Abstract

At the center of this work stands the anthropometric research program during World War I for studying constitutional medicine and the connected series of investigations by the medical internists Theodor Brugsch, Hermann Rautmann and Max Berliner, their advances in the statistics of variability as well as the subsequent debate in constitutional medicine and pathology on the definition of the physical norm.In order to create a data basis for the “normal” body in the study of constitutional medicine, a series of young German internists undertook comprehensive anthropometric studies in the context of World War I, thereby taking advantage of the opportunity offered them by war to conduct a series of examinations of soldiers, but without having first reflected on methods of measurement, comparison, and evaluation. At the same time, the concept of the “normal” body, then only vaguely formed, still needed to be critically expounded. However, this changed during the subsequent period and led not only to a stronger emphasis on methodology, rather also to greater competency in mathematical statistics and philosophical cogitation on the meaning of the “norm”. In this way, constitutional medicine originated the potent medical norm debate of the early 1920s which still resonates in medical theory today. By this means the few years following the end of World War I not only represented a turning point for constitutional medicine regarding the reflective use of methodology, but also introduced a new orientation of their research questions: away from the “normal” body to individuality.