Welcome to Oskar Diethelm Library
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Jekyll on trial : multiple personality disorder and criminal lawWhy do we find multiple personality disorder (MPD) so fascinating? Perhaps because each of us is aware of a dividedness within ourselves: we often feel as if we are one person on the job, another with our families, another with our friends and lovers. We may fantasize that these inner discrepancies will someday break free, that within us lie other personalities - genius, lover, criminal - that will take us over and render us strangers to our very selves. What happens when such a transformation literally occurs, when an alter personality surfaces and commits some heinous deed?
Voices of madness : four pamphlets, 1683 - 1796
A hole in the head : more tales in the history of neuroscience
Disturbances of the mindSergei Korsakoff, Alois Alzheimer, James Parkinson, Hans Asperger ... all eminent scientists whose names have become synonymous with a disease, a syndrome or an autistic disorder. Although the names of these psychiatrists and neurologists are familiar, we often know little about the individuals themselves and the circumstances surrounding their discoveries. What exactly did they discover, and who were their patients? Douwe Draaisma has expertly reconstructed the lives of these and eight other ’names’ from the science of mind and brain. Disturbances of the Mind provides a fascinating, illuminating and, at times, touching insight into the history of brain research.
The dancing plague : the strange, true story of an extraordinary illnessIn the searing July summer of 1518, Frau Troffea stepped into the streets of Strasbourg and began to dance. Over the next two months, roughly four hundred people succumbed to the same agonizing compulsion, with as many as one hundred literally dancing to their deaths. Evoking the sights, sounds, and hardships of the late medieval world, The Dancing Plague grippingly sheds light on an extraordinary illness and the strangest capabilities of the human mind.
Lawyers’ medicine : the legislature, the courts, and medical practice, 1760-2000This book investigates how the requirements, limitations and intellectual structure of the British legal process have shaped medicine and medical practice. The story of this inter-relationship is greatly under-researched, which is particularly concerning given that the legal system remains a significant and pervasive influence on medicine and its practice to this day. The question which unifies the series of historical studies presented here is whether legal consideration of medical practice and concepts has played a part in the construction of medical concepts and affected developments in medical practice -- in other words how the external, legal gaze has shaped the way medicine itself conceptualizes some of its practices and classifications. The majority of the chapters consider this question in the context of the development and application of legislation, but the influence of the court processes is also considered. Other themes which emerge from the book include the nature and exclusivity of medical expertise, the impact of public opinion on the development of medical legislation, and the difficulty the legal system has faced in dealing with new medical developments.
The protest psychosis : how schizophrenia became a black diseasePsychiatrist and cultural critic Jonathan Metzl tells a shocking story of how schizophrenia became the diagnostic term overwhelmingly applied to African American men at the Ionia State Hospital, and how events at Ionia mirrored national conversations that increasingly linked blackness, madness, and civil rights.
Diseases & diagnoses : the second age of biologyDiscusses why such social problems as addiction, sexually transmitted diseases, racial predisposition for illness, surgery and beauty, and electrotherapy, all of which concerned thinkers a hundred years ago, are reappearing at a staggering rate and in diverse national contexts. In the twentieth century such problems were viewed as only historical concerns. Yet in the twenty-first century, we once again find ourselves confronting their implications.
