An introductory lecture read at the opening of the clinique for nervous and mental diseases in the Royal Charité in Berlin, 1st May, 1866 / by Professor W. Griesinger ; translated by John Sibbald.

  • Griesinger, Wilhelm, 1817-1868.
Date:
1867
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introductory lecture read at the opening of the clinique for nervous and mental diseases in the Royal Charité in Berlin, 1st May, 1866 / by Professor W. Griesinger ; translated by John Sibbald. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    AN INTRODUCTORY LECTURE BEAD AT THE OPENING OP THE CLINIQUE FOR NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASES IN THE ROYAL CHARITE IN BERLIN, 1st may, 1866.* Gentlemen,—I now commence a course of clinical demonstra- tions and discussions in which mental and nervous diseases are for the first time to he made the suhject of instruction in union with each other. The position will also on this occasion he outwardly and practically realised, that diseases of the nervous system form one inseparable whole, of which the so-called mental diseases only em- brace a certain moderate proportion. This position is by no means one which has been accepted as a matter of course. It is a scientific acquisition only of the present day, the recognition of which mil cause great changes, remove many errors, and must open up new developments in all directions. A comparatively small proportion of nervous diseases are found ni asylmns; and they are placed there only from outward considerations of treatment and protection, such as the necessity for separation from the ordinary conditions of life, isolation, occupation, &c. &c. The phase of our speciahsm in which these alone were recognised as coming within its province has now been passed through, and I believe that the tune will soon arrive when only those will be true specialists in psychiatry who survey the whole domain of nervous disease, and cultivate it as widely as possible. It has been supposed up to the j)resent time that the study of mental disease was distinguished by some difficulty sui generis, and that the study of ordinary medicine had no direct bearing upon it— that the only entrance to psychiatry lay through the dark portals of metaphysics. And yet the other cerebral and nervous diseases which, with the so-called mental diseases, form an inseparable whole, have not, so far as I am aware, been hitherto much elucidated by metaphysics; and in Germany the time has quite passed away when * Professor Griesinger furnished some explanatory notes for the report of this lecture, which nppearrd in the'Archiv der Heilkunde.' They accordingly accom- pany tho En;,'lisli tnmslniion.