Lecture | Global Histories of Knowledge Seminar

Sympathy, Professionalism, and the Law: Medical Ethics in Britain and Germany during the Long Nineteenth Century

• Prof. Andreas-Holger Maehle (Durham University, UK)

Date

Thursday 26 February 2026

Time

15:30 - 17:00 hour

Serie

Global Histories of Knowledge 2025 - 2026

Address

Johan Huizinga
Doelensteeg 16
2311 VL Leiden

Room

2.60

Abstract

In an address to McGill Medical School in 1895, the eminent physician William Osler (1849-1919) stressed that ‘a clear head and a kind heart’ were necessary for doctors to cope with the challenges and conflicts of medicine. However, medical ethics in that time was not only about the virtues and character of the ideal physician or surgeon. In this lecture I discuss four issues that were significant in Britain and Germany in the medical and public discourse: disciplinary proceedings for medical misconduct; the requirements of patient information and consent; social and legal implications of medical confidentiality; and lay and professional perspectives on animal research. I argue that medical ethics of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had to consider patient values, professional demands, legal boundaries, and hopes for scientific progress.

Ludwig Halberstaedter (left) and Stanislaus von Prowazek (centre) conducting an experiment on an unknown man holding a baby orangutan during their research into cytoplasmic inclusion bodies of trachoma. Source: Wellcome Collection gallery. CC-BY-4.0

Speaker

Andreas-Holger Maehle is the Professor of History of Medicine and Medical Ethics at Durham University, UK. Trained in medicine in Bonn (Dr. med. 1983) and in History of Medicine in Göttingen (Dr. med. habil. 1990) and London (PhD 1996), he has published widely on the history of medical ethics, pharmacology, and animal experimentation. He authored A Short History of British Medical Ethics (2021) and is currently working on medical psychology and psychoanalysis in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries for a new book titled Albert Moll: Mind, Sex, Ethics (expected in autumn 2026 with McGill-Queen's University Press).

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