Modern Trends in Psychiatry
Addressing the Hamburger Aerztlicher Verein recently, Professor Weygandt, director of the large psychopathic hospital in Hamburg, delivered an address on the subject of modern trends in psychiatry. The following extracts from his address are adapted from an article in the Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift. Weygandt stated that, up to the close of the previous century, psychiatry followed a purely symptomato-descriptive trend, basing its sole reliance on the revelations of a detailed study of the anatomy of the brain. Kraepelin still followed that trend in the first edition of his famous textbook, but, in later years, influenced by the example of Kahlbaum, it became his aim to produce connected descriptions (life portraits, as it were) of various psychoses by means of anamneses and katamneses, critical analysis of the patient's condition, long continued observation of the course of the morbid process, research work as to the causes, and as