Abstract
IN a recent address (Nordisk Med., 10, 1921; 1941) at the opening of the new Psychiatric Clinic at the Caroline Hospital, Stockholm, Dr. Viktor Wigert gave a retrospect of clinical psychiatry in Sweden during the last hundred years. In 1844 it was stated by the authorities in charge of the hospitals in Sweden that no expert knowledge was required for the treatment of insanity, which was therefore no concern of public health. This pronouncement had been occasioned by a demand made by a Royal Commission headed by Dr. Carl Ulrik Sondén that all institutions to be built for the care of the insane should provide for the treatment as well as for the confinement of the patients. Sondén, who was a pioneer in Swedish psychiatry, was the first to emphasize the importance of instruction in this branch of medicine, which was introduced in Sweden by Dr. Nils Gustaf Kjellberg, at the Uppsala Asylum in 1859. Kjellberg was an eminent man of science, who as early as 1863 expressed his conviction of a causal connexion between syphilis and general paralysis. In 1861 psychiatry was made a compulsory subject for the medical student in Sweden. In the 'nineties demands were made, particularly by Prof. Frey Svenson of Uppsala and Dr. Bror Gadelius of Stockholm, that special clinics for instruction in psychiatry should be created and that professors of psychiatry should be relieved of their duties as senior physicians to large asylums. Opposition to this demand, however, was not overcome until 1928, when it was decided to open a psychiatric clinic at the Lund University Hospital. The establishment of a similar clinic at the Uppsala University Hospital has since been decided upon, but this has not yet been completed. The psychiatric clinic recently established at the Caroline Institute of Stockholm finally realizes Sondén's desire for an institution for the cure of mental diseases.
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Psychiatry in Sweden. Nature 148, 779 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/148779a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/148779a0