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History of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology
Edited by Edwin R. Wallace IV and John Gach
862 pp, $89.95
New York, NY, Springer, 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0-3873-4707-3
JAMA. 2008;300(7):854-855.
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This book is for someone who is really, really interested in the history of psychiatry. Each era or topic touched on—classical antiquity, German Romantic psychiatry, Freud, psychopharmacology—is covered in exceptional detail. Gaps in one's knowledge of psychiatric concepts and practice during past epochs are generously filled in, along with more than a dollop of cultural context. Chapter authors make commendable use of primary sources, providing pertinent, sometimes lengthy quotations. The movers and shakers get meticulous attention. Their ideas are thoroughly discussed, as are the forces, cultural and otherwise, that influenced them. Readers learn that Benjamin Rush, considered the father of American psychiatry, not only promoted bleeding as the treatment for all forms of madness, he also invented a tranquilizing chair and dabbled in nosology; tristimania, manalgia, and manicula are among the diagnoses he proposed.
The concepts, movements, and institutions that have shaped (and misshaped) the field are given ample coverage. . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Walter A. Brown, MD, Reviewer
Department of Psychiatry
Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University
Tufts University School of Medicine
Tiverton, Rhode Island
walter_brown@brown.edu
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