Introductory Lecture to a Course on Psychiatry, Delivered at the Imperial Joseph Academy in Vienna, November, 1866

Upon the noble ship of medicine, which sails proudly on the ocean of knowledge, decked out with gay and varied flags, there floats, my honoured friends and colleagues, one banner inscribed with the word “Psychiatry.” It is, I might almost say, the last one added and the lowest in position. For although in the future we may hope that it will be uplifted higher, and acquire more and more prestige, so as probably at length to range itself on a level with its auxiliary sciences, with pathological anatomy, physiology, and practical medicine, and with other specialities of this last, as a worthy equal with them, yet, alas! this happy event is not yet realised! Still, my friends, we must feel impelled to advance further and fur ther along the new road that we have entered upon-that practical and positive path whereby alone we can attain to that goal at which we aim, the goal of truth and perfection. And, in fact, my friends, if I to-day, in this introductory discourse, do not unveil before you the dreary picture of the past in respect to this science of psychiatry–if I withdraw from memory all those dark deeds and barbarities that prevailed of old, and gladly let oblivion cover them, it is with the view that I may do homage to progress, and thereby place myself in harmony with you; for the purport of our inquiry into this science of psychiatry is, to find not what was, but what is, and still more what shall be, and what shall be for the better, and at the same time to investigate and advance it. In considering to-day the principles (stand-point) of this science, I shall therefore, first of all, take up that division which is known as clinical psychiatry.

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Some Reflections on the Progress of Psychiatry

Journal of Mental Science ◽

10.1192/bjp.77.319.683 ◽

1931 ◽

Vol 77 (319) ◽

pp. 683-691

Author(s):

Richard R. Leeper

Keyword(s):

Clinical Psychiatry ◽

Good Work ◽

The Past ◽

Modern Methods ◽

The Future ◽

Great Association ◽

Arcus Senilis

Ladies and Gentlemen,—I rise, as your President, with a feeling of what the older physicians called præcordial anxiety, chiefly because I am not a teacher of psychiatry, but merely a clinical physician, and therefore possibly may have no real mandate from the gods to address you, except that which I owe to the kindly hearts of my fellow members of our great Association. Whatever work I have done in Ireland in helping to keep alive our interests in psychiatry you have bounteously rewarded, and I heartily thank you, on my own behalf, and also on behalf of the Irish Division, for the great honour you have conferred upon me. The old Shakespearian tag says: “Some are born great, and some achieve greatness,” but I assuredly have had this “greatness thrust upon me.” It is difficult, all must admit, to leave “footprints in the sands of Time,” and, to one who succeeds such men as Conolly Norman, Dawson and Nolan—all Irish Presidents—the task is not easy. The older members will easily remember Sir Thomas Clouston, Dr. Urquhart, of Perth, Sir George Savage, and many others who have kept alive the knowledge of psychiatry and amply added to it, and we, who speak to you in, possibly, “childhood's treble tones,” and look at you through the oncoming “silvery fringes of the ‘arcus senilis,’” can only feel that the good work of clinical psychiatry will be carried on, in the curative interests of God's mentally afflicted, as it has been done in the past; and it will, I feel sure, be effectually perfected in the future by the younger members of to-day, graced with the present-day knowledge of biochemistry and the more modern methods of psycho-therapy.

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