[Vincent Priessnitz and the Vienna Medical School]

secondary literature · 1991

type:secondary literature

year:1991

citation:Skopec M. [Vincent Priessnitz and the Vienna Medical School]. Wien Klin Wochenschr. 1991;103(16):506-508. Article in German. PMID: 1949807.

LINK

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1949807/

SUMMARY

History-of-medicine article from the Institut für Geschichte der Medizin, Universität Wien. Used in this case for two grounded statements drawn from the abstract: that Vinzenz Priessnitz, 'a small-scale farmer from Gräfenberg (Austrian Silesia), from the 1820's on aroused worldwide interest in hydrotherapy, on the basis of purely empirical observations on his regimen of compresses, head, eye and foot baths, hip baths and full baths, showers and cold-water cures'; and that scientific hydrotherapy was a later development, with Wilhelm Winternitz, who became a lecturer in hydrotherapy at Vienna in 1864, referred to as the 'father of scientific hydrotherapy.' The article anchors the empirical (non-scientific) basis of Priessnitz's practice and the later re-founding of the field on physiological grounds.

NOTES

Skopec’s 1991 article in Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift situates Priessnitz against the Vienna Medical School. The abstract states that Priessnitz, a small-scale farmer from Gräfenberg in Austrian Silesia, aroused worldwide interest in hydrotherapy from the 1820s on the basis of “purely empirical observations” and a regimen of compresses, head, eye and foot baths, hip baths, full baths, showers, and cold-water cures. It records that the Gräfenberg impulse influenced the Vienna Medical School and that Wilhelm Winternitz, a lecturer in hydrotherapy from 1864, is called the “father of scientific hydrotherapy.” This case uses the article for the empirical (pre-scientific) basis of Priessnitz’s method and for the point that the field was put on a physiological footing only later and by another figure, which bears on the disconfirmation stage.