Johann Christian Reil

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Johann Christian Reil
University of Halle
Humboldt University of Berlin
Halle (Saale)
, Germany, today Bergzoo Halle

Johann Christian Reil (20 February 1759 – 22 November 1813)

anatomist, and psychiatrist. He coined the term psychiatry – Psychiatrie in German – in 1808.[2][3]

Reil was one of five children, and was the son of a Lutheran pastor in Northwest Germany. He married Johanna Wilhelmine Leveaux in October, 1788. Together they had two sons and four daughters.

Medical conditions and anatomical features named after him include Reil's finger (later called digitus mortuus or

Islands of Reil in the cerebral cortex. In 1809, he was the first to describe the white fibre tract now called the arcuate fasciculus.[4] He is frequently and erroneously credited with discovering the locus coeruleus,[5] which was first described by Félix Vicq-d'Azyr.[6]

Between 1779 and 1780, Reil became acquainted with the scientist

Friedrich Schelling's Naturphilosophie.[8] In 1795, Reil established the first journal of physiology written in German, the Archiv für die Physiologie.[3] In 1810 he became one of the first professors of psychiatry after being appointed professor of medicine in Berlin
.

From 1802 to 1805, the poet

Goethe visited Reil to discuss scientific matters such as psychiatry and to access his skills as a physician.[3]

Reil used the term 'Psychiaterie' in a short-lived journal he set up with

German Romantic context, and his 1803 work Rhapsodien uber die Anwendung der psychischen Kurmethode auf Geisteszerrüttungen ('Rhapsodies about applying the psychological method of treatment to mental breakdowns') has been called the most important document of Romantic psychiatry. Reil didn't conceptualize madness as a break from reason, but as a reflection of wider social conditions, and believed that advances in civilization created more madness. He saw this as due not to physical lesions in the brain or to hereditary evil, but as a disturbance in the harmony of the mind's functions (forms of awareness or presence), rooted in the nervous system.[9]

Reil also wrote on Blumenbach's idea of the Bildungstrieb (literally, "building power"), a vital force within each organism that compels it to create, maintain, and repair its form. In Reil's essay "Von der Lebenskraft," he argued that each organism contained a "dormant germ" that was activated by the addition of the father's "animal force."[10]

Reil died on 22 November 1813[11] from typhus contracted while treating the wounded in the Battle of Leipzig, later known as the Battle of the Nations, one of the most severe confrontations of the Napoleonic Wars.[8]

See also

References

  1. ^ Hess, Volker (2003), "Reil, Johann Christian", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 21, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 332–333; (full text online)
  2. S2CID 28365371
    .
  3. ^
    S2CID 8152708
    .
  4. PMID 18614162
  5. PMID 10708919
  6. PMID 21445631
    .
  7. ^ Watson, Peter. The German Genius. New York: Harper, 2010. p. 83.
  8. ^ a b Hansen, Leeann. "From Enlightenment to Naturphilosophie: Marcus Herz, Johann Christian Reil, and the Problem of Border Crossings." Journal of Natural Biology. Spring 1993, Vol 26., No. 1. pp. 39–64.
  9. ^ Theodore Ziolkowski, German Romanticism and its Institutions. Princeton, N.J.:Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 181–217.
  10. ^ Watson, p. 83.
  11. ISBN 9781474256001
    . Retrieved 21 November 2018.

Sources

External links

External links

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