[Robert Schumann in the psychiatric hospital in Endenich near Bonn]. / Robert Schumann in der Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Endenich bei Bonn.

BACKGROUND: The composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856) spent the last two-and-a-half years of his life in the private psychiatric hospital in Endenich. His medical records emerged in 1991 and were published by Appel in 2006. METHODS: Daily entries by the physicians were analyzed concerning psychopathology and organic signs as well as the illness-related correspondence of the people closest to Schumann. RESULTS: The numerous entries reveal the treatment typical at that time for what was at first considered to be "melancholy with delusions": shielding from stimuli, physical procedures, and a dietary regimen. The feared, actual diagnosis, a "general (incomplete) paralysis," becomes a certainty in the course of the paranoid-hallucinatory symptoms with cerebro-organic characteristics and agitated states, differences in pupil size, and increasing speech disturbances. CONCLUSION: In the medicine of the time, syphilis is just emerging as the suspected cause, and the term "progressive paralysis" is coined as typical for the course. Proof of Treponema pallidum infection was not available until 1905. Nevertheless, the clinical signs strongly refer to the course of neurosyphilis. People close to Robert, in particular his wife Clara and the circle of friends around Brahms and Joachim, cared intensively for him and suffered under the therapeutic isolation. The medical records and disease-related letters contradict the theory that Schumann was disposed of by being put into the psychiatric hospital; they show the concern of all during the unfavorable illness course.

Malariablood in the pocket. / Malariablut in der Westentasche.

For the first time on June 5, 1919, at the Hamburg State Hospital Friedrichsberg, two paralytics were artificially infected with malaria, subjecting them to the new malaria fever treatment according to Wagner-Jauregg (1917). This article examines the life stories and medical histories of these patients, an opera singer and a yardmaster, and provides an interpretation based on their medical files. Relevant contemporary medical publications contextualise the specific configurations of their hospital stay. In both cases, a detailed comparison between each medical file and the published case history reveals remarkable.discrepancies. A specific concept of remission, mainly determined by the level of restoration of a patient's working power, i. e. the ability to work, was implemented. Finally, the article considers the question of why the new therapy method was introduced in Hamburg specifically on June 5, 1919.