Posted by Squiggles on September 24, 2006, at 11:58:03 [reposted on September 25, 2006, at 0:09:12 | original URL]
In reply to Re: the brain » Squiggles, posted by Jost on September 24, 2006, at 11:00:51
> Yeah---but then everybody also says that "schizophrenia" used to be called "dementia praecox"-- and if so, maybe he did actually help in the taxonomy of schizophrenia.
>
> I mean, I think everybody says, well, Kraepelin defined schizophrenia, although he called it "dementia praecox."
>
>
> eg, Columbia Encyclopedia:
>
> "Kraepelin...established the clinical pictures of dementia praecox (now known as schizophrenia) in 1893, and of manic-depressive psychosis (see depression) in 1899, after analyzing thousands of case histories."
>
> JostThey were all dementias at the time -- look at
this interesting article (with links):
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/161/2/381"The authors dramatically describe the appallingly complex diagnostic decisions faced by neuropsychiatrists in Alzheimer’s time, as now: dementia praecox (schizophrenias), dementia agitans (bipolar disorder), dementia paralytica (tertiary syphilis), dementia senilis (arteriosclerosis), and dementia presenilis (p. 81). Alzheimer objectively categorized the problem: which were organic, which functional? After he published his clinicopathological correlations in 1904, four discoveries were made in rapid fire through 1908: Spirochaeta pallidum by a zoologist (Fritz Schaudinn) and a serologist (Erich Hoffmann); the syphilitic origin of general paresis by a psychiatrist (Felix Plaut); a serological test for syphilis by a bacteriologist (August von Wasserman); and "606" (arsphenamine) for treatment by chemists (Paul Erlich and Sahachiro Hata). These multidisciplinary efforts had a major social impact: one-third to one-half of the patients in German mental hospitals and 70% of juveniles were put there by a treatable disease. The only psychiatric events of comparable impact were the discovery sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation that pellagra was a vitamin deficiency, which halved the population of mental hospitals in the southern United States, and the impact on the state hospital system and psychiatric practice of the discovery of neuroleptics, beginning in the 1950s with Rauwolfia serpentina."
Squiggles
poster:Squiggles
thread:688931
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20060922/msgs/688969.html