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 de´mence pre´coce.
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.
