‘Observing to describe, describing to observe’: The Epistemic Turn of Medical Writing in the 18th century1

Abstract

This paper is intended to view a specific epistemic turn from various angles concerning the role and function of scientific cognizance in relation to the documentation forms of the medical writings of physicians operating in the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, the internal structure of eighteenth-century medical knowledge is also revealing itself as being instrumental in presenting new elements of knowledge and making them accepted as scientific facts, disregarding direct relationship between doctors and patients, or in other words, exclusively relying on the application of the academic knowledge of doctors and specific observations on patients. It is rather aimed at continuously comparing various illnesses, such as epidemics, recurring endemic diseases, or unique illnesses, as well as arranging them on the basis of perception into homogeneous series of information incessantly proliferating in space and time.