Appendix CASE ONE - Collection Point® | The Total Digital Asset ...

100 Legal History in the Making
and eighteenth-century education and teaching dissertations or disputations -
defended in public or privately - occupied an important place. For prospective
jurists in particular, disputing counted as an outstanding practical exercise:
in the Faculty of Medicine in the long run it became obsolete as a teaching
method. 17 On the occasion of an alteration he made in the faculty curriculum
the famous Leyden professor of medicine Herman Boerhaave abolished the
compulsory practice disputation in the early part of the eighteenth century. 18
In eighteenth-century Louvain medical students were obliged to participate in
six practice disputations before taking the licentiate's examination but could
evade that obligation by paying a sum of money. 19
In the nature of things disputing was done orally although perhaps on the
basis of written moot points or theses. After the disputation had taken place
the proceedings might be put down on paper. After the middle ages we see
a gradually increasing importance given to the written piece that lay at the
root of the oral disputation or discussion; after the theses which the professor
praeses propounded, the paper written by the student himself appeared and took
over the name of disputatio. 20 Connected with this evolution is the emergence,
particularly in the seventeenth century, of the practice of writing some textbooks
in the form of a collection of disputationes or exercitationes . 21 In these exercise
disputations the subject matter, for instance a title of the Digest, was treated
17
I have the impression that the literature on the history of faculties of medicine has paid little attention
to the subject of 'practice disputations'; see e.g. R. French, 'Medical Teaching in Aberdeen: From the
Foundation of the University to the Middle of the Seventeenth Century, History of Universities, iii (1983)
127-57. With regard to the German faculties of medicine one can refer to E. Horn, Die Disputationen
und Promotionen an den Deutschen Universitaten vornehmlich seit dem 16. Jahrhundert, mit einem
Anhang enthaltend ein Verzeichnis alter ehemaligen und gegenwartigen deutschen Universitaten, Elftes
Beiheft zum Centralblatt fur Bibliothekswesen (Leipzig, 1893). In the seventeenth century the medical
students of Professor J. van der Linden (1639-51) in Franeker University regularly disputed in public
'exercitii causa'. A bound series of fifty-nine numbered disputationesphysiologicae dating from the period
1648-50 is held in the British Museum; see G.A. Lindeboom, 'Johannes Antonides van der Linden
(1609-64), medisch hoogleraar te Franeker en te Leiden: Zijn betekenis voor de Friese hogeschool',
Universiteit te Franeker, 356-70 at p. 361.
18
Boerhaave was appointed lecturer in 1701 and professor in 1709; he held this position till his death
in 1738.
19
See C. Bruneel, Repertoire des theses imprimees de I'Universite Louvain (1425-1797). Premiere
partie: Faculte de Medecine, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Catalogues, inventaires et repertoires
de la Bibliotheque centrale, iii (Louvain, 1977), VIII, XXIII. Cf. for the early seventeenth century the
text of the Visitatio of 1617, in J. Molanus, Historiae Lovaniensium libri XIV, P. de Ram, ed. 2 vols.
(Brussels, 1861), ii, 971, para. CXX: 'in quibus disputationibus et repetitionibus [Facultatis Medicae],
ne fraus committatur, observari volumus ea, quae superius in disputationibus et repetitionibus juris
studiosorum stride praecepimus'. I owe the references in this and the preceding note to my colleague
Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, of the Free University, Amsterdam.
20
On the development of theses nudae through theses vestitae into treatises which are divided into
chapters see K. Mommsen, Katalog der Busier juristischen Disputationen, 1558-1918. Aus dem Nachlass
herausgegeben von W. Kundert, lus Commune, Sonderhefte, ix (Frankfurt/Main, 1978), 42-57.
21
E. g. for the famous Frisian lawyer, UlrikHuber, T.J.Veen, 'Disputationes Huberianae',// Beaken,
xlvii (1985), 236-37, with supplementary material in Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis, Ivii (1989),
206,n.l8.