| pubmed-article:11609214 | pubmed:abstractText | The situation of German psychiatry in the early nineteenth century is of interest as the specialty was developing in a society which was still largely non-industrial. Examination of the literature of the time allows, therefore, a testing of hypotheses concerning schizophrenia as a disease of industrial society. This study presents a number of descriptions of illness resembling schizophrenia derived from textbooks on mental illness and psychiatric journals from the period 1790-1830, as well as a fictional account in a novella by George Büchner dating from 1835. These descriptions suggest that schizophrenia did occur not uncommonly in pre-industrial Germany, and that the most detailed descriptions tended to come from non-specialist sources. The implications of this for the non-recognition of schizophrenia before Kraepelin's account of 1896 are discussed. | lld:pubmed |
