Der Körper des Pferdes und das Geschick des Pflegers

One Medicine im spätmittelalterlichen Marstall

Abstract

English abstract: Drawing on the history of knowledge and social history, this article asks about the body-oriented equine-human interactions which constituted late medieval horse care in the context of «one medicine». To this end, the article traces the barely visible traces of hippatric «care practitioners» and their equine patients in order to present practices of late medieval equine medicine beyond a text-based tradition of knowledge reaching far back into antiquity and to understand them as historically specific routines in dealing with horses. Such a praxeological approach takes the corporeality of both equine patients and human medical experts seriously and shares the concern to understand animal history also as body history. In this sense, this article argues for a twofold body-historical approach: the therapeutic interaction between the human caregiver and the sick animal body can be understood as a genuinely human-animal bodyhistory. In a concluding synopsis, the results are then put into perspective with regard to a new concept of equine care that could help to historically grasp violent forms of medical and therapeutic intervention: «violent care».