Functional neurology after the Second World War: The beginnings of neurology on screen (III).

Treatment of functional symptoms has a long history, and interventions were often used in soldiers returning from battle. On the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, I review the portrayal of neurology in documentary film. Two documentaries were released in 1946 and 1948 (Let There Be Light and Shades of Gray, respectively), which showed a number of soldiers with functional neurology including paralysis, stuttering, muteness, and amnesia. The films showed successful treatments with hypnosis and sodium amytal by psychoanalytic psychiatrists. These documentaries link neurology with psychiatry and are remarkable examples of functional neurology and its treatment on screen.

[Advice and treatment from the clairvoyant Croiset]. / Adviezen en behandeling van de paragnost Croiset.

Around 1960, the Dutch clairvoyant Gerard Croiset (1909-1980) was consulted by 'people with symptoms - considered to be unexplained - such as paralysis or neurological disorders'. I searched the archive of the Johan Borgman Fund Foundation for the effect of Croiset's advice and treatment in patients with these symptoms who might have had the diagnosis of conversion disorder. Contrary to my expectations, Croiset treated no patients with conversion disorder. His advice and treatment were successful in patients with poliomyelitis, epilepsy, lumbar disc prolapse and infantile encephalopathy. Four of his patients had been insufficiently stimulated by the first person who treated them to improve their remaining muscular strength through exercise; symptoms of anxiety had not been investigated sufficiently in two patients; and in one patient the treating professional had adhered too rigidly to the set treatment. Alternative healers are apparently not only successful with patients with unexplained symptoms, and their success is not always the result of a placebo effect.

Recipe Collections and the Realities of Fashionable Diseases in Eighteenth-Century Elite Domestic Medicine.

This chapter focuses on the individualistic nature of medicine by considering manuscript recipe collections, and the concerns and rhetoric of the elite patients who wrote about fashionable diseases and experienced them. Domestic medicine in the eighteenth century was a facet of elite health care that included commercial medicine and professional assistance. Looking broadly at the fashionability of health care, including the fashionability of the consumer goods and services linked to self-management and leisure time, reveals the realities of fashionable diseases in elite lives. The sociocultural rhetoric of fashionable diseases was incorporated into the recipe collecting tradition, but experiences of suffering and a need for care continued to be at the forefront of the discourse in domestic medicine and this writing tradition. This essay argues also that domestic rhetoric and experiences of fashionable disease were significantly driven by consumerism.

[Oswald Schwarz: a pioneer in psychosomatic urology and sexual medicine]. / Oswald Schwarz : Ein Pionier der psychosomatischen Urologie und Sexualmedizin.

Oswald Schwarz, a urologist from Vienna, was a scholar of Anton Ritter von Frisch and Hans Rubritius. As a physician during World War I, he was confronted with numerous bullet wounds to the spinal cord. In 1919, he completed his professorial thesis"Bladder dysfunction as a result of bullet wounds to the spinal cord". Oswald Schwarz was known as a committed surgeon. As an urologist he also treated patients with sexual dysfunction. Besides his practical and scientific urology-related work, he was also interested in psychology and philosophy. He held lectures on both subjects earning himself the nickname, the Urosoph. In the 1920s, Oswald Schwarz belonged to the inner circle of Alfred Adler, the founder of Individual Psychology, and was editor of the first psychosomatic textbook published in German, "Psychological origin and psychotherapy of physical symptoms" (1925). In addition, Schwarz wrote numerous articles and several books on sexual medicine. He also made many valuable contributions to the development of medical anthropology. Altogether, his work includes over 130 publications. Faced with the rise of fascism and National Socialism in Europe, Oswald Schwarz, who was of Jewish origin, emigrated to England in 1934. There he died in 1949. Unfortunately his scientific work has largely been forgotten. The aim of the following article is to remind us of his important contributions to the field.

[From disability to the adunatos: some thoughts on disability and somatoform pain disorder]. / De l'invalide à l'adunatos: réflexions sur l'invalidité et le trouble somatoforme douloureux.

Disability, especially if related to a psychiatric disorder, such as somatoform pain disorder, is characterized by medical, psychological, relational, social and societal, as well as financial and political aspects. This manuscript, part of a PhD thesis which reflects on a possible dialogue between an ancient text and the modern conceptualization of disability, tries to address the phenomenological, historical and political dimensions of disability.

German battle casualties: the treatment of functional somatic disorders during World War I.

