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Social History of Medicine 1995 8(3):423-442; doi:10.1093/shm/8.3.423
© 1995 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
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Medicalization and Secularization: the Jewish Ritual Bath as a Problem of Hygiene (Germany 1820s–1840s)

THOMAS SCHLICH*

*Institut für Geschichte der Medizin der Robert Bosch Stiftung Straussweg 17, 70184 Stuttgart, Germany

SUMMARY In the 1820s and 1840s the Jewish Ritual bath in Germany was criticized on the basis of medical arguments. Associated with this critique were demands for a change in the traditional Jewish way of life in general, especially as concerning the Jewish religion. The new role assigned to religion can be seen as part of a process of ‘secularization’. The criticism of the ritual bath was justified by medical arguments and entailed a demand for an extension of the medical sphere of competence, and thus formed part of a development described as ‘medicalization’. An historical investigation of the debate on the Jewish ritual bath illuminates the way in which medicalization and secularization were different aspects of the same process of the attribution of complementary circumscribed spheres of medicine and religion.

Keywords: medicalization; secularization; ritual bath; Judaism; hygiene; Germany


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