This grant will support the writing of a book Medicine and Society in Wurttemberg 1730-1830, which will contribute to the social history of German medicine and will provide important interpretation and analysis to German social history. Further, it will heighten the reader's awareness of the historicity of notions of the body and of concepts of health care. The central focus of the book will be an analysis of the interaction between """"""""official"""""""" medicine, or theory and practice of medicine avowed by the central government's health administration, and """"""""customary"""""""" medicine, a blend of healing practices peculiar to the localities. The study will treat """"""""customary"""""""" healers as well as university-educated physicians, and their patients; it will critique concepts used to describe changes in medical practice in the period,"""""""" medicalization"""""""" and """"""""professionalization."""""""" The heartpiece of the book will be an in-depth study of a physician and the locality he served. The monograph is a revision of a 1988 doctoral dissertation and will be the first of two volumes: the second will extend the time frame to 1880. Three major kinds of revision are planned: expansion of the archival base, reevaluation of secondary material, and reinterpretation of the theoretical basis. Parts of the dissertation that are of less interest to the intended audience of historians of medicine and social historians have been condensed. The time frame has been altered; the dissertation covered 1670-1806, the monograph will treat 1730 -1830 in order to encompass the whole of an important period of social and economic change in Wurttemberg.
