Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2199

HERMANN OPPENHEIM (1858-1919) Die traumatischen Neurosen. August Hirschwald 1889 vi [2] 146 pp. 23.5 cm.

Oppenheim was the acknowledged leader of German clinical neurology during the last decade of the nineteenth century, an especially productive period for this rapidly expanding field. After serving as assistant to Carl Friederich Otto Westphal (1833-1890) at the University of Berlin's psychiatric clinic, the Charité, he opened a private clinic which soon became an international center of neurology. Oppenheim's investigations included studies on disseminated sclerosis, syphilis, polio, alcoholism, and amyotonia congenita (Oppenheim's disease). His later work on the diagnosis and treatment of brain disease led directly to the first successful removal of a brain tumor. The appearance of the present work on traumatic neuroses touched off a lively and often heated debate over Oppenheim's contention that the psychic changes resulting from trauma were caused by actual organic disturbances within the brain. His theory was most actively opposed by Charcot (see No. 1918 ff.), Kurt Mendel (1874-1946), and Max Nonne (1861-1939), who did not accept the concept of organic changes in the brain.

See Related Record(s): 1918