Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T07:31:40.375Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Schizophrenia—A Hundred Years Ago and Today

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

Franklin S. Klaf  and
John G. Hamilton
Franklin S. Klaf
Affiliation:
Clinical Assistant
John G. Hamilton
Affiliation:
Physician, The Bethlem Royal Hospital and The Maudsley Hospital
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Have there been changes in the clinical picture of schizophrenic illness over the past hundred years? Or, to put the question more precisely, are the schizophrenic patients of the 1950s any different phenomenologically from their counterparts in the 1850s?

Recent studies (4, 5, 9, 14, 20) have aimed at determining the presence or absence of an increased incidence of psychosis in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Opinion is evenly divided as to whether the social changes of the twentieth century have significantly altered the epidemiology of psychotic illness. In spite of an increasing preoccupation with social psychiatry (13), the psychiatric literature is silent on the vital question “Have the changes of the past hundred years altered the clinical picture of schizophrenic illness itself?”

The present study, comparing a selected group of schizophrenics of both sexes from the 1850s and 1950s, begins the search for information on the change or lack of change in this important condition over the past hundred years.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 107 , Issue 450 , September 1961 , pp. 819 - 827
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1961 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Addison, W., Religious Equality in Modern England, 1714-1914, 1944. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.Google Scholar
2 Bleuler, E., Dementia Praecox or The Group of Schizophrenias, 1911, Transl. 1950. New York: Int. Universities Press.Google Scholar
3 Burrows, G., Commentaries on the Causes, Forms and Treatment of Insanity, 1828. London: Underwood.Google Scholar
4 Dayton, N., New Facts on Mental Disorder, 1940. Springfield: Charles Thomas.Google Scholar
5 Elkind, H., and Taylor, M., Amer. J. Psychiat., 1936, 122, 817.Google Scholar
6 Elliott-Binns, L. E., Religion in the Victorian Era, 1946. London: Lutterworth Press.Google Scholar
7 Feuchtersleben, E., The Principles of Medical Psychology (Translated by Lloyd, H.), 1847. London: Sydenham Society.Google Scholar
8 Gartner, L., The Jewish Immigrant in England, 1870-1914, 1960. London: George Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
9 Goldhamer, H., and Marshall, A., Psychosis and Civilization, 1953. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press.Google Scholar
10 Haslam, J., Observations on Insanity, 1798. London: Rivington.Google Scholar
11 Anon. Sketches in Bedlam, 1823. London: Sherwood & Jones.Google Scholar
12 Kellett, E., Religion and Life in the Early Victorian Age, 1938. London: The Epworth Press.Google Scholar
13 Linton, R., Culture and Mental Disorder, 1956. Springfield: Charles Thomas.Google Scholar
14 Malzberg, B., Social and Biological Aspects of Mental Disease. 1940. Utica, New York: State Hospitals Press.Google Scholar
15 Mayo, T., Elements of the Pathology of the Human Mind, 1838. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
16 Moorman, J., A History of the Church in England, 1953. London: Adam & Charles Black.Google Scholar
17 O'Donoghue, E., The Story of Bethlehem Hospital, 1914. London: T. Fisher Unwin.Google Scholar
18 Spinks, G., Religion in Britain since 1900, 1952. London: Andrew Dakers Ltd.Google Scholar
19 Wickham, E. R., Church and People in an Industrial City, 1957. London: Lutterworth Press.Google Scholar
20 Winston, E., Amer. J. Sociol., 1935, 60, 427.Google Scholar
21 Wood, H. G., Belief and Unbelief Since 1850, 1955. Cambridge: University Press.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.