VIRUS – Beiträge zur Sozialgeschichte der Medizin, Band 21
Schwerpunkt: Musik und Medizin
No.:
21
Year of the volume:
2023
Die Zeitschrift "Virus - Beiträge zur Sozialgeschichte der Medizin" ist das Publikationsorgan des Vereins für Sozialgeschichte der Medizin und erscheint einmal jährlich.
Sie versammelt wissenschaftliche Beiträge verschiedener Disziplinen, die sich mit Themen aus den Bereichen Medizin, Gesundheit und Krankheit in historischer, kultur- und/oder sozialwissenschaftlicher Perspektive empirisch auseinandersetzen. Weitergehende Einschränkungen für Beitragsvorschläge in thematischer oder methodischer Hinsicht bestehen nicht.
Der "Virus" publiziert vornehmlich Beiträge mit Bezug zur Geschichte der Medizin in Österreich, dessen Nachbarländern sowie der ehemaligen Habsburgermonarchie. Vergleichend angelegte Arbeiten können aber über diesen Rahmen auch hinausgreifen. Hinsichtlich der behandelten Zeiträume bestehen keine Eingrenzungen, jedoch stehen Beiträge zur Medizin in der Neuzeit und der Moderne/Postmoderne im Vordergrund (16.-21. Jahrhundert).
Das aktuelle Schwerpunktheft, herausgegeben von Maria Heidegger, Milijana Pavlović und Marina Hilber, ist dem interdisziplinären Dialog zwischen der Medizingeschichte und der Musikwissenschaft gewidmet. Aus beiden Perspektiven werden Zusammenhänge zwischen Musik und Medizin und verschiedene Möglichkeiten darüber ins Gespräch zu kommen, beleuchtet. Anhand konkreter Fragestellungen wird etwa nach den ambivalenten Wirkungen des Musikalischen gefragt und dabei die gesamte Bandbreite von therapeutisch, beruhigend und erheiternd bis zu aufwühlend, quälend und verstörend berücksichtigt. Bewusst wird im Intro – entgegen des Mainstreams – nicht etwa die therapeutische Qualität des Musikalischen, sondern die „dunkle“ Seite, der mögliche Missbrauch der Musik, betont (Josephine Morag Grant). Die Autor:innen des Schwerpunktteils des Heftes liefern Variationen zu unterschiedlichen historischen und geschlechtsspezifischen Vorstellungen über Körper, Stimme und Resonanzen von Musik (Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild, Till Stehr), sie analysieren Musikwerke in medizinischen Räumen wie Kurbädern und Sanatorien (Christina Vanja, Lorenz Adamer, Irmtraut Sahmland und Aleš Verner), fragen aus dem Blickwinkel der historischen Sound Studies nach Klangerfahrungen und nach den Quellen, in denen sich etwa Patient:innen sowohl als Musikhörende als auch als Musikproduzierende aufspüren lassen (Maria Heidegger), nach Musik als Medium oder als Bestandteil von Diskursen in medizinischen Vermittlungsprojekten (Martina Hochreiter, Timur Sijaric) oder nach Aufführungsängsten von Musiker:innen (Regina Thumser-Wöhs) und nach den biografisch fluktuierenden Grenzen zwischen musikalischem Beruf und therapeutischer „Berufung“ (Michaela Krucsay). Das Outro des Thementeils bilden Berichte über aktuelle Projekte im Schnittfeld von Musikwissenschaft, Sound Studies und Geschichtswissenschaft.
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Editorial
Page 9 - 14 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s009
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Bleed a little louder: Sound, silence and music torture
Music, like medicine, can be used to damage as well as to heal, and there is a long history linking music with punishment rituals, and torture. However, the common tendency to think about violence and injury in terms of physical force and visible scars means that impacts of psychological and social violence have often been downplayed, even silenced. The emphasis on physicality also results in erroneous ideas about music torture: for example, the assumption that the music used must be intensely physical, ergo extremely loud. Studying the impacts of non-physical violence present difficulties for the historian, not least given changes in how injury and illness are discussed and perceived. However, as nineteenth-century debates around flogging demonstrate, historical actors sometimes show a surprisingly acute awareness of the medical impacts of psychological violence. This essay ultimately argues that giving voice to survivors of these forms of violence is imperative for justice and healing, and that historians are well placed to contribute to this.
