Abstract:
The generalised skepsis characterising the period of enlightenment included a critical approach to the basis of medicine. The evidence of its frailty and uncertainess led to a crisis of its fundaments. Application of a new, stable, and secure theory of cognition should donate medicine credibility, make possible a further evolution, and a classification under the sciences. At the beginning of the reception of Kant´s philosophy, in 1794 in Frankfurt/Oder, emerges the dissertation of the medical student Benedict Gebel, with the titel "Philosophia critica arti medicae non esse inimicam". According to his contemporary collegues, the philosophic physicians and in analogy to the Arkesilas-article, as one of the first he emphasizes the way in which translation of the critical philosphy to medicine could lead to it´s refinement: application of Kant´s theory of cognition would point out its sources, give clear laws and keep medicine into limits. The apriority as unique source of science would classify medicine unto the arts, but this art would gain securness and become "systematic" by observance and experience. This dissertation is a translation of the original latin test and discussion of Gebel´s and the philosophic physicians´ideas.