From the 1860s to the 1960s, the faculty saw steady growth. The 1866 university reform laid the foundation, greatly accelerating the development of the Faculty of Medicine. Expansion in the humanities was slower than in the sciences and at German universities.

Studies on university history have noted a general “leap of growth to a new developmental plateau” (Hartmut Titze) around 1870 – as in the period around 1960. During these years, most European universities saw graduate numbers rise to a higher level, structurally tied to the Second Industrial Revolution.

This statistical shift is also evident in student numbers in Basel. For the faculty in Basel, the period around 1870 marks the turning point where the previously discontinuous, sporadic expansion since 1818 transitioned into continuous growth defining an epoch. This expansion continued for nearly a century until the 1960s, eventually becoming a structurally new development pattern.

The steady expansion of personnel was legally enabled by the university reform of the 1860s. The main innovation of the 1866 University Act, as opposed to the 1835 law, was the elevation of the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Medicine. Due to financial pressures from the truncated state finances following the cantonal separation, these faculties had been downgraded to preparatory training institutions, their staffing levels severely restricted. The 1866 law elevated them to full-fledged faculties. 

Global trends, local blockages

This university reform was part of the general climate of reform that marked the city-canton in the years leading up to the end, in 1875, of the “councilmen’s regime,” as it was called, evident in the abolition of the marriage court, criminal law reforms, and a (failed) codification of civil law. The immediate impetus for the university reform, however, stemmed from Basel’s competitive situation with other Swiss universities: the goal was to position its own university in the race for a proposed (but never realized) federal “central university.”

The idea of a university at the federal level had been launched within the Helvetic Society and repeatedly discussed thereafter. Just a few years after the founding of the Federal Polytechnic School, a motion in the Basel Grand Council in 1862 reignited the debate. For the majority of the council members supporting a Basel candidacy, it was clear that Basel’s location would remain uncompetitive under the preparatory restrictions of 1835.

The 1835 law particularly hindered the development of the Faculty of Medicine. The lifting of this blockade by the new law is clearly shown by the numerical growth of full professors, as documented in the personnel directories: after 1866, the number of full professors in medicine doubled from five to ten in a very short time. This surge of expansion evidently came at the expense of the natural scientists, whose number of full professors was halved for several years. The number of full professors in the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Theology, and Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (the Philosophisch-Historische Fakultät) either stagnated or increased only slightly in the immediate aftermath of 1866.

Two global trends underpinned this rapid rise in medicine – trends that had been delayed locally by the preparatory restrictions but now, with the new law, began to make themselves felt. Historians also use the term “medicalization” to describe aspects of this change. Medicine played a pioneering role in the formation of modern disciplines, along with the the natural sciences. Until the nineteenth century, academic medicine encompassed a diverse body of knowledge, including elements from ancient humoral pathology and anthropology, history, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and newer insights such as “galvanic electricity” or “animal magnetism” (mesmerism). This diversity reflected a holistic perspective that held body and mind to be inseparable.

From “medicine by the books” to “practical medicine”
Partly replacing and partly continuing this body of knowledge, modern medicine developed its leading disciplines – physiology, anatomy, pathology, surgery, gynecology, and psychiatry – throughout the nineteenth century. This evolution occurred in close alignment with scientific research methods and principles of explanation. Laboratory experiments, microscopic observations, and chemical and physical analyses gradually added support for a view of the human body as a thermodynamic machine, with functions that could be measured with mathematical precision and interactions that could be clearly described.

The structural transformation of health care was the second process that gained more influence in 1866, greatly elevating university medicine. At the start of the nineteenth century, academic physicians constituted an “erudite class” with a minor role in treating the sick, a responsibility primarily handled by midwives, healers, surgeons, or quacks. By the late nineteenth century, however, academic physicians had obtained a near-monopoly in attending to patients as a professionalized group. As scientific experts, they shaped the health policies of industrialized nations, which increasingly saw “public health” as a crucial military and economic factor for national self-assertion amid international rivalry and economic competition.

The two developments made themselves felt in Basel beginning in 1818, when the new university law added a chair for anatomy, surgery, and obstetrics to the traditional “book medicine,” thereby integrating “practical medicine” – literally: “Wundarznei,” a medical practice concerned with treating wounds – into academia. This approach was essentially reaffirmed in 1835, when the new university law redistributed two chairs to physiology and pathology. However, since the faculty was simultaneously downgraded to a preparatory institution, the influence of the full professors was limited to theoretical education.

