VIRUS – Beiträge zur Sozialgeschichte der Medizin, Band 2327

Animals’ vulnerability has increasingly gained attention in academic and public debates. How-ever, still, the treatment of animals in various contexts is remarkably divergent. This is also reflected in practices related to medicine. In different contexts, they are framed in different ways and become either objectified, e. g., as risk potential (vectors) or resources (lab animals), or subjectified as patients. Thus, they are treated in various ways even though they might have similar bodies. For instance, rats are kept as pets, used in animal experiments, or are the target of pest control. Health crises may change these roles and restructure practices. During the Covid-19 pandemic, however, such roles were possibly altered, but a tendency emerged to stabilize practices that promised to provide an alleged certainty. The One Health approach seeks to harmonize and align the health of humans and animals in a shared environment. However, it runs the risk to neglect tensions between various health-related needs as well as to neglect the moral infrastructure, in which animals are framed as risk potential, resource, or as co-patients. Such framings imply different ways and degrees of the visibility and recogniz a-bility of vulnerability. Ethical reflections must not be restricted to the flourishing of individual ani mals but need to include the processes of objectification and subjectification.

Keywords: One Health, humananimal studies, vulnerability, zoonoses, Europe, 21st century

What do MERS, SARS, BSE, HIV, Zika, Ebola and Covid-19 have in common? Animals play(ed) an important role in the transmission of pathogens, and with the recent covid pande-mic, animals – in this case pangolins at a market in Wuhan – have come to the fore as vectors. However, it would be wrong to reduce the role of animals in the animal-human relationship solely to that of an intermediate host or possible carrier of disease. They are also part of the so- lu tion: In the laboratory, animals model human diseases, or in the pharmaceutical industry, they served as “donors”, as biological or organic sources in the production of serums and vaccines. The role of animals in the development and control of diseases, and in medicine in general, has long been overlooked in (medical) history. The article examines the complex relationships bet-ween animals and humans in medicine (and especially in bacteriology and related sciences) and explores various aspects relevant to this relationship, such as risk and biopolitics, public health, knowledge production, food and pharmaceutical industries. Starting with a dubious turtle tuber culosis serum developed by Friedrich Franz Friedmann in Berlin in the decade after 1900, the article asks what relationships exist between animals and humans in medicine, how these relationships can be categorised (animals as vectors, animals as patients, animals as economic or epistemic objects, etc.) and, above all, how the different levels of relationship are interrelated.

Keywords: Human-animal relationships, epidemics, epizootics, veterinary medicine, tuberculosis cure, 19th and 20th century

Until the 20th century, horses played an outstanding role as draught and pack animals or farm horses. They were symbols of powerful rulers, pivotal actors in the cavalry as well as in the mounted police. Even today, horses are cherished hunting and sports companions. This central importance of horses, mules and donkeys for the traditional working and living environment is also reflected in the history of medicine. Since ancient times, equidae have been at the forefront of veterinary healing attempts, so that one can even speak of the special subject of hippiatria. This shows the great attention that was paid to the health of these animals at all times. Diete tics and remedies were rooted in the principles of Hippocratic-Galenic medicine, and until the foun ding of the first veterinary institutes in the second half of the 18th century, therapists were primarily experienced stable masters and blacksmiths. Focusing on horse baths in health resorts, this article examines equine medicine that has so far received little attention in spa history.

Keywords: Horses, equine medicine, health resorts, hydrotherapy, early modern and early 19th century Europe

At the beginning of the 20th century, syphilis was one of the most feared diseases. Intensive medical research on the disease was considered crucial to improving its curability, which moti-vated many changes in research practices until the 1920s. All these changes had one thing in common: they involved a large number of animals. The purpose of this article is to focus on those animals and to explore their shifting roles in syphilis research: In what ways were they and their bodies used? What was the nature of human-animal relationships? What were the ‘advantages’ of animal experiments over human ones? Using the example of two German researchers involved in many experiments (mostly on rabbits), this article links previous research on the history of animal experimentation to the specifics of syphilis – a highly stigma-tized disease with moral implications. It also shows how ideas about a human venereal disease were transferred to animal experiments.

Keywords: Syphilis, medical history, animal experiments, humananimal relations, 20th century, German Empire

Recently, anatomical specimens of various mammal heads were discovered at the Department of Anatomy of the Medical University of Vienna. They were used by anatomist Ferdinand Hochstetter (1861–1954) in his research for one specific publication published in 1941. This article examines the scientific practices surrounding Hochstetter’s work, the importance of longterm efforts of Viennese anatomists and others to establish scientifically curated collections of animals and other specimens in Vienna, the professional and personal networks he relied upon in order to gain access to animals and other required materials, and the process of artificially creating these specimens from the original animals in order to create a basis usable for scientific examination. In doing so, this article also aims to re-establish the specimens (original) context in order to pull them out of their state as “modern ruins”, i. e. as objects which have lost their context and thus, their meaning and use.

