THE SCHIZOPHRENIC SYNDROME AS A PRODUCT OF ACUTE INFECTIOUS DISEASE

Abstract

May schizophrenia result from acute infectious disease; if so, in what manner and with what frequency does this occur, and what is the relation of this psychotic product to the so-called symptomatic psychoses? To these problems the present study is addressed. No one now doubts the exogenous origin of some cases of the schizophrenic syndrome, cases of what are in every other respect orthodox "dementia praecox"; Bleuler, Jaspers, Kretschmer, Birnbaum and others have advanced this fact beyond dispute. Few writers, however, have been statistically precise. To these, Rosanoff¹and Strecker²are exceptions; the former found somatic exciting causes in twenty-six of 202 cases of schizophrenia, and the latter found that in seventeen of 100 cases there were serious or overwhelming physical disease as precipitants and in seventeen others there were somatic precipitants of doubtful (not insignificant) importance. There is scarcely any literature regarding the percentage of schizophrenic patients