie, 1977, 30 (1), 63–66.
Adam Wrzosek, O potrzebie studiów filozoficznych dla lekarzy. Krakow: Drukarnia Uniwersytetu Jagiellofiskiego, 1918.
The Warsaw chair was attributed to Franciszek Giedroyé, who delegated the teaching of philosophy to Henryk Nusbaum; the Vilnius chair was attributed to Stanislaw Trzebifiski, the Poznafi chair to Adam Wrzosek, while the Lwów chair remained empty until 1931, when it was attributed to Witold Ziebicki.
W. Szumowski, Historia Medycyny,op. cit., p. 378.
Ibid., pp. 344–345.
On Pasteur’s hagiography, see: Daniel Raichvag, L’Empire des microbes. Paris: Gallimard (Collection Découvertes, Sciences), 1995. Bruno Latour, Pasteur. Une science, un style, un siècle. Paris: Librairie Académique Perin Institut Pasteur, 1994.
W. Szumowski, Historia Medycyny,op. cit., p. 345.
Proceedings of the meeting, “Holistic Medicine”, McGill University, Montreal, May 3–5, 1995.
Wladyslaw Szumowski, “Filozofia medycyny jako przedmiot uniwersytecki”, Przeglad Filozoficzny, 1920, 23.
W. Szumowski, “La Philosophie de la médecine, son histoire, son essence, sa dénomination et sa définition”, op. cit., on p. 1126. A review of the 1948 edition of Szumowski’s book The Philosophy of Medicine, stressed the interest Szumowski had for Carrel’s views. Arpad Herczeg, “Compte rendu du livre de Wladyslaw Szumowski, Filozofia Medycyny”. Krakow: Gebethner & Wolf, 1948. Archives Internationales de l’Histoire des Sciences, 1950, 29, 220–222.
Alexis Carrel, L’Homme cet inconnu. Paris: Plon, 1962 (1935) p. 18. Carrel’s book was reissued in a pocket edition in 1962.
Ibid., p. 374.
Ibid., p. 409.
Ibid., p. 435–436. On the history of the application of this idea in Nazi Germany from 1939 on, see Robert N. Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988. Adam Wrzosek, Wyklad wstepny z historii medycyny (November 3, 1910, Jagiellonian University, Krakow). Lwów: Drukarnia Piller-Neumann, 1911.
Adam Wrzosek, “Religijnoéé naszych znakomitych lekarzy w XIX wieku”, Archiwum Historii i Filozofii Medycyny, 1927, 7, 159–167.
Adam Wrzosek, Wyklad wstepny z historii medycyny (November 3, 1910, Jagiellonian University, Krakow). Lwów: Drukarnia Piller-Neumann, 1911.
Adam Wrzosek, “O stosunku niektórych pomiarów antropologicznych i typów rasowych do sprawnosci umyslowej”, Przeglgd Antropologiczny, 1931, 5, 1–15.
Bolestaw Skarz~fiski, “Slowo wstppne”, in: Szumowski, Historia medycyny,op. cit., pp. m—lx, on p. viii.
Henry E. Sigerist, Socialized Medicine in the Soviet Union. London: Victor Gollancz. 1937, pp. 19–22, 322–326.
On Carrel’s goals, see Carrel, L’Homme cet inconnu,op. cit., p. 344.
Anne Harrington, “Unmasking Suffering’s Masks: Reflections on Old and New Memories of Nazi Medicine”, Dedalus,Winter 1996, 125 (1), 181–206.
Ibid., pp. 199–200.
Anne Harrington, “Kurt Goldstein’s Neurology of Healing and Wholeness: A Weimar Story”, paper given at the conference “Holistic Medicine”, op. cit.
Harrington, “Unmasking Suffering’s Masks”, op. cit., p. 194. This is clearly an extreme case: not every “context” so obviously shapes every action within it as the Dachau concentration camp did.
Ludwik Fleck, “On the Crisis of `Reality”’, (trans. H. G. Shalit and Y. Elkana), in Robert S. Cohen and Thomas Schnelle (eds.), Cognition and Fact: Materials on Ludwik Fleck. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1986, pp. 47–58, on p. 51. This article was first published in German in 1929.
Iiana Löwy, The Polish School of Philosophy of Medicine: From Tvtus Chatubinski (1820–1889) to Ludwik Fleck (1896–1961). Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990, pp. 215–228.
Zygmunt Kramsztyk, “Racyonalne leczenie”, in: Z. Kramsztyk, Szkice krytyczne z zakresu medycyny. Warsaw: E. Wende, pp. 189–196.
Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (trans. F. Bradley and T. Trenn). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979 (1935), pp. 113–114.
Fleck, “On the Crisis of `Reality—, op. cit., p. 54. The comparison between science and a river was first proposed by Zygmunt Kramsztyk, ”O znaczeniu wiedzy historycznej“, Kryryka Lekarska, 1899, 3 (9), 253–255.
Kramsztyk, “O znaczeniu wiedzy historycznej”, op. cit. p. 255.
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Löwy, I. (2000). The Polish School of Philosophy of Medicine: Lessons from the Past. In: Tymieniecka, AT., Zalewski, Z. (eds) Life the Human Being between Life and Death. Analecta Husserliana, vol 64. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2081-6_27
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