Networking in medical care: The patient's perspective in the earlier years – the case of Bettine von Arnim, Berlin (1828 to 1859)

Networking for the benefit of the patient is normally expected to be done by physicians. The other side of the therapeutic relationship between patient and physician is less in the focus of attention, but may also be important: After choosing homeopathy as a possible system of cure, there are various challenges to the patient to act within the medical market. Among others, the choice of a homeopathic physician as either an additional principal or exclusively a private physician. Other concerns are to be able to find a stand-in, if the doctor should be absent, or to choose a successor after retirement or his or her death and last but not least to get a second opinion in difficult cases. Other aspects are: how to organize self-medication with or without the help of the physician, to better lay-information, buying homeopathic remedy kits, convincing other members of the family, informing other possible patients, receiving informal proposals of homeopathic treatment of third parties and recommending physicians to family and friends. In this paper I shall present a systematic outline of these elements for patients' networking with focus on the well documented case of the German writer Bettine von Arnim (1785 – 1859) during the early days of homeopathy in Berlin (1828 – 1859). In conclusion I shall line out comparisons with the nowadays, patient's possibilities to network.