Vienna and Transylvania: Center and Periphery

The "seed bed" of Enlightenment, as Roy Porter describes it, has been the centre of attention of recent eighteenth- century scholarship. This research primarily focuses on the Enlightenment in Central Europe and draws on approaches from social history, the history of medicine and history of ideas, in order to rethink Enlightenment in the Habsburg Monarchy, between 1770-1830. The broad themes, which the work seeks to address, include questions of the role of intelligentsia and the role of learned societies and clubs in Enlightenment culture. The historical problem at its core is the role of science and medicine in building modernity in the Habsburg Monarchy between the 1770 and 1830. The study concentrates on Vienna and Transylvania, a province of the Habsburg Monarchy, explores and compares environments that facilitated building up associations and learned societies which made latest discoveries in the sciences be heard, read and discussed within the framework of Enlightenment in Europe. The immediate goal of the research project is a comparative study of social and cultural practices, political, scientific and medical ideas. It draws on the interdisciplinary approaches of several scholars who focussed on cultural and communicative practices, and scientific communication as a model for sociable exchange, which seeks to secure social harmony and stability. I will argue that production and circulation of knowledge between the capital of the empire and one of its province and between the provinces and Vienna and the dynamics of this circulation reveals the fact that problems such as, health, diseases, public health, hygiene and dietetics were at once patriotic, medical and cultural issues in the complex political, ethnical and confessional milieu of the Habsburg Monarchy. The measures of sanitation, public health, the treatment applied in these cases were not only the result of scientific development, but also the result of new social, political, and economic realities. Moreover, ideological transformations, the shifts of mentalities, the transmission and reception of ideas about preserving health and about a new lifestyle, which included diet, exercise regimen and personal hygiene among the educated strata improved the health of the population. Science (and medicine) and education were considered by the representatives of the enlightened intelligentsia essential commodities to be appropriated by a country/nation to reverse decay and backwardness. In Central Europe - especially some peripheral provinces of the Habsburg Monarchy - a predominantly agrarian society was characterised by a state of economic backwardness. The representatives of the local intelligentsia grouped in literary, philosophic and scientific societies engaged in cultural activities in order to catch up with the advances in Vienna and Western Europe where the industrial revolution already begun. They were consumers and producers of scientific ideas. The first chapter Enlightenment Discourse and Health in Vienna looks at Vienna, which in the second half of the eighteenth century emerged to be a center of producing relevant knowledge in the medical field. These ideas are supported by a thorough research of the structure and the institutions of medical education such asVienna University, Josephakademie and several hospitals in Vienna. Moreover, the curriculum used for teaching emerged to be very influential not only in the provinces of the Monarchy, but also in all German lands, is required. The institutions and the medical knowledge "produced" in Vienna were emulated in the provinces of the Monarchy. Chapter two is primarily concerned with the "Enlightenment Discourse and Health in Transylvania". It presents schools of thought that influenced members of the intelligentsia, having in view that medicine in 18th-century Transylvania was dominated by the mechanistic and the animistic schools of thought influenced by Newton and Descartes, coupled with a revival of the Hippocratic principles and philosophy according which identified unhealthy and dirty environments as causes of many diseases. Chapter three explores "Ideas and theoretical background", especially those theories intensively popularised throughout Europe, analyses how ideas relating to health influenced the politics of sanitation and their impact on the public and individual health policies. Thus, the chapter includes a discussion of theories and discourses of purity, disease and contagion, dietetics, regimen, exercises and environmental health. Chapter four "Medical and Health-Related Literature" outlines specific strategies in promoting health discourses. It analyses the existing medical and practical literature on the avoidance of diseases. To this end, it also outlines the role of the intellectuals and clergy as inspired by Enlightenment Humanitarianism in their philanthropic actions to support the vaccination campaigns, the translation and publications of books for the benefit of the masses. The Conclusion relates the developments outlined in the last three chapters in the light of the broader themes presented in the introduction. Thus, I re-emphasise the centrality of Vienna its role in the transformation of the Transylvanian medical thought and profession. Moreover, the dynamic of and the circulation of knowledge re-consider enlightenment thought in the Habsburg Monarchy.