Abstracts fra Bibliotek for Læger 2/2004

Kronik: Forskningens etiske og politiske udfordringer.

Torben Clausen:

The ethical and political challenges of science.

Bibl Læger 2004; 196: 84–105.

Science is a search for truth and loses its meaning if you cannot trust or understand its results. Research is performed on behalf of society and its results markedly transform the life of society. Also for this reason scientists are obliged to ensure honest documentation of their data, intelligible presentation and accessability of the results. The reliability of research also depends on the prevailing economical, political and religious conditions. Therefore, scientists must personally contribute to secure the freedom, independence and applicability of their research as well as to the further development of the basic concepts, ethics and perspectives of their field of interest. Several of the ethical challenges described here relate to the personal attitudes of the individual scientist. Moreover, scientists may be trapped in two towers: a tower of Babel of uncoordinated research or an Ivory tower of secluded life. Taken together, the solution to these problems is a prerequisite for the maintenance of our modern societies, their welfare, democracy and political equilibrium. There is much at stake; considerable insight, care and initiative are required as well as efforts that may carry personal risks.

 

Originalartikel: Pestepidemien i Danmark i 1650’erne.

Lise Knudsen:

Plague in Denmark

Bibl Læger 2004; 196: 106–31.

In the period from 1347 to the 1660’s the plague was omnipresent in Europe. Time and time again the European population was struck by this disease that killed people in large numbers everytime it appeared. The great impact of the plague has made historians wonder about the nature of the disease, and until recently it has been accepted by most scholars that the plague was identical with the modern bubonic plague as it appeared in India and China around 1900. In the past 30 years though, this view has changed, and several historians now find that the behavior of the “historical” plague is in contrast with the retrospective diagnosis. In this article I take a close look on the plague epidemic in Denmark in the 1650’s in order to establish the nature of the disease. My source material for this study is the parish registers for 96 parishes in Sjælland, Lolland-Falster, Møn, and Bornholm. The registers show that the plague spread from parish to parish through social infrastructure. On the local level interpersonal contacts also played an important part in the spreading of the disease; the majority of deaths during an outbreak of plague occured in families where two or more died of the plague. This way of spreading suggests a disease spread directly by person to person contact and is thus inconsistent with the knowledge we have of modern bubonic plague. The parish registers also show that the plague was present in all seasons. Most outbreaks – in Denmark as in other European countries – took place in the summer and autumn, but in many cases the disease occured in winter or in the early spring months. This would be unlikely if the disease in question was actually modern bubonic plague, since this disease can only appear when the weather is hot and humid.

The conclusion is that the disease called plague, which ravaged Eastern Denmark in the 1650’s was not identical to the modern bubonic plague. The study of the spreading of the disease furthermore suggests that the “historical” plague was a disease directly transmitted from person to person.

 

 

Originalartikel: Carl Ottos forbryderhoveder. Frenologi og det intellektuelle miljø i København i første halvdel af 1800-tallet.

Anja Skaar Jacobsen:

Carl Otto’s criminal heads. Phrenology and the intellectual climate in Copenhagen in the first half of the 19th century.

Bibl Læger 2004; 196: 132–61.

The appearance of phrenology in Copenhagen in the beginning of the 19th century is a fascinating story because it involved many prominent figures in medical, scientific, and intellectual circles. The physician and phrenologist Carl Otto (1795–1879) constitutes the very pivot of this story by virtue of his energetic appearance and great endurance in favour of phrenology in the 1820s. Several factors shaped the reception of phrenology in Copenhagen such as the general positivistic turn of both science and medicine from the 1820s onwards and the philosophical and intellectual climate at the time in terms of Romanticism inspired from German Naturphilosophie. Generally, the Romantics, i.e. the powerful intellectual elite in Copenhagen, were philosophically biased against phrenology, while primarily people disagreeing with the philosophical values of Romanticism were inclined to endorse phrenology. However, there are also important exceptions to this generalisation as revealed from the present paper.

 

Originalartikel: Ole Bang og den moderne medicins begyndelse.

Morten Arnika Skydsgaard:

Ole Bang and the beginning of modern medicine.

Bibl Læger 2004; 196: 162–81.

The main object of this study is the physician Ole Bang (1788–1877) and the process of change in Danish medical science in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century the perception of Ole Bang is critical and Bang is interpreted as a hindrance for progress of medical science in the period. In order to correct what I will argue is a partly misinterpreted picture of Bang, this work intends to give a more detailed view of him by relating his work to the context of Danish medicine in the period 1810–1840. The article, based on the PhD thesis “Ole Bang and the last Hippocratic medicine”, contributes to the general understanding of the period, since the history of the development of medicine in nineteenth century Denmark mainly has been a narrative based on historical figures and themes later on labelled as “modern”. Using a historical person such as Bang makes it possible to tell another story. Bang was interested in the new French medicine but he also paid attention to, for example, meteorological observations, because he and other Danish physicians tried to modernise Hippocratic medicine. The study of Bang shows us that the celebratory histories of the arrival of modern medicine, is also a story about the survival and decline of Hippocratic medicine in nineteenth century Danish medicine.

 

Kommentar: Et spørgsmål om tillid? Forholdet mellem patienter, læger og medicinalindustri.

Inga Marie Lunde:

A matter of trust? The relationships between patients, doctors and

drug companies.

Bibl Læger 2004; 196: 182–90.

It has become more and more evident that the entanglement between doctors and drug companies is widespread, and evidence shows that interactions with industry influence doctors’ behaviour. Therefore the goodwill relations between doctors and drug companies have to be examined critically. Many doctors receive gifts from drug companies, and most doctors deny this influence despite considerable evidence to the contrary. In this article it is argued that the culture of gift giving in sponsoring creates dependencies for doctors that conflict with their primary obligation to patients. The feeling of indebtedness is repaid by support for pharmaceutical solutions. When a pharmaceutical company funds research into drugs, studies are likely to produce results favourable to the sponsoring company’s product. Doctors should bear in mind that integrity and trustworthiness is not something for ever given, but something that we may loose. Trust is essential in the patient-doctor relationship, and we have to struggle to sustain it every day.

 

Forsidebillede: Frederik Christian Sibbern (1785– 1872).