Psychiatry was introduced into Greece in the second half of the nineteenth century. It developed as a medical specialty between 1880-1930. The fundamental characteristics of psychiatry in Greece are: (a) the discontinuity in the introduction of scientific knowledge; (b) the important position of the private clinics; (c) the delayed organization of the public sector.
A study is presented of the functioning of the lunatics department as it existed in the Hospital y General de Nuestra Señora De Gracia in Zaragoza in the eighteenth century.This hospital, which already by this period required a medical certificate for the admission of mad people, cared for between 150 and 250 mad persons daily throughout the century, with the consequence that it became the most important centre for psychiatric care at that time. Thus, mental patients from many different regions and countries were admitted there, and also private mental patients who paid for their treatment.The living conditions, food, clothing, and also the work carried out by these patients is described; regarding therapy, it should be pointed out that the birth of work therapy took place here in this hospital, a fact later made known by Pinel.
The controversy among German psychiatrists about the best caring-system for the insane - asylums versus family-care - in the middle of the nineteenth century has been analysed on the basis of all contributions to this topic in the Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie (AZP) in the period between 1844 and 1902. These debates led to a decision in 1868 with a clear vote for continuing the asylum-policy that has had lasting effects up to the present day. The AZP and its editors had a decisive influence on the debate, although it was based on an already antiquated background. Although asylum-psychiatry succeeded in this controversy, at the turn of the century family-care was established in Germany as an additional and feasible form of care outside the asylums. This development was stopped in the national-socialistic period and has not recovered since.
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