Wiktionary
n. (context dated pathology English) schizophrenia
WordNet
n. any of several psychotic disorders characterized by distortions of reality and disturbances of thought and language and withdrawal from social contact [syn: schizophrenia, schizophrenic disorder, schizophrenic psychosis]
Wikipedia
Dementia praecox (a "premature dementia" or "precocious madness") is a chronic, deteriorating psychotic disorder characterized by rapid cognitive disintegration, usually beginning in the late teens or early adulthood. Schizophrenia is the new word describing this disease. The term was first used in 1891 by Arnold Pick (1851–1924), a professor of psychiatry at Charles University in Prague. His brief clinical report described the case of a person with a psychotic disorder resembling hebephrenia. German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926) popularised it in his first detailed textbook descriptions of a condition that eventually became a different disease concept and relabeled as schizophrenia. Kraepelin reduced the complex psychiatric taxonomies of the nineteenth century by dividing them into two classes: manic-depressive psychosis and dementia praecox. This division, commonly referred to as the Kraepelinian dichotomy, had a fundamental impact on twentieth-century psychiatry, though it has also been questioned.
The primary disturbance in dementia praecox is a disruption in cognitive or mental functioning in attention, memory, and goal-directed behaviour. Kraepelin contrasted this with manic-depressive psychosis, now termed bipolar disorder, and also with other forms of mood disorder, including major depressive disorder. He eventually concluded that it was not possible to distinguish his categories on the basis of cross-sectional symptoms.
Kraepelin viewed dementia praecox as a progressively deteriorating disease from which no one recovered. However, by 1913, and more explicitly by 1920, Kraepelin admitted that while there may be a residual cognitive defect in most cases, the prognosis was not as uniformly dire as he had stated in the 1890s. Still, he regarded it as a specific disease concept that implied incurable, inexplicable madness.
Usage examples of "dementia praecox".
She tore strips of paper from her legal pads, fastened them into long yellow loops, inscribed each one with Collatio bonorum and Dementia praecox, and tied them loosely around Kelerison's wrists and ankles.
A trial for poisoning means an exhaustive study not only of analytic chemistry, but of practical medicine on the part of all the lawyers in the case, while a plea of insanity requires that, for the time being, the district attorney shall become an alienist, familiar with every aspect of paranoia, dementia praecox, and all other forms of mania.
What he's done is to go into what they used to call dementia praecox.
Fundamentally Carl is a snob, an aristocratic little prick who lives in a dementia praecox kingdom all his own.
Afghan specialists were called in and diagnosed dementia praecox with possible overlays of adolescent catatonia.
That was merely obsessive manic-depression bordering on dementia praecox.
The Syphilis Empire, The Republic of Suicide, Dementia Praecox, which of course borders on beautiful Paranoia.
He had all the symptoms of what was then called dementia praecox and would be so diagnosed.
It wouldn't be ridiculous to ponder the possibility that Vanning was a victim of dementia praecox, extremely shrewd about hiding it, underneath the disease a good man, but dominated by the disease, a murderer and a terror.
Lyman believes that this note contains positive proof of a well-developed case of dementia praecox , but Willett on the other hand regards it as the last perfectly sane utterance of the hapless youth.
Lyman believes that this note contains positive proof of a well-developed case of dementia praecox, but Willett on the other hand regards it as the last perfectly sane utterance of the hapless youth.