Medical Vienna

Viennese medical history from the beginning to the foundation of the First Viennese Medical School in the late 18th century

Already the Celts left medical traces in Vienna. However, one can only speak of medicine as a science with the founding of the University of Vienna in 1365. When anatomy was first introduced as a separate subject in 1394, it did not take long for the first post-mortem to be carried out in the area north of the Alps: namely in 1404.

But even in the 19th century people were still helplessly at the mercy of their illnesses, and the healers were just as helpless at their bedside. There were certified Medici, Physici or book doctors, bathers, barber surgeons and field clippers, healing artists and self-proclaimed »doctors« – but in the end, only the saints or God »helped« in that time.

It was not until the end of the 19th century when pioneering discoveries and reforms in health care and medicine were made which paved the way for Vienna’s Karl Landsteiner, Julius Wagner-Jauregg or Robert Bárány to achieve the world’s highest scientific award: the Nobel Prize.