Keywords: Music, torture, Britain, USA, 19th–21st centuries
Morag Josephine Grant
Page 15 - 32 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s015
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Zwischen Badelast und Badelust: Der Hautausschlag in der Badekur
The article focusses on satirical song-lyrics dealing with spa rashes (exanthemas), a phenomenon caused by the extensive use of the warm waters during spa treatments. The lyrics can be dated to the second half of the 17th century and ought to be sung in different melodies. Due to the contemporary medical opinion on how the waters evoke their healing effects on the body, the provocation of spa rashes was deemed necessary. Only after its outbreak, people were allowed to take part in the pleasure and entertainment of the spas. In comparison with the ambitions to install certain standards of bathing due to medical aspects, our source presents a distinct patient’s view. The spa rashes seem to have been a commonly shared physical experience in early modern times. This setting is metaphorically transformed to comment on the idea of self-assertion within steadily hostile surroundings.
Keywords: Rash, spas, Switzerland, 17th century, patient's view
Irmtraut Sahmland - Aleš Verner
Page 33 - 52 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s033
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Georg Philipp Telemanns „Pyrmonter Kurwoche“ (1734). Über die physiologischen Zusammenhänge von Trinkkur, Promenade und Musik
Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767) visited Bad Pyrmont at least five times because of general exhaustion and various ailments. In return, he dedicated “Scherzi melodichi” (TWV 42) to the Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont, who had greatly promoted the spa. For each day of the week, he composed a piece with different movements for violin, viola or violone and harpsichord. Each of the melodic pieces of music, especially pastoral on Sundays, lasted 10 minutes and were to be performed in the early hours of the morning. This was the time of drinking water, which in the understanding of the time had a “health-promoting, internally cleansing effect” (Michael Stolberg). The success of this cure was supported by slow strolls on the spa promenade in a ‘cheerful’ environment. Last but not least, the spa music contributed to this bright atmosphere. In the early modern period, however, it caused more than just a good mood: in the context of humoral medicine music had also lasting physiological consequences.
Keywords: Georg Philipp Telemann, Pyrmont, spa history, water music, humoral medicine, 18th century
Christina Vanja
Page 53 - 68 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s053
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Music for Bathing and Spa Therapy in the Early Modern Period
Spas and baths proved to be spaces where a wide array of dietary and medicinal approaches to improving health were connected. For the medicinal theories of the early modern era (1500– 1750) the teachings on humor, spiritus and temperament, and the difference between res naturales and res non naturales were essential. One’s health was also considered to be significantly dependent on one’s emotional state, and could therefore be influenced by music as well. Thus, music was of central importance to medical advice regarding spas and baths in the early modern era because of its influence on, or control of, human emotions, which affected both the mind and the body. As illustrated by the many medical remarks in balneological treatises, music not only stimulated emotions but also caused reactions in the human body.
Keywords: early modern period, bath, spa, music therapy, Central Europe, dietary
Lorenz Adamer
Page 69 - 84 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s069
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Musikalische Madeleines im Wandel der Zeit. Konzepte von Erinnerung und ästhetisch-emotionalem Musikerleben seit dem 18. Jahrhundert
A musical Proust effect refers to a situation in which music transports us back to a whole-bodily felt experience from our past. This article traces concepts of this effect, here heuristically called “musical madeleines”, in the history of science since the 18th century and shows how both its explanations and its evaluations have changed over the decades in relation to contemporary medical, psychological and musical knowledge. The historical focus is on 18th-century physiology and 19th-century psychophysics, with Ernst Anton Nicolai’s Die Verbindung der Musik mit der Artzneygelahrheit (1745) and Gustav Theodor Fechner’s Vorschule der Ästhetik (1876) serving as main examples. These historical accounts are framed by some reflections on empirical music research today and some suggestions for a cultural-historical embedding in the history of medicine, emotions and music in general and in the discourses on programme music versus absolute music in particular.
