Wilhelm Griesinger

Wilhelm Griesinger was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1817. He studied medicine, learning from Johann Lukas Schönlein in Zurich and the physiologist François Magendie in Paris. After his doctorate he worked in several places, including Stuttgart, Tübingen and the University of Kiel. In 1845 he published an influential textbook on mental illness, Die Pathologie und Therapie der psychischen Krankheiten. In the early 1850s he went to Egypt as director of the medical school in Cairo and became personal physician to its ruler, Abbas I; his experience there led him to write on tropical and infectious diseases. Returning to Tübingen in 1854 as a professor of clinical medicine, he later helped plan the Burghölzli mental hospital in Zurich. In 1865 he moved to Berlin to lead the Charité clinic, where he founded a medical-psychological society and an important psychiatric journal. In its first issue he wrote that patients with so-called mental illnesses are really individuals with illnesses of the nerves and brain. He favoured short hospital stays combined with support from patients' families and communities. He died in Berlin in 1868.

Wilhelm Griesinger is also an author in the library: author page and works.

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