The Migration of Medical Dissertation Techniques from One Generation to the Next

By comparing 17th-century medical dissertations we can study how the strategies of disputation and dissertation changed and migrated from one generation of students to the next. My case study is the prolific thesis writer and supervisor Daniel Sennert (1572-1637), professor of medicine and alchemist at the university of Wittenberg. Among the more than one hundred dissertation students he supervised several went on to become professors themselves who supervised theses in turn. I will study the dissertations supervised by three of Sennert’s intellectual offspring: Daniel Beckher (1594-1655) at the Prussian university of Regiomontanus or Königsberg (now Kaliningrad in Russia); Laurentius Eichstaedt (1596-1660) at the Academic Gymnasium of Gdansk in the Kingdom of Poland; and Werner Rolfinck (1599-1673) at the university of Jena (Duchy of Saxe-Weimar in the Holy Roman Empire). Comparing the theses supervised by Sennert with those supervised by these three student of his brings to light changes and continuities in the methods of writing and orally defending theses in 17th-century European universities. We can expect that professors drew on their own experience in modelling oral performance for their students. The culture of academic performance permeated universities not only through the circulation of texts, but also through the geographical movement characteristic of many academic careers, including those of Sennert and these three students. My paper connects the development of early modern dissertation practices in medicine through the experiences of two generations of doctoral students defending their theses in the descendance of Daniel Sennert.