Keywords: Proust effect, music and memory, music and emotions, 18th-century physiology, 19th-century psychophysics, empirical music aesthetics
Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild
Page 85 - 102 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s085
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„Schlafe, mein Prinzchen“ des Berliner Arztes Carl Eduard Flies (1770–1829) im Kontext von „Stilldebatte“, Autorschaft und Haskala
Even today, songs from the 18th century can be found in nursery rhyme books or music boxes to sing babies to sleep. The lullaby “Schlafe, mein Prinzchen” is one of them. In music historiography, it has been a matter of debate whether it was set to music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or by Isaac Beer (Carl Eduard) Flies. As an amateur composer the latter was active in the social environment of the Berlin salons of the 1790s, and as a doctor he practised and published until the first quarter of the 19th century. In the context of this paper, I propose to compare a close reading of the lullaby and Flies’ journal article “Ueber den modischen Misbrauch, den vornehme Mütter mit dem Selbststillen treiben”, which was published in 1800 in the Journal des Luxus und der Moden with the broad 18th-century debate about the breastfeeding of infants by the mother (as opposed to being fed by a wet nurse). The new approach, which incorporates the medical-historical perspective and that of gender studies, offers an insight that not only determines a “mother-image” in Flies’ publication in its contemporary context, but vice versa also reveals the discursive strategies in the historical dispute about the authorship of the lullaby.
Keywords: Carl Eduard Flies, Jewish medical doctors, lullaby, breast-feeding, Berlin, Cultural History
Martina Hochreiter
Page 103 - 120 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s103
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„[…] auch richtete man mit passenden Geigenvorstellungen etwas.“ Auf Spurensuche nach der Musikpraxis in der frühen Anstaltspsychiatrie
This contribution explores musical practices in German-speaking asylums in the first half of the nineteenth century. Using the example of the provincial mental asylum in Hall in Tyrol, established in 1830, it sheds light on the presence of musical sound in ‘silent’ archival sources. Therefore, the article investigates the question of what we can actually learn about the fading sounds and musical experiences of psychiatric patients. Firstly, it focuses on the institution as a space for music performance; secondly, it discusses conceptual framings for music therapy in early psychiatry up to 1850. A third thread of discussion derives from a close reading of contemporary medical literature and concerns the ambivalent perceptions of the effects of music. While this approach focuses more on the perspectives of physicians, the fourth section of this paper takes a patient-oriented perspective. Using the example of Tyrol, it examines the traces of music in medical records. The article therefore emphasizes a desideratum of research, in which it draws attention to musical patients and their instruments.
Keywords: early psychiatry, musical practice, sounds, therapeutic concepts, patient files, patient-oriented view, 19th century
Page 121 - 140 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s121
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Reappraising the Queer Falsetto. Magnus Hirschfeld, Sexology, and the Gendered Vocality of Gay “Men”, 1900–1914
Filling a gap in falsetto history, this article unearths several mentions of male high-voice singing in Berlin’s homosexual subculture before World War I. Using the theories of the physician and liberationist activist Magnus Hirschfeld, a contemporary medical explanation for this phenomenon is discussed, especially with regard to Hirschfeld’s attitudes towards the singers’ gendered and queered bodies. His medical approach, which reinforces the singers’ performative agencies, is brought into conversation with more (post-)modern ideas of queer theory and voice studies, the concepts of embodiment, medicine, and gender providing for interesting points of contact between the two.
Keywords: Magnus Hirschfeld, queer history, male high voice singing, voice studies, Berlin, Wilhelmine Era
Till Stehr
Page 141 - 158 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s141
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„Musiker wirst Dein Leben kaner!“ – Stress, Druck, Lampenfieber und Neuro-Enhancement in der Musik
In recent years the ‘classical music scene’ has come under increasing criticism regarding neuro-enhancement and the use of drugs, including Ritalin, beta blocker, caffeine, LSD in microdoses or alcohol. Pressure to perform, touring, stress and performance anxiety are part of musicians’ everyday lives. I assume that the phenomenon of overwork in the field of music is not new. Performance limits for professional musicians existed much earlier. The text is about music education, violence in education, child prodigies, and the dealing with fears of failure and stressful situations. The increased thematization of stage fright is due on the one hand to the emergence of large concert halls and the accompanying expansion of the audience, and on the other hand to the possibility of preserving and comparing voices and artistic interpretations of works on data carriers. Autobiographical texts as well as concert reviews and articles in historical- medical journals are used as sources.
