Los motivos de una fugaz resurrección: el método histórico natural en la obra de K. W. Stark (1787-1845) y F. Jahn (1804-1859)

Abstract

This Work analyses the methodological proposals of two German doctors in the first half of the XIX century, traditionally linked to the so-called "Naturalistic School". It aims especially to evaluate the importance given by each to the "Naturalistic method" applied to the classification of these diseases, taking into account the fact that both defended an ontologistic or "parasitic" conception of the same. This study illustrates how this undertaking responds to the challenge, expounded by the followers of Schelling's Naturphilosophie, of converting medicine into a natural science. Likewise, this undertaking was doomed to failure due to the existing contradiction between the utilization to the classificatory method, characteristic of eighteenth century Natural History, and the need for a physiological foundation of nosology, more in acoordance with the nascent Biology, which will greatly reduce the epistemological soundness of the concept of morbid species. This very imbalance will be revealed, in the strictly medical aspect, in the doubts when giving epistemological priority to physiology or to the clinical observation.