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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 July 2009
Knowledge is not a fixed thing but a stage in human development, with a past and a future.
Neil Postman, 1992Reading the description of the treatments available to Kahlbaum in 1874, we can see how great our options are today. Patients were ill for months to years, recovering after an unusual emotional or traumatic experience, a febrile episode, or most often, inexplicably. In pages titled “Therapy,” Kahlbaum apologizes for his meager experience:
… only later was I to concentrate on the more practical subjects of prognosis and therapy, and the latter only at a late stage, since the proposal of a new disease form calls for abandoning old forms of treatment and performing multidimensional and precise experimental research to devise the correct therapy.
He offers hospital care:
In respect to the details of treatment, I must emphasize that there is no specific drug, and that as in other mental diseases, the preliminary experiences are on the whole rather negative.
Tonics are useful:
In some cases which were cured, the use of iron and quinine, combined with a diet and with a regulation of daily routine of the patient (when necessary implemented against his will) appear to have contributed greatly to the favorable outcome.
He opposes blood-letting, laxatives, withdrawal of fluids in dieting, and taking “the waters at spas”:
… it is self-evident that the drugs and methods which are based on opposite viewpoints – debilitating treatments – which were formerly widely accepted and extensively applied in all psychoses, are absolutely contraindicated in catatonia.
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