Promotionskandidat:innen Carolin Fröschle

The interdisciplinary doctoral thesis examines image-based medical instruments and practices in pain medicine. In addition to analyzing their specific functionality and systematizing them accordingly, the dissertation represents the first visual studies-based exploration of these instruments. Various images, such as different pain scales, pain drawings, and schematic representations in textbooks and medical publications are analyzed in terms of their visual aspects and examined in terms of their form-specific function, history, and significance for medical practices. The study aims to show that the visual methods of pain medicine have played and continue to play a central role in shaping our understanding of pain, both in their historical development and in their current applications.