[Medical Society of Magdeburg in 1848--a medical history reflection].

The Medical Society of Magdeburg is one of the oldest associations of physicians in the territory of the German language. It was founded in 1848 following the discussions between the aspiring natural-scientifically orientated schools and the members of the medical profession who clung to the old habits of therapy which for the largest part developed from mysticism and symbolism. The society soon gained a scientific importance which transgressed the closer territorial boundaries. Distinguished representatives of medical science and practice were and are members of this society. As is was already in the past, the society is nowadays again a place of scientific meeting and postgraduate medical training, whereby it has retained its traditional progressive and interdisciplinary character and will be understood as the uniting tie for the whole medicine which now tends to frittering.