Medycyna

Overview & Synopsis

The Romantic model, though mostly part of the history of medicine today, can be assessed in various different ways. Some indeed see it as an insignificant episode in the history of medical practice, and a conservative, or even backward, one at that. On the other hand, others (and it seems they are not in the minority) are of the opinion that Romantic medicine played a certain role both in the overcoming of the crisis in the eighteenth century, and in the new self-defining of somatic and material medicine, which, in turn, to some degree sped up the shaping of medicine in its contemporary interpretation. Some ideas of Romantic medicine became a subject of artistic re-interpretation and they still return today, even if their haven is predominantly alternative medicine. The forms of therapy founded in science are also not devoted solely to the bodily and physiological mechanisms. In a somewhat holistic way, more and more often they also engage with the issue of the subjectivity of the patient, enriched with psychological and social elements, which could be called (albeit with bombast and exaggeration) the posthumous triumph of Romanticism. Finally, one must not forget that it is precisely the Romantic medicine, with its focus on the connection between body and spirit, that is to be credited as an impulse for the development of psychoanalysis (Freud regarded illnesses as psychosomatic phenomena), psychology and psychiatry.