The volume being reviewed is a collection of papers from two conferences. This review deals exclusively with the eleven articles from the conference in Frankfurt am Main in 2014 on the nexus of Pietism and medicine.
Irmtraut Sahmland’s article deals with Johann Samuel Carl’s holistic understanding of the decorum of the medical profession (1723). Since the soul’s regeneration takes place in the body, the health of the body is important, and physician has pastoral duties, as he is tending to the dwelling of the patient’s soul. Pietist-Christian values form the foundation for the physician’s calling and a practical guide for his practice of medicine. Sahmland concludes that Carl’s model could only be implemented in an homogenous community of people with the same beliefs, as the religious element was so dominant.
Vera Faßhauer’s contribution looks at the copious journals (c. 38 000 pages) of the Frankfurt physician Johann Christian Senckenberg (1707–72). For the first half of his life, Senckenberg was consumed with – typically Pietist – intensely critical introspection. However, Faßhauer sees a break in Senckenberg’s biography after 1740, when his journal entries became more balanced and had other things as their subject matter. Faßhauer also relates the importance of Senckenberg’s meeting Johann Conrad Dippel (1673–1734), and his enormous influence on Senckenberg’s spiritual development.
Veronika Marschall’s Johan Christian Senckenberg und die ‘Pietas Medici’ looks at Senckenberg’s understanding of a pious physician with the help of his journals and his 1737 lecture ‘De Pietate Medici’. Marschall summarises Senckenberg’s religious development and his medical studies at the University of Halle and, like Faßhauer, Marschall describes Senckenberg’s meeting Johann Conrad Dippel in 1732 in Berleburg as ‘life-defining’. Like Johann Samuel Carl, Senckenberg regards a pious physician as a caretaker of both the body and the soul of the patient (theologomedicus). Senckenberg maintains that a pious physician should be generous with his colleagues in sharing his medical knowledge and be humble in his willingness to learn from them.
Annemarie Kinzelbach’s and Marion Maria Ruisinger’s article takes a look at the Nuremberg physician Johann Christoph Götz (1688–1733) and asks the question of whether one can speak of a specifically ‘Pietist’ practice of medicine at all. The authors were not able to identify an explicitly ‘Pietist’ form of medicine practised by Götz, except perhaps for his preoccupation with his own health, in keeping with the Pietist principle of caring for the body as the temple of the soul. Götz’s Pietism is above all evident in the company he kept, including patients, friends and professional colleagues.
Konstanze Grutschnig-Kieser’s contribution investigates the activities of the Inspirationist Johann Philipp Kämpf (1688–1753), pastor and lay physician. Kämpf attributed the cause of most chronic illnesses to intestinal blockages, which he treated with regimens of enemas. Analogous to the role of inspiration in reforming theology, Kämpf regarded enemas as the way of the future for the practice of medicine, and he regarded his ‘gift’ as a medical practitioner as his gift of inspiration. Kämpf was a mentor to many medical students, among them Friedrich Christoph Oetinger.
Rita Wöbkemeier’s article on Johann Friedrich Struensee (1737–72) looks at Struensee’s role in the historical process of the medicalisation of society in which the state recognises its realisation in the populace, as well as his role in the process of the professionalisation of the practice of medicine. Wöbkemeier concludes that neither his father Johann Adam (1708–91) nor his grandfather Johann Samuel Carl (1677–1757), both Pietists, had any lasting effect on Johann Friedrich’s piety or approach to medicine.
Anne Lagny’s article takes a look at Adam Bernd’s (1676–1748) autobiography, a detailed description of the author’s lifelong struggle with melancholy and hypochondria. Although Bernd’s autobiography is generally considered as being ‘Pietist’, Lagny points out that Bernd’s introspection in his autobiography was not due to religious experience, as was typical of Pietists, but was due to his intellectual struggle with doctrinal issues. Lagny sees a significant contribution by Bernd in his distinguishing between psychological conditions and sin. Lagny’s study is a welcome look at an individual whose biography exemplifies the eighteenth-century struggle between religious and naturalistic explanations for the human condition.
Hans-Jürgen Schrader traces the historiography dealing with Hemme Hayen (1633–89), a peasant from East Friesland in Germany, and his extraordinary visions. Schrader traces the study of Hayen through five historical phases, all of which were publications and interpretations of his biography, and takes up where nineteenth-century interpreters of Hayen left off and makes connections between them, earlier Pietists and Paracelsian and spiritualist notions of flowing magnetic elementary powers, (which have nothing to do with the later ideas of Anton Mesmer). Schrader points out that Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert (1780–1860) view Hayen’s experiences as moments of raised consciousness, and not as pathological illnesses. A contemporary review of the religious explanation of the Hayen phenomenon by Johann Arnold Kanne (1773–1824) followed a middle way that sought to harmonise a magnetic and religious interpretation. Schrader concludes that even today no satisfactory explanation for Hayen’s experiences has been found.
Jeff Bach’s Heilung, Medizin und Alchimie in Ephrata, Pennsylvania looks at Christian Eckstein (1717–87) – also known as Dr Gideon – Samuel Eckerlin (1703–82) and at the alchemist Jacob Martin (1725–90). Other than the biblical practice of anointing the sick with oil, very little is known about the community’s actual medical practices. Eckstein ran some sort of ‘apothecary’s’, and Eckerlin was called a ‘medicus’ by the Ephrata chronicler Sangmeister, who describes his having treated Sangmeister’s skin infection with a purgative. Bach reports that there is no information on which medicines either had, nor which medical books they may have owned, except for four prescriptions written by Samuel Eckerlin. Although not a doctor, Jacob Martin was well acquainted with newer concepts such as circulation and the central nervous system.
Ulf Lückel’s article on Medizinisch-alchimistische Traditionsmitgiften im Pietismus looks at three eighteenth-century thinkers. Lückel traces a connection from Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702–82), a theologian and theosopher, through Johann Friedrich Metz (1720–82) to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). Lückel describes Metz’s treatment of Goethe’s apparent oral haematorrhoea, and relates how Metz recommended alchemist books to Goethe, from which he could learn how to produce medicines himself, especially the ‘universal salt’. Lückel follows Hans-Jürgen Schrader in finding Radical Pietist influence in Goethe’s Faust.
Christoffer H. Grundmann looks at pastor Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805–80) and his controversial understanding of supernatural healing. In the course of his two-year pastoral counselling of a deeply troubled woman, Gottliebin Dittus, Blumhardt experienced her illness as demonic possession and was personally drawn into her struggle. Her shout of ‘Jesus is Victor’ at the moment of her healing became the maxim by which Blumhardt then lived, as he sought to recover key aspects of the Christian life he felt had been lost in his time. In understanding Blumhardt, Grundmann argues that one cannot think in categories of truth, reality or imagination. Central for Blumhardt was not Dittus’ illness, but her healing. Grundmann emphasises that Blumhardt’s subsequent focus was not on demonic activity, but on divine activity. If Jesus is victor, anything is possible.
The persons studied in this diverse volume include theologians and pastors, physicians, laymen and theosophers. Each article takes a strong biographical approach. All figures studied are men. The conference did not intend to be the last word on Pietism and medicine, but a beginning. The tenor of the articles supports this humble assessment. Nonetheless the volume contains valuable insights – some quite original – into the nexus between Pietism and Medicine in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
