Carl Wernicke’s Grundriss der Psychiatrie in klinische Vorlesung(1906): First accessible English translation

In the English-speaking world, Carl Wernicke (1848-1905) is best known as a pioneer of neurology, a reputation he earned as a newly-qualified physician, in the 1870s. However, in the world in which he worked, neurology and psychiatry were not sharply separated; and in the last 20 years of his life he headed a psychiatric institution in Breslau (today: Wroclaw in south-west Poland). His lectures to advanced trainees in psychiatry were first published in the 1890s, and at the time of his death (prematurely, from injuries sustained in a bicycling accident), he was in the process of preparing a new edition. Because of his untimely death, and perhaps because some of his ideas were too difficult for his times (and sometimes, admittedly were quite far-fetched), he was eclipsed by other German psychiatrists at the time. They came to be seen in many countries as the founders of the advancing discipline of psychiatry, and are still very influential today. Even in the German-speaking world, Wernicke’s writings on psychiatry are thus little known. With John Dennison, of Otago, it has been our great privilege to prepare this edited translation of Wernicke’s Grundriss der Psychiatrie in klinische Vorlesung (Outline of Psychiatry in Clinical Lectures). Although some of his ideas are implausible today (given that he could not have known some basic facts about the nervous system), he is sometimes fifty years ahead of his contemporaries, and at his very best, we feel, ahead of where the psychiatric profession is today. All-in-all, we believe there is much to be learned from his writings on psychiatry.This volume was published on 1st September, 2015. For the cover design of this book, click on:- Dennison-04 For further details, on the website of Springer Verlag, see:- http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319180502
posted 04.10.2015

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