World War I witnessed the admission of large numbers of German soldiers with neurological symptoms for which there was no obvious organic cause. This posed a considerable challenge for the military and medical authorities and resulted in an active discussion on the etiology and treatment of these disorders. Current historiography is reliant on published physician accounts, and this represents the first study of treatment approaches based on original case notes. We analyzed patient records from two leading departments of academic psychiatry in Germany, those at Berlin and Jena, in conjunction with the contemporaneous medical literature. Treatment, which can be broadly classified into reward and punishment, suggestion, affective shock, cognitive learning, and physiological methods, was developed in the context of the emerging fields of animal learning and neurophysiology. A further innovative feature was the use of quantitative methods to assess outcomes. These measures showed good response rates, though most cured patients were not sent back to battle because of their presumed psychopathic constitution. While some treatments appear unnecessarily harsh from today's perspective and were also criticized by leading psychiatrists of the time, the concentration of effort and involvement of so many senior doctors led to the development of psychotherapeutic methods that were to influence the field of psychiatric therapy for decades to come.

Medical men, women of letters, and treatments for eighteenth-century hysteria.

This paper explores evolving treatments for hysteria in the eighteenth century by examining a selection of works by both physician-writers and educated literary women. The treatments I identify--which range from aggressive bloodlettings, diets, and beatings, to exercise, fresh air, and writing cures--reveal a unique culture of therapy in which female sufferers and doctors exert an influence on one another's notions of what constitutes appropriate management of women's mental illness. A scrutiny of this exchange of ideas suggests that female patients were not simply oppressed and silenced by male practitioners; rather, their collective voice, intellect, and expertise helped to form progressive treatments for eighteenth-century hysteria.

[Images of gender and gender-specific therapies in German homoeopathic and naturopathic guidebooks (c. 1870-1930)]. / Geschlechterbilder und geschlechtsspezifische Therapien in deutschsprachigen Patientenratgebern der Homöopathie und Naturheilkunde (ca. 1870-1930).

In the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century sex and gender became crucial categories not only in the medical discourse of German speaking countries. At the very centre of this discourse was the idea of women as the weaker sex. Because of the paradigm shift in the history of medicine (due to the discovery of the cytopathology) the principle of a weaker sex seemed to be corroborated by scientific research, a fact which impacted on medical practice in many ways. "Nervous" disease evolved as the major threat "of our times," with urban girls, young women and "weak" young men being most at risk. At the same time homoeopaths and naturopaths challenged modern medicine, offering alternative health practices, cures and drugs for people who could not afford the help of physicians or distrusted them. An analysis of several alternative medical guidebooks printed between c. 1870 and 1930 showed that homoeopaths and naturopaths shared the "sexualization" of medical discourse and practice only to an extent. On the one hand they believed that disorders such as hysteria, masturbation, chorea Sydenham and anaemia were nervous in nature and that the chances of curing them were poor. With the exception of masturbation these "deadly" threats were considered to be typically female. The general approach of alternative physicians, on the other hand, was unisex. The cures they offered to the public used unisex scales of constitutional characters. They even ignored the gender specificity of sick headaches. Gender-specific problems such as difficult deliveries and childbed fever were treated as "natural" and mild cures were favoured. The conclusion is that the influences of upper and middle class discourse on common health practices should not be overestimated.

El modelo psicosomático de Pierre Marty / Pierre Marty´s psycho-somatic model

El artículo hace un recorrido por la teoría psicosomática de Pierre Marty y la escuela formada entorno al «lnstitut de Psychosomatique de Paris. (IPSO), que continúa su labor de investigación, desarrollo teórico y difusión. Se aborda, en primer lugar, la descripción del modelo teórico de Marty, según los tres aspectos fundamentales (monista, evolucionista y económico); posteriormente, las principales características del proceso de somatización y las distintas formas de presentarse la enfermedad somática y, por último, algunas consideraciones sobre diagnóstico y tratamiento (AU)

The article traces the developmetn of the psychosomatic theory of Pierre Marty and the school formed by the Institut de psychosomatique de Paris (IPSO), which continues his work in the fields of research, theoretical development and diffusion. Marty´s theoretical model is described according to three main aspects (monistic, evolutionary and economic). The author then considers the main aspects of the process of somatization, the different forms that illness can present, and its diagnosis and treatment (AU)

The concept of somatization as a cultural and historical product of Western medicine.

Somatization is handled as a concept that plays an important role in the contemporary clinical theory and practice of psychiatry and general medicine. A distinct biomedical epistemology and model of illness underlies use of the concept and gives it meaning. First, the nature of the assumptions about the medical problems described by the concept are outlined. Then, some of the cultural and historical aspects of Western medical history that shaped the concept and its epistemology are reviewed. The concept is seen to arise as a consequence of the development of the modern ontological view of disease, the shift in the role ascribed to the nervous system and theoretical developments involving the explanation of psychoses through a descriptive language of psychopathology and bodily states. A discussion of non-Western perspectives of illness is pursued in order to highlight the differences in the conditions that led to the evolution of the concept in Western medicine. Some of the theoretical quandaries associated with the concept are briefly reviewed.