Ancient Greek and Roman literature indicated that the general population had an awareness of schizophrenia. Greek physician blamed delusion and paranoia on an imbalance of bodily humors.
Following the early lead of the British, after 1801 it was the French who dominated the medical study of the mentally ill until mid-century, when the Germans began their nomination of this field.
In April 1908 Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939) published a paper suggested that the disorder be renamed schizophrenia to remove the emphasis on prognosis suggested by the term dementia praecox. Schizophrenia formerly named as ‘dementia praecox’ by Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926) referring to the Latin meaning ‘out of one’s mind’.
Kraepelin first mentioned dementia praecox in 1893 and summed it up as a subcategory of mental degenerative processes.
Bleuler had been using the term schizophrenia in lectures to his medical staff at the Burgholzli Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, prior this time.
The word schizophrenia is derived from the Greek word for ‘split brain’. The new term carried with it a different grammatical structure that implicitly alluded to a difference in theoretical conceptualization.
History of schizophrenia
