Duchess, Heal Thyself: Elisabeth of Rochlitz and the Patient's Perspective in Early Modern Germany

This article uses the case of German noblewoman Elisabeth of Rochlitz as a window on sixteenth-century patient attitudes toward disease and the body. A widowed duchess of Saxony, Elisabeth spent the last twenty years of her life battling an increasingly serious string of illnesses. Despite her ready access to learned physicians and her friendly relationship with several of them, she used a wide variety of practitioners and frequently privileged lower-status healers when she perceived their methods to be more efficacious. She placed the greatest weight on remedies that would relieve the experienced symptoms of her illness, rather than more holistic methods such as doctors' regimens. This perception of disease as a set of symptoms led to a dispute about the meaning of signs in her final illness.