Kadaverhersenen en Excessen in Baccho en Venere. Dementia Paralytica in de Nederlandse Psychiatrie (1870-1920)

Cadaver brains and excesses in Baccho and Venere. Dementia paralytica in Dutch psychiatry (1870-1920) This article deals with Dutch psychiatry’s involvement with dementia paralytica between 1870 and 1920. The psychiatric interpretation of this disorder, which is caused by syphilis, would vary depending on the institutional and social context wherein it was examined, treated and discussed by physicians. We argue that psychiatric diagnoses and understandings of this disorder in part have a social-cultural basis and can be explained against the backdrop of the professionalization of Dutch psychiatry. First we address what dementia paralytica amounted to and why this disease drew so much attention in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Next we discuss (1) how psychiatrists variously understood dementia paralytica in asylum practice, which centered on diagnosis, care and treatment, (2) their pathological-anatomical study of the physical causes of this disease, as well as (3) the public debate on its prevalence and causes.