Medicine and Religion in the Work of Johann Nepomuk Ringseis

Abstract

Johann Nepomuk Ringseis (1785-1880), professor of medical clinic at the University of Munich, claimed in his System of Medicine (1841) that medicine should be founded like all sciences, in the traditional (catholic) doctrine of Revelation. He maintained the origin of disease from the original sin and the therapeutic efficacy of prayers and sacraments. The article shows, how he tried to give a scientific explanations of such effects and how his particular philosophical premises nevertheless made him possible not to abbandon in practice the traditional methods of medical treatment.