ABSTRACT
Schizophrenia is a chronic, more or less debilitating psychosis that occurs in about 1 percent of the general population and which is equally common in males and females. This illness was first noted by Morel in 1860 (Anonymous 1954), who referred to it as démence précoce. A full description of the disease, however, had to await the efforts of Emil Kraepelin. Kraepelin, who latinized the name to dementia praecox, was a German psychiatrist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whose work remains a guiding force for modern psychiatry. The current name for the disease, schizophrenia, was coined by Eugen Bleuler, a Swiss psychiatrist who amplified Kraepelin’s original descriptions. Another guiding light in the elucidation of the disease was the German psychiatrist Kurt Schneider, who isolated certain symptoms, now known as Schneiderian first rank symptoms, which, although not pathognomonic of the disease, are very, very suggestive.
