To the History of Scientific Concepts of the XIX Century Domestic Psychiatry: P.A. Butkovskiy’s Textbook

Abstract

Background: the elaboration of problems of clinical psychiatry in Russia had already begun in the end of the XVIII — beginning of the XIX centuries by professors of internal medicine and of other branches of medical academic institutions, and from the thirties years of XIX century gradually moved to the hands of the doctors who were specialized in psychiatry (V.F. Sabler, A.I. Gerzog, I.F. Rjul, I.P. Malinovskiy and others).The aim was to analyze the history of the formation of scientific concepts in Russian psychiatry in comparison with the relevant German and French psychiatric concepts at that time.Method: narrative review.Conclusion: the author of the first domestic textbook of psychiatry “Diseases of the soul” (1834) was Professor of department of surgery and mental diseases of Kharkov’s University P.A. Butkovskiy. Creating his textbook P.A. Butkovskiy grounded on the textbook of one of the founders of german “school of psychics” J.Ch. Heinroth (1818) and took as a basis of classification of mental diseases Heinroth’s systematics. The forms of mental diseases according to P.A. Butkovskiy and J.Ch. Heinroth were distinguished by two principal signs: predomination of affection of the one among three areas of psyche: imagination, intellect and volition, and due to the changes in its functions: amplification or weakening. Wherein P.A. Butkovskiy connected with the affection of the brain only the group of “paranoiс” diseases (general paranoia, ecnoia, paraphrosyne, moria) and acquired stupidity (anoia) that were explained by exaggeration or weakening of the brain functioning respectively. P.A. Butkovskiy also introduced in Russian psychiatry the notion of “dynamics” and “psychosomatic” that were borrowed from J.Ch. Heinroth, and the concept of “general feeling” (coenesthesis) of J. Reil. The forms of mental disorders distinguished by J.Ch. Heinroth represented the next progressive step in the differentiation of syndrome pictures of mental diseases (but not in psychiatric nosology as the author considered), and the fact that P.A. Butkovskiy, the author of the first Russian Textbook on Psychiatry, created the similar systematics on the same principles, contributed to the building of mutual understanding between national psychiatric schools that were in the process of being formed.