August Sander's Portfolio "The Doctor and the Pharmacist": German Patients between Professional and Lay Medicine.

This article examines August Sander’s photographic portfolio “The Doctor and the Pharmacist” as a lens to explore the complex boundaries between professional and lay medicine in early twentieth-century Germany. Comprising twelve portraits of both licensed medical practitioners and alternative healers—such as herbalists, magnetopaths, and hypnotists—the portfolio reflects tensions in German medicine amid modernization, professionalization, and public ambivalence toward scientific authority. The article situates Sander’s work within broader historical contexts, including the rise of social insurance, public health campaigns, and the persistence of alternative healing practices despite efforts by medical professionals to assert exclusive authority. By portraying both conventional doctors and unlicensed healers with nuance, Sander’s images challenge rigid distinctions between modern and folk medicine, highlighting the fluid and contested nature of medical knowledge and patient experience in Weimar Germany.