How 19th Century District Physicians Constructed the Category of "Volksmedizin"

Over the nineteenth century, medicine in Germany professionalized and Bavaria reformed and centralized its government. The process of professionalization involved academic physicians wresting authority and control from a variety of other practitioners. Yet as my thesis will show, they did so in conversation with those practitioners. Using district medical officers’ reports, this thesis examines how in the late nineteenth century these district physicians constructed the category of Volksmedizin to solidify academic physicians’ authority in medical practices. District physicians were implemented in various rural districts of Bavaria to care for the poor and rural citizens, as well as produce medical topographical and ethnographical information for the Bavarian government. These reports were required by the Bavarian government to help assess the rural regions, their health, practices, and beliefs.While extensive research has been published on these district physicians and their reports, the actual labeling and conceptualization of Volksmedizin and its meaning to these physicians has largely been ignored. Volksmedizin was constructed as a category to distinguish “medicine” from the healing of rural practitioners. Utilizing doctors’ reports to the Bavarian government as well as other primary and secondary source material, this thesis will address the following historical concerns: How did Volksmedizin come to exist as a category? How did the district physician’s role, through the policies of the Bavarian government, change during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? How did the development of medicine fundamentally alter the conceptualization of Volksmedizin and rural practices? Utilizing physician’s reports, this thesis will answer these questions to create a new conversation about the conceptualization of Volksmedizin, and the process in which district court physicians constructed this category.