The decisive breakthrough for the structural transformation of health care and the enhancement of academic medicine came with the Clinic Contract of 1865. This agreement between the canton and the Bürgerspital guaranteed that the Faculty of Medicine would be connected to the hospitals for clinical training – meaning practical training with patients. At the same time, modernization and expansion of hospital infrastructure was begun (with the Children’s Hospital in 1862, a new Bürgerspital building in 1868, an Eye Clinic in 1877, and the Friedmatt Asylum in 1886). This change was largely a response to the accelerating process of urbanization around 1850, which worsened sanitary conditions. A cholera epidemic ravaged Basel in 1855, followed by a typhus epidemic in 1865.

Horizontal and vertical expansion
In examining the two philosophical faculties—the “Philosophisch-naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät” or Faculty of Science, and the “Philosophisch-historische Fakultät” or Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences—the numerical development of chairs established is particularly interesting. Such a view allows us to refine the picture given by personnel directories, revealing the quantitative distribution of personnel resources among the faculties, with specific nuances for each discipline. This is crucial for the natural sciences and the humanities, as they encompass quite heterogeneous fields. Of course, not every newly created chair represented a new discipline. It is important to differentiate between horizontal and vertical expansion: horizontal expansion of chairs broadens the range of disciplines with new subjects, while vertical expansion increases the number of full professorships in established subjects.

Scholars have extensively examined the establishment of chairs in the natural sciences and humanities at German universities. By 1870, the “basic framework” (Marita Baumgarten) in natural science disciplines was essentially complete: mathematics, physics, chemistry, mineralogy, botany, zoology, and geography were represented by independent, regular professorships at nearly all universities. The completion of this basic framework in the humanities, however, was delayed. Core subjects were particularly promoted from the 1890s and only fully represented before the First World War. By 1914, most universities had chairs for philosophy; for ancient, oriental, and modern philologies and comparative linguistics; for ancient and modern history; and for archaeology and art history. Only at this point did the humanities catch up with the backlog they had faced since the decline of the neohumanistic educational ideal in the mid-nineteenth century.

The development of chairs at the University of Basel largely followed these trends but differed significantly in one particular aspect. In the natural sciences, the creation of chairs matched the pace of German universities. Since the 1818 reform at the latest, mathematics, natural history (including botany), and chemistry and physics (divided since 1852) had full professorships. The partial reform of 1855 added zoology, prominently represented by Ludwig Rütimeyer, and the 1866 University Act added a chair for mineralogy and geology. Geography was the only subject that lagged behind, obtaining its own chair only in 1911, completing the basic framework for the natural scientists.

Delayed expansion in the humanities
The completion of the humanities, however, occurred – predictably – more slowly than in the natural sciences, but also – surprisingly – more slowly than at German universities. Between the 1866 and 1837 University Acts, humanities chairs were scarcely expanded horizontally, but they increase grow vertically: philosophy, German studies, Romance studies, and economics each received two chairs, and history even three.

This growth was evident from around 1900 as an uptick in the number of full professorships in the humanities recorded in the personnel directories, and reflects the trend of promoting the humanities. Still, the broadening of the subject spectrum within the humanities did not keep up with the developments at German universities. Between 1866 and 1937, only two previously unfunded subjects were endowed with chairs: art history and English philology. By contrast, oriental studies, comparative linguistics, and archaeology still lacked permanently funded chairs in 1937, whereas at most German universities, they had been endowed before 1914 as part of the process establishing the basic frameworks at these institutions.

This significant delay is related to the fact that, at least since the cantonal separation, the city’s educational elite maintained unusually closely links with the university, especially with the Faculty of Liberal Arts. The university, reestablished in 1835 as a “civic academy,” was supported to a significant extent by private contributions – voluntary positions and unpaid teaching lectureships, foundations, and donations. In return, it met the neohumanistic educational and representational needs of Basel’s citizens.

The disciplinary gaps that still existed between humanities chairs at the legal level in 1937 were a direct consequence of this close connection. In 1874, a bequest from the Vischer-Heussler family established the basis for a foundation that funded professorships, under the patronage of the Voluntary Academic Society, in comparative linguistics (including Sanskrit) and archaeology. During the twentieth century, these private funds were gradually replaced by state funding, initially as regular teaching contracts and, in the 1950s, by the establishment of personal full professorships.