caa a22 4500 378857312 CHVBK 20180305123338.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161128e20031002xx s 000 0 eng 10.2202/1565-3404.1079 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)gruyter-10.2202/1565-3404.1079 Brunner José 1Tel Aviv University. Trauma in Court: Medico-Legal Dialectics in the Late Nineteenth-Century German Discourse on Nervous Injuries [Elektronische Daten] [José Brunner] This paper discusses a dialectic whereby the law not only influenced medical thinking in late nineteenth-century Germany, but also underwent medicalization of its own initiative. At the end of the 1880s, social legislation was crucial in initiating the German discourse on traumatic nervous disorders. By employing doctors as medical experts in court, the law also created a new experiential realm for doctors, altering their behavior toward patients and shifting their focus from therapy to investigation. However, in the wake of their experiences in court, doctors developed a dual etiology of traumatic symptoms, which included the law itself as a pathogenic element with the power to aggravate symptoms. Two medical views of law can be distinguished: some doctors claimed that it was the desire to receive the pensions offered under social legislation that induced workers to perpetuate and exaggerate their symptoms; others argued that since pension claims embroiled claimants in intimidating legal proceedings, the pathogenic effect of social legislation stemmed from fear rather than greed. ©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston Theoretical Inquiries in Law De Gruyter 4/2(2003-10-02) 4:2 2003 4 til https://doi.org/10.2202/1565-3404.1079 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.2202/1565-3404.1079 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Brunner José 1Tel Aviv University NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Theoretical Inquiries in Law De Gruyter 4/2(2003-10-02) 4:2 2003 4 til CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-gruyter