Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2170

EMIL KRAEPELIN (1856-1926) Psychiatrie. Ambr. Abel 1887 2nd ed. xii, 540 pp. 17.3 cm.

Kraepelin studied under the well-known physiological psychologist Wilhelm Max Wundt (see No. 1981) and, after graduation from the Würzburg Medical School, studied in Munich with the neuroanatomist Bernhard von Gudden (1824-1886) and in Leipzig with the neuropathologist Paul Emil Flechsig (see No. 2100). Although neurophysiological research was of great interest to Kraepelin, he was active in clinical psychiatry. He taught at Dorpat and Heidelberg before moving to Munich in 1904 to direct the newly opened Psychiatric Clinic and to become professor of psychiatry at the University. He remained at Munich until his retirement in 1922, when he became director of the Research Institute of Psychiatry in Munich. Early in his medical career, Kraepelin turned his attention to the psychological state of the patient. It was he who first began to organize the various types of poorly-defined psychotic disorders into a carefully structured nomenclature. His rigid and formal classification, now considerably modified, was based on careful clinical observation of individual patients, detailed keeping of records, and on disciplined, orderly thinking. Kraepelin introduced and clearly defined the terms paranoia, insanity, and manic-depressive. The present work, commonly known as the Lehrbuch, was first published in 1883, went through nine editions, and was translated into English and Russian. It is in this edition that Kraepelin divides mental diseases into the curable exogenous and incurable endogenous, which was the first indication of his idea that prediction could be used as the basis for the diagnosis of mental illnesses.

See Related Record(s): 1981 2100

Cited references: Garrison-Morton 4941 (1st ed., 1883); Waller 5399 (1st ed.)

Gift of John Martin, M.D.