Auf der Frequenz der Zeit: Elektrotherapie als medizinische Selbsttechnik im 20. Jahrhundert
Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: Electrotherapeutic devices can be found in numerous medical and technical history collectionsand are still offered almost every month by private donors. These objects, which developedinto a social fashion article in the 1920s, open the view to a specific cultural-historical context.Against the background of a “crisis in medicine”, alternative healing methods and technologiesof self-treatment had experienced an increasing demand during the Weimar Republic. Thesemedical machines can be described as profoundly ambivalent objects: promising self-empowermenton the one hand, incorporating the actually criticised “mechanization of medical treatment”on the other hand. Being symbols of the electrified urban society, the devices also becamelifestyle accessories of a bourgeois entertainment culture. This article is devoted to the contradictoryrole of electrical healing devices as part of a specific material culture and particularlydeals with different practices of appropriation.
DOI: 10.1553/virus19s155
Author: Henrik Eßler
Language: German
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W3170810090