Clinical psychiatry : a text-book for students and physicians

Front matter

LIBRARY

Walter E. Fernald State School

Waverley, Massachusetts

Preface

The motive for this work was to make the teachings of Kraepelin in psychiatry accessible to American medical students and general practitioners, and, at the same time, to provide a full, but concise, text-book, not only for the author's own classes in psychiatry in the Medical Department of Yale University, but as well for other American teachers who follow Kraepelin' s views. Urged by the rapidly increasing interest in Professor Kraepelin' s teaching during the past five years in this country and the constantly growing number of his disciples, it was the author's first intention to publish a complete translation of the sixth edition of Kraepelin's " Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie." It was feared, however, that a full translation would be too large to best subserve the function of a text-book, and would have rendered impossible the adaptation of the Kraepelin psychiatry to our peculiar American needs.

The classification, terminology, and, wherever possible, the phraseology of this work are Kraepelinian, but the author has taken the liberty of abbreviating disproportionately the description of some psychoses which are of less importance to the American physician, especially the constitutional psychopathic states and thyroigenous insanity, and of laying more stress upon other more important forms, the description of acquired neurasthenia, traumatic neuroses, also the treatment in epileptic and hysterical insanity and acquired neurasthenia.

vi PREFACE

The only omissions are the general etiology, diagnosis, and treatment in the first volume of Kraepelin, but such points as are of most importance have been added to the etiology, diagnosis, and treatment of the different diseases.

The work has been done in the pressure of routine duties as Assistant Physician and Pathologist of the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane, and the author begs leave to express in this place his grateful appreciation of the generous advice and help of his colleagues in the hospital, especially Dr. Charles W. Page. He is particularly indebted to Dr. J. M. Keniston for a general revision of the text as well as for the arrangement of the chapter on epileptic insanity, to Professor Raymond Dodge, Ph.D., of Wesleyan University, for criticism and suggestion with regard to the general symptomatology, and to Dr. August Hoch and Adolf Meyer for their continued inspiration and critical assistance.

A. ROSS DEFENDORF.

MlDDLETOWN, CONN.,