Keywords: Vienna, 19th and 20th century, history of anatomy, comparative anatomy, Ferdinand Hochstetter

Human and veterinary medicine tend to be thought of as separate entities. This paper investi-gates the cooperation between a Swiss veterinarian and a neurologist that led to the establish-ment of the Institute of Comparative Neurology at the University of Berne, discussing the conditions for interdisciplinary collaboration. The focus lies on the so-called vices of cattle that disrupt the milking routine. Engaging with Charles Rosenberg’s model it analyses how the Framing of Animal Disease shifted during the 20th century.

Keywords: History of veterinary medicine, animal health, comparative neurology, Switzerland, 20th century

The article discusses the involvement of veterinarians in the debate on the stunning of slaughter animals in Germany from the late 19th century until the 1930s. In the first part, it illu mi nates general developments and arguments. In the second part, it concentrates on three sig ni ficant figures of the debate: Hugo Heiss, Carl Klein and Max Müller. The article confirms already known facts about the entanglement of the debate with the question of a possible limitation of the Jewish ritual slaughter (shehitah). It argues that anti-Semitic notions were not ne cessarily the main motivation for the involvement in the debate. Rather, various interpretations of the idea of animal protection encouraged German veterinarians to take a public stand. The positions presented in the article vary from a scientific attitude towards stunning methods (Heiss), to a radical form of animal protection (Klein) and finally to a völkisch view of human-animal relations (Müller).

Keywords: Slaughtering of animals, stunning of animals, shehitah, animal protection, veterinarians, German Reich

This paper analyzes the reactions of scientists working with animal experiments to the increasing disapproval of this type of research by large parts of the society in German-speaking countries in the last quarter of the 20th century. It examines the statements made by individual scientists and research institutions such as the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Max- Planck-Gesellschaft, which were intended to appeal to a broad audience. They chose a con-frontational approach by presenting themselves as the exclusive voice of reason and science and their practice as pure necessity, while accusing critics from various social movements of ignorance, anti-scientific sentiment and excessive emotionalism. Public and academic protest did not diminish, but actually increased. The major research institutions in particular failed to address the emotions as an essential factor in the complex ethical conflict and their social impact.

Keywords: Animal experimentation, animal ethics, emotions, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, 1970s to 1990s, Germany

This article explores the question of why and to what extent the collection of animals (both living and taxidermied) played a central role in the Austrian expedition to Brazil from 1817 onwards. Using exemplary “collector biographies”, such as those of Archduchess and Empress Leopoldine and Johann Natterer, animals are viewed as objects of collection as well as know-ledge. The animal intestinal worms collected by Natterer are of particular interest to medical history, for example in connection with parasitological issues. They were the focus of scientific research in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as potential pathogens and disease vectors.

Keywords: Johann Natterer, Johann Gottfried Bremser, Austrian expedition to Brazil, intestinal worms, Natural History Museum Vienna, Archduchess/Empress Leopoldine

This project report deals with the depictions of monkeys in medical portraits and medical representa tions from the 16th to the 20th century. Starting with Vesal, the levels of meaning of the monkey as an attribute of medicine, especially comparative anatomy, and as a symbolic ani-mal of the theory of evolution from Darwin to the 1930s are discussed. The allegorical mon key as the bearer of an anatomical pictorial tradition is at the center of an image analysis at the inter-section of the history of science, social history and art history.

Keywords: monkey, Medicine, Darwin, portrait, Europe, Modernity

The project report explores human-animal relationships in psychiatric institutions around 1900 on the basis of visual material and entries in medical records, as this topic has not been researched yet. It follows the animals that appear in the sources in a variety of ways which at the same time show the diversity of possible relationships between patients and animals under the conditions of psychiatric institutions. The paper elaborates on the animals that lived there as farm animals or that were lured with food and attention and tamed there. It asks after the relationships that could evolve between nurses, patients and animals. What dynamics and interactions were set in motion by the presence of and contact with animals? And what spaces of possibility were the animals able to open up for the patients – and can first approaches to a animal-assistend therapy be already identified?

Keywords: Psychiatry, human-animal-relationship, animal-assisted-therapy, 19th and 20th century

Early traces of the methodology of pathological anatomy, systematized in the 19th century, were found in a document dating back to 1765 containing the description of an autopsy. This document records observations made during the autopsy of Ferenc Barkóczy (1710–1765), the head of the Hungarian Roman Catholic Church and the Archbishop of Esztergom. The systematic description, the sequence of opening body cavities, and the structure of the record roughly follow the canonized methods established about eighty years later. The reason why this des-crip tion preceded its time can be primarily explained by the fact that the autopsy, in addition to determining the cause of death, also aimed at excluding the possibility of foul play (poisoning). In other words, the dissection of the body served a forensic purpose, also evidenced by the presence­of­the­official­state­physician­during­the­procedure.

Keywords: Hungarian archbishop, autopsy, legal background, 1765, Habsburg Empire, multimorbid pathological lesions