A text-book on mental diseases for the use of students and practitioners of medicine.

  • Kellogg, Theodore H.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A text-book on mental diseases for the use of students and practitioners of medicine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    icdl lore which, at the close of this first period (400 B.C.), may be said to have attained to the respectable dimensions of a science of medicine. The most crnde part of this science, however, was psy- chiatr}^, in spite of the fact that in all ages it had been studied by the most learned men, by philosophers, priests, and physicians. The nomenclature of Insanity was limited to the three terms, phrenitis, mania, and melancholia. Phrenitis applied to mental dis- order with inflammation of the brain or other internal organs. The etiology of Insanity was based on vague views of changes in the bile, nmcus, and other secretions. The treatment was by hygienic means, outdoor games, baths, mineral waters, and a few simple therapeutic remedies, apart from the religious practices on the part of the priests. Second Period {JfiO B. G.—200 A.D.). The First Scientific Evolutionary Period of Psychiatry, Ending with the Decline of the Greek School of Medicine. The beginnings of psychiatry having been made by many peoples in various lands, the time was now ripe for some master hand to mould the crude material thus contributed into some definite shape, and the genius for the work arose in no less a person than Hippoc- rates, the Father of Medicine, himself, who laid the first founda- tions of the science of psychiatry. Hippocrates was born 460 B.C., in the island of Cos. His teach- ings as to Insanity are not given collectively, but they are to be found scattered throughout his wonderful clinical descriptions of diseases in every domain of medical practice. With but slight knowledge of the anatomy of nervous centres, he still conceived that the brain was the seat of Insanity. He recog- nized acute and chronic forms of mental disease. He spoke of the latter under the use of the terms mania and melancholia, and to the former he applied the word phrenitis, which he also used to describe Insanity with cerebral or visceral inflammation. It is evident from his clinical descriptions that he was familiar with puerperal, alcoholic, and epileptic forms of mental disorder. His depictions of insane symptoms bore the stamp of everlasting truth, so that to-day, twenty-three hundred years after they were written, they might be applied to cases of mental disease with truth- ful fitness.