Ludwig Meyer (doctor)

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Ludwig Meyer

Ludwig Meyer (born December 27, 1827 in Bielefeld , † February 8, 1900 in Göttingen ) was a German psychiatrist and university professor . He reformed the psychiatry system.

Career

As a baptized Jew , Meyer began studying medicine at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn , where he joined the Bonn fraternity of Frankonia , before founding the “Normannia” fraternity on March 9, 1849 with Philipp Wessel . Finding himself with Gottfried Kinkel , Carl Schurz and Friedrich Spielhagen at the Revolution of 1848/1849 involved and on 11 May 1849 at the storming of the Siegburg armory had participated, it was after five months of detention relegated and imprisonment punished. Covered by Rudolf Virchow , he was only able to continue his studies in 1850 at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg and later at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin . 1852 at the Charité for Dr. med. after receiving his doctorate , he became an assistant to Karl Wilhelm Ideler . He then worked in the Schwetz institution . In 1857 he became a senior physician at Ideler. In the same year he completed his habilitation. In 1858 he became a senior physician at the St. Georg General Hospital in Hamburg . There he was hired to reorganize the treatment of the mentally ill. In 1864 he set up the Friedrichsberg State Hospital according to his plans. In 1866 he was appointed full professor at the University of Göttingen and director of the sanatorium and nursing home. He received the first chair for psychiatry created at a German insane asylum. For the academic year 1884/85 he was elected rector of the University of Göttingen. Meyer later ran as a national liberal for the Reichstag (German Empire) and was a supporter of Otto von Bismarck . In 1893 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

Services

Ludwig Meyer deserves the credit of being the first in Germany to support John Connolly (1794–1866) and of having introduced his no-restraint principle at the psychiatric hospital in Hamburg in 1858 (and again in 1864) . In this way, he had created the prerequisites to become Wilhelm Griesinger's (1817–1868) closest friend in the fight for a scientific psychiatry that recognizes physical (neurological) illness as the cause of mental disorders and therefore renounces punishment and coercion. It is thus understandable that Meyer, like Joseph Guislain (1797–1860), pushed for bed treatment, which gave the psychiatric institution hospital character. Meyer also campaigned for the possibilities of psychiatric institutions to be improved by doing research and teaching students here, a claim that William Battie (1703–1776) and Thomas Arnold (1742–1816) had already made. This demand, too, was related to what Meyers believed was ostensible and necessary scientific research. The Göttingen establishment was therefore founded “with the express precondition of teaching”. Together with Wilhelm Griesinger, Meyer called for the expansion of psychiatric outpatient clinics so that the new scientific approaches can also be used for consultation psychiatry . Together with Griesinger, he founded the journal “ Archive for Psychiatry and Nervous Diseases ”. This was a declaration of war against institutional psychiatry and the " Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie ", which Heinrich Philipp August Damerow (1798–1866) also edited .

family

Ludwig Meyer's son Ernst and his sons Hans-Hermann and Joachim-Ernst were also psychiatrists.

Works (selection)

  • The no-restraint and German psychiatry. 1863.
  • Relations of the insane with the possessed and witches. 1861.
  • Studies on forensic psychiatry, especially on reduced sanity. 1870.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Archives Corps Rhenania Freiburg
  2. ^ Elisabeth Burkhart: Ludwig Meyer (1827-1900) - life and work. A representative of German psychiatry on its way to becoming a medical and scientific discipline. Berlin 1991 (medical dissertation, Free University of Berlin, 1991), p. 205 ff.
  3. ↑ Rector's speeches (HKM)
  4. ^ Klaus Dörner : Citizens and Irre. On the social history and sociology of science in psychiatry. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1975 (first published in 1969), ISBN 3-436-02101-6 , p. 313.
  5. ^ Klaus Dörner : Citizens and Irre. On the social history and sociology of science in psychiatry. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1975 (first published in 1969), ISBN 3-436-02101-6 , pages 313, 316, 335.
  6. ↑ Degkwitz, Rudolf et al. (Ed.): Mentally ill. Introduction to Psychiatry for Clinical Study . Munich 1982, ISBN 3-541-09911-9 , p. 297.
  7. ↑ Degkwitz, Rudolf et al. (Ed.): Mentally ill. Introduction to Psychiatry for Clinical Study . Munich 1982, ISBN 3-541-09911-9 , p. 361.
  8. ^ Klaus Dörner : Citizens and Irre. On the social history and sociology of science in psychiatry. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1975 (first published in 1969), ISBN 3-436-02101-6 , p. 316 f.
personal data
SURNAME Meyer, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychiatrist; University professor and rector in Göttingen
DATE OF BIRTH December 27, 1827
PLACE OF BIRTH Bielefeld
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1900
Place of death Goettingen