„Je to boj přírody o život & smrt…“. Lékaři ve službách Schwarzenbergů v letech 1780–1830
“This is Nature’s Battle of Life and Death”. Doctors in the Service of the Schwarzenbergs, 1780–1830

Summary/Abstract: From the 1780s on, the court of the Princes of Schwarzenberg generally maintained four or five personal doctors. These privileged positions were frequently held by individuals who also practised as municipal or county physicians. In their castles in Bohemia the Schwarzenbergs also employed surgeons and apothecaries, and in line with the professionalization of medical care during the Enlightenment they attached great importance to the training of health workers. In the first three decades of the 19th century health care in the context of the Schwarzenberg primogeniture became even more specialized and the number of medical staff on the various Schwarzenberg estates increased. In addition to their own physicians, the Schwarzenbergs also entrusted their health needs to eminent medical experts drawn primarily from the Habsburg court and the University of Vienna and later, from the 1830s on, to many doctors working in the Czech Lands. This study considers the relationship between the high nobility as representatives of social elites on the one hand and the Enlightenment me dicalization of society with its professionalization of health care on the other. It maps the structure of medical care within one aristocratic family and their estates and its transformation over a fifty year period. It also attempts to discover who the Schwarzenbergs’ doctors were and what socio cultural background they came from.

• Details
• Contents