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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
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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 

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