Handbook of Insanity

About this book

What did physicians mean by insanity before modern diagnostic categories took shape? Theodore Kirchhoff's handbook records a medical profession trying to name, classify and treat disturbances of thought and behaviour.

The work describes symptoms, institutions and theories current in its own period. Some observations will sound familiar; other judgments reflect assumptions now rejected or seriously revised. Its strongest historical value comes from seeing both the precision that nineteenth-century clinicians sought and the limits of the language available to them. The people described in those categories often remain less visible than the system built around them.