[Patient physiognomy-- the picture of the patient: (author's transl)].

The facial expression of the patient has demonstrably occupied doctors with regard to diagnosis and prognosis even in ancient times. Physiognomy found acceptance in the medicine of modern times, particularly through the publications of Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801), Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869) and then, after 1838, of Karl Heinrich Baumgärtner (1798-1886) who took advantage of lithography, which had just come into use, to reproduce pictures of patients. In the thirties of our century, patient physiognomy has undergone a renaissance (Killian, Fervers, Risak, Lange and others) which was repeated in the sixties. In the last decades, the interest was almost always an expression of dissatisfaction with an exclusively scientifically oriented medicine.