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Fallgeschichte, Historia, Klassifikation: François Boissier de Sauvages bei der Schreibarbeit

In this publication, Mendelsohn and his co-editor approach two fundamental questions: what was classification as it first took modern form in the eighteenth century, and how did it relate to earlier describing and ordering? To answer these points, they examine medicine instead of botany. First among disease classifications was the ‘nosology’ of François Boissier de Sauvages. They show that he broke with earlier physicians’ humanistic ordering of disease while sustaining the paper practices they had used. Scientific method grew from scholarly method and classification arose through an incomplete break with, and intensified practice of, a past library-based way of ordering the described world.