Keywords: music education, music performance anxiety, (psychological) violence, child prodigies, neuro-enhancement, 19th and 20th centuries
Regina Thumser-Wöhs
Page 159 - 176 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s159
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Ein Hippokratischer Eid für die Musik. Beruf und Berufung in den Schriften der Violinistin Hedi Gigler-Dongas
Hedi Gigler-Dongas (1923−2017), daughter of the composer Grete von Zieritz and the writer Herbert Gigler, was already looking back on a successful career as a violin soloist when she − according to the ego documents she left behind − increasingly followed her actual vocation from around the 1970s. She found it in the therapeutic, didactic work with violinists who suffered from profession-specific physical complaints, whereby for Gigler-Dongas psychosomatic aspects functioned as superior to physiological ones. Symbolic research with sexual connotations also played a significant role in her analytical approach. Gigler-Dongas’ own painful experience of being an externally determined child prodigy served as a source of inspiration and motivation. Her distinct self-image as a highly qualified specialist both in her bread-andbutter profession as a violinist and for her vocation as a therapist for body and soul, as well as her efforts to actively influence her external perception as such, can be traced in numerous first-person documents, including above all autobiographical narratives, letters and diaries. These always reveal a close interweaving of the public “professional persona” with aspects of private life, even in later years, for instance, by implying medical competence via her role as a doctor’s wife.
Keywords: Berlin, Graz, 20th−21st centuries, violin methodology, professionalism, therapy, autobiography
Michaela Krucsay
Page 177 - 194 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s177
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Resounding Eyes, Educating Minds. The Eye as a Musical Object in Wien-Film’s ‘Medical Features’
Against the background of the scientific and cultural-social interest in the Third Reich for the eyes and their characteristics, this paper conducts an audiovisual examination of Augen (D 1943), a Kulturfilm produced by the Wien-Film production conglomerate. This analysis is preceded by a review of two legacies principal to the paper’s investigation of Augen: the Kulturfilm genre and its ideological instrumentalisation on the one hand and the infamous “research” conducted by Dr. Josef Mengele on the other. Although unlikely that these positions influenced each other at the time, the interpretation of the organ made the inspiration and ultimately the realization of the state-sponsored research and film production, exemplified by “Eye Studies” and selected films respectively, possible. The audiovisual motif of the eyes is therefore (re)presented in an educational context but shrouded in an ideologised means of mediation.
Keywords: Augen (Eyes), Third Reich, Wien-Film, audiovisuality, Kulturfilm, 1938–1945, Vienna
Timur Sijaric
Page 195 - 214 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s195
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The Shaman’s Drum: Eurocentric Interpretations of Non-European Sonic Worlds
In this contribution, I will focus on the history and meaning construction of the term “shamanism” and its implications for the music that is attached to this concept. “Shamanism” was brought to Europe from Russian Siberia in the 17th century and then, until the 20th century was re-interpreted as an epitome of the exotic and diabolic. During the last third of the 20th century, however, the term and concept were transformed and romanticised in alternative and New Age contexts of modern societies. The music associated with Indigenous ritual was likewise transformed and adapted so that anyone could play it, such as monotonous drumming for instance. Both processes, i. e. the historical construction of the exotic and contemporary appropriations of the romantic, are based on highly colonial prejudices against what was considered as “primitive” and are ignorant of the Indigenous historical and contemporary realities.
Keywords: shamanism, Colonialism, Ritual, health practices, ritual music, indigenous music
Bernd Brabec de Mori
Page 215 - 224 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s215
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Musik und Gewalt. Die akustische Dimension des Krieges in narrativen Texten des Mittelalters
Medieval war was full of sounds and several medieval authors refer to a variety of acoustic aspects of warfare. This paper examines some of these references that reflect on the use of music in warfare and on its representation in literary texts. The first part of the paper explores what historiographical sources can tell us about how and why music was used in medieval battle, focusing on the battle of Worringen (1288). This battle is the main topic of a historical poem written by Jan van Heelu that mentions a variety of signals and gives some indications on the psychological implications of music in warfare. The second part of the paper focuses on the effects of music on the body using literary texts as an example. The meaning and effect of voice is described on the basis of the late court novel “Daniel von dem blühenden Tal” written by Stricker in the 13th century. Finally, the correlation between music and combat is to be analysed on the example of the “Nibelungenlied”.
