Spiegel of bril? Over diagnostische categorieën in de psychiatrie

Omschrijving

In zijn Essays on Fashionable Diseases wees de Schotse arts James Makittrick Adair in 1786 op de invloed van een eerder verschenen boek over nervous diseases (van Robert Whytt, 1764). Vóór de publicatie van dat boek, schreef Adair, hadden mensen zelfs geen idee dat ze zenuwen hadden, maar '... a fashionable apothecary of my acquaintance, having cast his eye over the book, and having often been puzzled by the enquiries of his patients concerning the nature and causes of their complaints, derived from thence a hint, by which he readily cut the gordian knot - "Madam, you are nervous"; the solution was quite atisfactory, the term became fashionable...'