[Current status and future prospects of the history medicine in Germany--dedicated to Ulrich Hadding]

Science aims at generalised knowledge about human beings. Medical action, by contrast, is directed towards individuals and their subjectivity. Thus, in the doctor-patient encounter the scientific object-orientation of medical science turns into the subject-orientation of medical practice. This means that modern medicine can essentially be explained through the social sciences and the arts and humanities. Among these approaches, historiography explores the aspect of action in time. The historiography of medicine therefore aims genuinely at the specific aspect of medical action under its conditions in time. In its current transition from the natural sciences to the life sciences, medicine meets its boundaries not only in science and practice, but also in the individual person and in the social world. It is of utmost importance, for medicine as well as for society, to analyse the historicity of medical knowledge and action by historiographical methods. The results of historiographical research are to be explained--as a history of medicine--to the public and--as a history in medicine--to medicine itself. And in a sort of a pragmatic history in medicine they are to be turned to practical use for current problems of medical action.