Court physicians and State Regulation in Eighteenth-century Prussia: The emergence of medical science and the demystification of the body

As the monarchs in Brandenburg-Prussia succeeded one another from the Große Churfüst Friedrich Wilhelm (1620–88) to Friedrich III (1657–1713), who became the first ‘König in Preußen’ (1710, as Friedrich I), to Friedrich Wilhelm I (1688–1740), so the style of their governing changed. The Große Churfürst is said to have laid the foundation for the state of Brandenburg-Prussia; Friedrich I made it a monarchy full of the pomp and circumstance of absolutist courts; and Friedrich Wilhelm I achieved its bureaucratic, financial, and military consolidation. Friedrich Wilhelm, the Soldatenkönig, made Friedrich the Great’s Prussia possible, the Prussia of legend, of whose power one had to be mindful in conflict-laden early-modern Europe.