[The formation of a new medical discipline: psychiatry in Austria in the 19th century]

Abstract

The first psychiatric chairs and university departments of psychiatry in Austria were founded in Vienna and Graz in 1870: hence they celebrate their 150th anniversary this year 2020. These foundations represent a peak in the development of psychiatry as a scientific medical discipline. It is the aim of this paper to sketch that step by step development in its connection with the development of care institutions of the time and with reference to important personalities in the field. Vienna-as the metropole of the state and the most prominent place in the field-is taken as an example. One can distinguish four developmental periods: (1) The establishment of care institutions (asylums), at first without an own medical staff and unqualified male and female keepers (late 18th century up to early 19th). (2) The growing independance of these institutions-in Vienna the 'Tower of Fools'-and the emergence of 'alienists' who began to reflect on their activities and to share their experiences on academic grounds and the publication of a first Austrian textbook (1st half of 19th century). (3) From the 1850s on several alienists habilitated, partly with special emphasis on forensic psychology or cerebral anatomy and physiology, and developed a systematic academic teaching, again with a new 'modern' textbook, in some connection with a new care institution, and the foundation of a scientific association of psychiatry and forensic psychology in 1868. (4) An early activity of that association was to call for the institution of a chair and a university department of psychiatry within the asylum, both realised in 1870.

Keywords: 19th century psychiatry; Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben; Ludwig Schlager; Maximilian Leidesdorf; Psychiatry in Vienna; Theodor Meynert.