Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

disease brought about by the influence of the Enlightenment
resulted in a number of respectable advances. However,
according to Dr. Erwin Ackerknecht, it was not until the
nineteenth century that medicine made its greatest progress. Of
this, Ackerknecht explains:
Medicine had been scientific in intention for a long
time. But only during the nineteenth century did it
become to a large extent scientific in fact. In
general it was the systematic promotion and
application of natural science which gave the
nineteenth century its most characteristic features.
(145)
For Ackerknecht, the influence of Western Science, with its
utter reverence of Reason and all that this entailed, upon the
theory and practice of medicine, “the application of the basic
sciences to the problems of clinical medicine” (156) as
Ackerknecht put it, cannot be stressed enough. To that end,
Ackerknecht continues:
The basic sciences gave medicine an unprecedented
knowledge of the intricate structures of the human
body. They provided a means of correlating
pathological signs with changes in those structures;
they allowed the main functions of the body […] to be
understood as never before; they made possible the
objective measurement of these functions and their
deviations from the normal; and they made therapeutic
action equally predictable and measurable. It is
obvious that this new background was to have a
decisive influence on the future development of
clinical medicine. (168-9)
Of crucial significance here is the concept of the rendering of
health as well as illness “predictable and measurable,” in
particular with regard to some “normal” standard. Through the
use of the principles of basic science, physicians practicing
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