How did academic medicine come to dominate scientific and medical opinions in local public spheres far away from universities? This contribution—based mainly on material from Lübeck journals and printed books—deals with the transformation of the public sphere in eighteenth century. A closer look at publication strategies and carrers of physicians shows that the new forms of self-empowerment provided by the Habermasian public sphere could only prove successful because they ran together with traditional forms of representation such as titles and official (...) posts. Local journals, books, instruments, and reputation could then provide scientific capital to be transformed into the symbolic capital of grades, titles and posts; which was in turn convertible into the economic capital of remunitions from patients or annual awards as town-, state- or court physicians. At the beginning of the nineteenth century professional organisation proved a still greater source of power than the individual strategies that had been developped before. (shrink)