[The "Plague Doctor's Mask" in the German Museum for the History of Medicine, Ingolstadt].

This paper is part of Forum COVID-19: Perspectives in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The figure of the plague doctor with the beak mask has become the symbol of the plague par excellence. It's little wonder that the plague mask in the collection of the German Museum of the History of Medicine in Ingolstadt (Bavaria) is one of the museum's most popular objects and motifs.

[Ernst von Metternich (1656-1727). A patient-focused view of the medical marketplace around 1720].

In his medical diary the physician Johann Christoph Götz from Nuremberg recorded his visits as well as his consiliary correspondence. The case of Count Ernst of Metternich who dwelled in Ratisbon and suffered from a bladder stone is particularly well documented. Thus, the source which is focusing the doctor permits to take a look at a section of the medical market managed by the patient around 1720.

[Surgery in letters. The example of Lorenz Heister's epistolary consultation].

The consultation letters of Lorenz Heister enable a specific patient-focused analysis. Heister was not only a famous physician of the early German Enlightenment, but a renowned surgeon as well. His double expertise gives his correspondence a unique character.

[History of homeopathy in Franconia].

The research for this paper was initiated by an Erlangen exhibition project on the history of homeopathy on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Samuel Hahnemann's birth in 2005. The founder of homeopathic medicine received his doctor of medicine degree at the University of Erlangen in 1779. As Hahnemann spent only four months in Erlangen, homeopathic physicians, patients and apothecaries in the region from Hahnemann's time until today were investigated.

[Curing by cutting. Surgical patients in the consulting correspondence of Lorenz Heister (1683-1758)].

The consultation letters of Lorenz Heister (1683-1758) are kept in the University Library Erlangen-Nürnberg. Heister was not only a famous physician, but also a renowned surgeon. This double qualification gave a unique character to this correspondence: The letters allow not only a glimpse on the phenomena of "medicine-by-post", but of "surgery-by-post" as well.

["Children are, generally, more difficult to cure than adults". Young patients in the consultory correspondence of the early 18th century].

Since Philippe Ariès' History of Childhood scholars have been interested in the history of the sick child in the Early Modern Period. This paper adds one more case study to the current research. It analyses sources connected with the physician and surgeon Lorenz Heister: his handbooks on surgery (1719) and medicine (1744) on the one hand, which reflect the respective therapeutic ideal, and his consultation letters on the other hand, which enable us to have a closer look at Heister's therapeutic practice.

Misreading pictures: Fabricius Hildanus (1560-1634) and the cure of spinal dislocation.

In 1646, Fabricius Hildanus accompanied his description of a new way to apply a setaceum (seton) in the neck with a nicely carved woodcut. In 1951, this same woodcut was used by an author of the History of Neurological Surgery to illustrate Hildanus's method of "reducing cervical dislocation." In 1997 this striking misreading found its way into the History of Neurosurgery in its Scientific and Professional Contexts.

[Monastery asylum. A contribution to the ethno-psychiatry of Greece].

The history of the mentally ill in Greece, at least from the foundation of the Kingdom of Greece in 1832 until the incorporation of the Ionian Islands in 1864, is without either lunatic asylums or specialised psychiatrists. Instead, it is a history of the intermingling of two psychiatric concepts. On the one hand, the imported "professional psychiatry" supported by government and Western education physicians and, on the other hand, the indigenous (autochthon) "folk psychiatry" supported by the majority of the people and by the Orthodox church.

[The professor and his student. The correspondence between Lorenz Heister and Christoph Jacob Trew].

Letters were the central medium of communication in the medical scientific community of the 18th century. Professional as well as personal relationships were established among the various correspondents. These relationships constituted the smallest units of communication which contributed to the regional and international scientific network of the Republic of Letters.

Lorenz Heister and the challenge of trepanation: a neurosurgical case study from the 18th century.

In the 18th century, medical practice was essentially based on communication. Cranial trepanation, however, was usually performed on an unconscious person. Here the dialogue ceased.