Keywords: Music, Warfare, soundscape, belliphonie, medieval literature
Martin Clauss - Gesine Mierke
Page 225 - 232 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s225
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Schönheits-Chirurgie für Gesangsstimmen? Was die Medizingeschichte über die Konjunktur des Kastratengesangs im frühen 17. Jahrhundert verraten könnte
The early period of castrato singing, i. e. the late 16th and early 17th centuries, has received little scholarly attention. Therefore, the aim of my current doctoral dissertation project at the University of Music Weimar is to examine how the rise of castrato singing came about, looking at contemporary performance practice and drawing on sources from multiple other disciplines. Here, I present interim results from my research into medical history, starting with an outline of the state of the art of surgery and barber-surgeons, and of the important development of plastic surgery as an art that helps to (re)create natural beauty. The second part summarizes what (learned) physicians of the time considered to be consequences of castration. Castrati – or eunuchi – were e. g. described as cold and damp, lacking of vital heat and thus effeminate, with higher, tender voice and softer flesh; as for character traits, they were seen as phlegmatic and vicious. Third, referring to contemporary theories on affects and their transmission as well as treatises on singing technique, it is reflected that due to their bodily constitution the castrati could have been particularly suitable for the singing profession, especially for the embodiment of soloistic affect music.
Keywords: castrato singers, surgery, humoral pathology, affects, Italian peninsula, late 16th and early 17th centuries
Heidrun Eberl
Page 233 - 244 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s233
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Music at Sanatoriums in Sweden 1890–1960. A report from an ongoing project
This report is on a recently started research project on cultural activities in sanatoriums for the treatment of tuberculosis in Sweden 1890–1960. The project has a multidisciplinary focus, with participation from researchers within art studies, musicology, ethnology, and the history of medicine respectively. The main questions of the project are what music and other cultural activities meant to patients and staff at the sanatoriums and how it affected their well-being and quality of life. The chosen period is 1890–1960, starting when sanatoriums with a special focus on tuberculosis began to be established, and ending at a time when many sanatoriums were closed down, as the need for this type of healthcare institution no longer existed. Tuberculosis is a disease with a long history. It became widespread in Sweden as well as in many other European countries from the mid 19th century onward, partly due to the industrialization and its consequences such as cramped living conditions in overcrowded cities.1 Gradually, many sanatoriums were established throughout the country, with a total of more than 100, in varying sizes, run by private companies as well as by the state.
Keywords: sanatoriums, public health, tuberculosis, Music, quality of life, Sweden, 19th–20th century
Karin Hallgren
Page 245 - 254 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s245
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Die Pharmakologie in Prag. Biographische Annäherungen an W. Wiechowski, E. Starkenstein und G. Kuschinsky
This dissertation explores three case studies of pharmacologists which had been the Chair of Pharmacology at the Charles University of Prague in the early to mid-20th century and thereafter. Due to their different personal background and research interests, both their academic research work and also their personal lives are investigated, with regards to their contribution to modern pharmacology and also in terms of political victimization or preferential treatment. The underlying methodological concept has to be seen in Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenological philosophy, drawing from the understanding of the individual’s experiences, adding an interpretative view to his teacher’s perception of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl. Thematically seen, all three pharmacologists are being reviewed in terms of their academic biography, including professional influences or direct academic collaborations. To understand socio-political influences, also personal stances on philosophical issues as well as humanist interests have been considered, e. g. their ideas on public health or wider health policies, professional development of healthcare professions or their relations to the pharmaceutical industry itself. Based on a “thick description” (Geertz), the results of this research demonstrate implications of ideological interferences on academic careers, and also consider Ehrenreich’s and Cole’s “Perpetrator-Victim-Bystander-Model”.
Keywords: pharmacology, 20th century, Prague, phenomenology, case studies, victimisation
Patrick L. Zawadzki
Page 255 - 261 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/virus21s255
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Rezensionen
Page 262 - 285
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Vereinsinformationen
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Edition:
978-3-7001-9402-6, eJournal, Digital, 24.03.2023
Pages:
288 Pages
Images:
numerous figures, charts, diagrams
Language:
German, English
DOI (Link to Online Edition):